Break-even ROAS - See full result
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What ROAS do you actually need to break even?

Your margin decides your break-even ROAS.
Your break-even ROAS decides the budget Meta needs to optimise properly.
Most brands have never worked out either number, and it's the reason ads quietly lose money.

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Your numbers

$

The average amount a customer spends in one order. Add up a month of sales and divide by the number of orders, or pull it straight from Shopify.

$

What you pay your supplier, or what the materials cost. Not postage.

$

Postage, packaging, pick and pack - minus anything the customer pays towards it.

%+$

Defaults to standard Shopify Payments / Stripe rates for your currency.

%

Roughly what share gets refunded. Leave at 0 if you are unsure.

Profit left from each order after you've paid to win that customer. Not sure? Start with break even.

Optional - for a sharper read

x

ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend - Ads Manager shows it. Leave blank if you've never run ads.

$

What you spend now, or what you'd be willing to spend.

Your numbers, worked out

Break-even ROAS
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Most you can pay per order
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What different profit goals would need

Contribution margin is what's left from each order before you've paid for the customer. Everything above is derived from it.

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Why the budget number matters more than the ROAS number

Knowing your target ROAS tells you whether an ad is working. The budget maths tells you whether Meta was ever able to find out.

Your margin sets the target

Whatever is left after product, shipping, fees and returns is what you have to spend winning a customer. Divide the order value by it and that is your break-even ROAS, the line everything else gets measured against.

The target sets the budget

Meta's delivery system does its best work once an ad set has built up roughly 50 conversions a week. At your cost per order, that is a specific daily figure, and it is usually higher than people expect going in.

Concentrated spend gets there faster

That threshold is reached per ad set, not per account, so thinly spread budget takes longer to build real signal anywhere. Keeping spend concentrated is the single fastest way to build it.

Why a bigger ROAS can mean less profit

Two products, same ad spend. The higher ROAS looks like the better spend, until margin gets factored in.

Looks better
5.0x ROAS

$100 order, 50% margin

$30 profit per order
Actually better
2.0x ROAS

$150 order, 75% margin

$37.50 profit per order

The 2x made more money. This is the entire reason this calculator leads with break-even ROAS instead of whatever number your ads dashboard shows you.

Building toward that threshold

Not a shortfall, a starting point. The gap between what you have and what the threshold needs is closed by where the budget goes, not by spending more of it:

Keep spend concentrated

A single clear signal builds faster than the same money split thin. Concentrating spend, rather than spreading it, is what gets you to full signal soonest.

Widen the targeting

Broad targeting gives Meta's system room to find real buyers rather than narrowing to people who'll click. At this budget, less constraint outperforms tight interest-stacking.

Then leave it alone for seven days

Changing targeting, bid strategy or the optimisation event resets learning back to day one, so the biggest lever is often patience.

Install the Conversions API

Server-side events count toward the threshold too, so proper tracking is a direct, practical way to add signal.

Questions people ask at this point

What counts as a good ROAS?
There isn't a universal one, and anyone who gives you a number without asking about your margins is guessing. Reported 2026 ecommerce averages sit around 2.9x with a median closer to 2x, and roughly half of stores run below 2x. But a 4x is losing money at 20% margins and very profitable at 60%. The only number that means anything is the one this page just worked out for you.
Meta says my ROAS is fine. Why does this say otherwise?
Platform-reported ROAS is almost always higher than reality. Meta counts view-through conversions in a 7-day window and claims credit for sales it didn't cause. TikTok does something similar over 28 days. Google tends to be the most conservative. The honest read is blended: total revenue divided by total ad spend, checked against what actually landed in Shopify. If you enter platform ROAS above, treat the result as the optimistic version.
I've never run ads. Is this still useful?
It's arguably more useful before you start. Leave the ROAS and budget fields blank and you'll still get your break-even, your maximum cost per order, and what a realistic budget looks like. Knowing those three things before you spend anything is the difference between a test and a donation.
My customers buy more than once. Doesn't that change it?
Yes, and this calculator deliberately ignores it. Everything here is first-order economics, which is the strict version. If your customers reliably repeat, you can justify a lower first-purchase ROAS - roughly your break-even divided by average purchases per customer. We've left that out because most brands at this stage don't yet have clean enough repeat data to trust it, and assuming loyalty you can't prove is an expensive mistake.
How long should I run ads before judging the numbers?
For cold traffic, 14 to 21 days at a stable budget. The first week is noise while delivery settles. Anything shorter and you're reading variance, not performance - which is how most people end up switching off ads that were working and scaling ones that weren't.
My budget is nowhere near what this says I need.
Perfectly normal at this size, not a sign anything is wrong. It's also worth knowing the standard advice to test lots of audiences can work against you here, since the conversion threshold builds per ad set. Keeping spend concentrated and widening rather than narrowing the targeting both help. The section above walks through it.
My ads aren't working. What do I actually check first?
It depends on where people are dropping off, and each stage points at a different fix. Weak thumbstop, meaning people scroll straight past, means the hook or thumbnail is the problem, not the offer behind it. Decent thumbstop but a weak click-through rate means the offer or copy is the problem, not the creative that got them to stop. Good click-through but no purchases means the landing page is the problem, not the ad that sent them there. Fixing the wrong stage is the most common reason people burn budget testing creative when the actual leak was three steps further down the funnel.
Do you actually work with brands my size?
Yes, that's who this is built for. We take on a small number of brands at a time, and if the numbers say paid social isn't viable for you yet, we'll tell you that on the call rather than take the money. The calculator is deliberately capable of telling you not to advertise.

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Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Bring your margins and your account and you'll get a straight read on whether paid social can work at your size - including if the answer is not yet.

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