ROAS Calculator (Return on Ad Spend)
ROAS tells you how much revenue each unit of ad spend generates. Enter spend and attributed revenue — and your profit margin, to see the break-even ROAS below which a "profitable-looking" campaign actually loses money.
How to use this calculator
- Enter total ad spend for the campaign or period.
- Enter the revenue attributed to those ads (from your ads manager or analytics).
- Add your gross margin to unlock break-even ROAS — the number that separates real profit from vanity.
Formula used
A 3.5x ROAS means 3.50 in revenue per 1.00 spent. Break-even converts margin into the minimum ROAS: at 40% margin you need 1 ÷ 0.40 = 2.5x just to cover the ads. ACoS (advertising cost of sales) is simply the inverse, expressed as a percentage.
Example calculation
Spend 50,000, revenue 175,000: ROAS = 3.5x.
At a 40% margin, break-even is 2.5x — so this campaign clears real profit: 175,000 × 40% − 50,000 = 20,000. The same 3.5x at a 25% margin (break-even 4.0x) would be losing money.
ROAS without the vanity
ROAS is the advertising world's headline metric, but raw ROAS is only half a number — whether 3x is great or terrible depends entirely on your margin. Software with 80% margins profits at 1.3x; a 20%-margin retailer needs 5x. That's why the break-even calculation belongs next to every ROAS report.
Attribution is the other honesty check: platforms tend to claim credit generously (view-through conversions, overlapping channels), so platform-reported ROAS usually flatters. Comparing blended ROAS (total revenue ÷ total ad spend) against platform numbers reveals how much.
Why use this calculator?
- Judge campaigns against your break-even, not against generic "good ROAS" folklore.
- See ACoS too — the same truth Amazon sellers speak in.
- Get the actual profit figure after ads, not just the ratio.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good ROAS?
Whatever exceeds your break-even (1 ÷ margin) with room to spare. Common benchmarks cluster around 3–4x for e-commerce, but a high-margin business can thrive at 2x while a thin-margin one loses money at 4x. Compute your break-even first.
What's the difference between ROAS and ROI?
ROAS compares revenue to ad spend only; ROI compares profit to total cost. A 3x ROAS at 30% margin is a −10% ROI once you do the math — which is exactly the trap the break-even row exposes.
Should I use platform ROAS or blended ROAS?
Track both. Platform ROAS guides in-platform optimization; blended (total revenue ÷ total ad spend across everything) is the truth serum, since platforms over-attribute. A growing gap between them usually means double-counting.