Contractor Profit Calculator

The contractor profit calculator shows exactly what a job actually earns you after materials, labor, and overhead are paid. Enter your job revenue and costs to see your net profit in dollars, your profit margin as a percentage of revenue, and your markup as a percentage of cost.

It also shows your biggest cost driver, how a 10% cost overrun would change your profit, and the revenue you would need to charge to hit a target margin — so you can decide whether to raise your price, negotiate costs, or walk away before you sign.

Net profit is your total revenue minus every cost tied to the job: materials, labor, and a share of overhead. Overhead includes fixed business costs — insurance, vehicles, office, tools, software, and admin time — spread across your jobs, usually estimated as a percentage of revenue (commonly 8–15%).

Profit margin tells you what percentage of the sale price is profit (profit ÷ revenue). Markup on cost tells you how much you added on top of your costs to arrive at the sale price (profit ÷ cost). The two numbers look similar but are not the same — a 25% margin requires roughly a 33% markup.

To hit a target net margin, the revenue required is total cost ÷ (1 − target margin). The calculator applies this directly so you can see the gap between your current price and your goal.

• Underestimating overhead: Many contractors price jobs off materials and labor alone and forget overhead entirely.
• Change orders left unbilled: Extra work performed but not invoiced eats directly into margin.
• Material price swings: Costs quoted weeks before the job starts can rise before materials are purchased.
• Callbacks and rework: Warranty work and corrections are pure cost with no matching revenue.
• Underbidding to win work: Racing to the lowest price often means racing toward zero profit.

This tool treats overhead as a flat percentage of revenue that you enter. It does not allocate overhead by labor hours, project duration, or equipment usage, so jobs that consume a disproportionate share of overhead (heavy equipment, long timelines) may be less profitable than the estimate suggests. Materials and labor are assumed to be fully spent on the job with no waste or rework included.

The target-margin revenue figure is a direct mathematical calculation from your entered costs; it is not an estimate. The cost-driver and sensitivity views use your exact inputs. Full formulas and data sources are documented on our How We Calculate page. Last reviewed January 5, 2026.

Most healthy contracting businesses target a 10–20% net profit margin after all costs, including overhead, are covered. Specialty trades and design-build work can run higher; highly competitive commodity work like basic painting or landscaping often runs lower. If your calculated margin comes in under 8–10%, treat that as a warning sign before you commit to the job — a single change order dispute or cost overrun could turn the job into a loss.