Markup & Margin Calculator
Free markup vs margin calculator for electrical contractors. Understand your profit margins and set the right prices for jobs.
Job Numbers
What the job actually costs you to deliver — not what you plan to charge.
The percentage you add on top of your cost.
The share of the selling price you keep. Capped at 99% — at 100% the price would be infinite.
Jump to a target margin
Pricing Results
The Two Numbers, Side by Side
Margin is always the smaller number. A 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin — pricing a job as if they were the same is how a shop works all year at what it thinks is a healthy rate and ends up short.
What Each Margin Is Worth on This Job
| Margin | Markup | Price | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 25.0% | $1,250.00 | $250.00 |
| 30% | 42.9% | $1,428.57 | $428.57 |
| 40% | 66.7% | $1,666.67 | $666.67 |
| 50% | 100.0% | $2,000.00 | $1,000.00 |
Ten points of margin on this job is $178.57 — moving from 20% to 30%.
Where the Industry Sits
A starting point you adjust — never your cost. Your work mix moves these more than anything else on this page.
The widest spread in the data. Flat-rate service shops sit at the top of this range; hourly time-and-materials shops sit at the bottom.
Source: Lightning Path Partners (35–42%) and Profitability Partners (benchmark 62%), 2026
Thinner and more cyclical than service work. A blended margin below this usually means bid work is subsidising overhead.
Source: Profitability Partners, 2026
Net is what survives overhead, vehicles, insurance, and owner salary. Small shops commonly land well below the typical band.
Source: Lightning Path Partners, 2026; CFMA is cited second-hand for ~12% at top performers
Covers waste, obsolescence, cost of capital, and the admin of buying. Below ~20% you are financing the customer.
Source: Lightning Path Partners, 2026
These are electrical-contractor figures, not general-contractor figures. They come from secondary industry write-ups rather than a primary survey — NECA's Financial Performance Report and CFMA's annual survey are member-gated. Published sources disagree widely (the residential gross-margin range above spans 27 points), so treat the range as a range, not a target.
How this works
Markup and margin sound like the same idea and they're not, and mixing them up is an easy way to underprice a job without noticing. Markup is the percentage you add on top of your cost. Margin is the percentage of the final price that's actually profit. A 50% markup on a $100 cost gets you a $150 price, but that's only a 33% margin, not 50.
This calculator flips the math around too. If you know the margin you're targeting, divide your cost by 1 minus that margin as a decimal to get the price you need to charge. A $100 cost at a 30% margin target comes out to $142.86, not $130.
Getting this wrong in one direction usually means quietly working for less than you think you are.
Worked example
A $100 job cost, priced to hit a 30% margin.
A 30% margin on $100 of cost is a $142.86 price: a 42.86% markup, not 30%. Treating the two as the same number quietly underprices the job.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between margin and markup?↓
Markup is the percentage added to your cost to get the selling price. Margin is the percentage of the selling price that is profit. A 50% markup on a $100 cost gives a $150 price, which is a 33% margin.
What is a good profit margin for an electrical contractor?↓
Published figures vary widely and no single number is authoritative. Secondary industry write-ups put typical electrical net profit margin around 8% to 14%, with strong operators above 15%; the primary surveys most often cited (NECA's Financial Performance Report, CFMA's annual survey) are member-gated. Whichever band you use, gross margin has to sit well above it to cover overhead — and your mix of service versus new-construction work moves the number more than anything else.
How do I calculate the selling price to get a specific margin?↓
To calculate the selling price for a desired margin, divide your cost by (1 minus the margin decimal). For example, for a 30% margin on a $100 cost: $100 / (1 - 0.30) = $142.86.
Learn more
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Electrician Pricing Guide: What to Charge for Common Residential Jobs in 2026
2026 electrician pricing by job: panel upgrades, outlet installs, and service calls, priced against Angi and Housecall Pro data plus your own margin math.
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You've priced the margin. Price the whole job → — or lock it into a branded proposal.