ROAS Calculator: The "Scale or Kill" Dashboard
In digital marketing, seeing a "3.0 ROAS" in your Facebook or Google dashboard feels good. But does it mean you are making money? Not necessarily.
If your profit margins are thin, a positive ROAS can still mean a net loss. The Countimator ROAS Engine goes beyond vanity metrics. It combines your Ad Spend and Revenue with your specific Profit Margin to calculate your "Break-Even Point." It tells you exactly what multiplier you need to hit to stop losing money—and when you are safe to scale.
The "Break-Even" Engine
Standard calculators just divide Revenue by Cost. We take it a step further by analyzing your Profit Margin.
📉 Why ROAS is Tricky
Let's say you sell a $100 product, but your cost of goods (COGS) is $50. Your margin is 50%.
To just break even, you need to generate $2.00 in revenue for every $1.00 spent.
Break-Even ROAS = 2.0.
If your dashboard shows a 1.8 ROAS, you are losing money on every sale, even though the campaign looks "successful" to an amateur. Our tool flags this instantly.
Interpreting Your Score: Scale or Kill?
Our dynamic status bar visualizes your financial health in real-time using a simple traffic-light system:
🔴 The Kill Zone (Loss)
Status: Below Break-Even.
Action: Pause the ad immediately. You are paying to acquire customers who cost more than they generate.
🟡 The Break-Even Zone
Status: Zero Profit.
Action: Optimize. You aren't losing money, but you aren't growing. Test new creatives or landing pages.
🟢 The Scale Zone (Profit)
Status: Profitable.
Action: Scale! Increase the budget. Every dollar you put in returns more than $1 in pure profit.
The Formulas Behind the Dashboard
We use two core formulas to determine your campaign health:
1. Standard ROAS Formula:
Total Revenue / Total Ad Spend
Example: $5,000 Revenue / $1,000 Spend = 5.0 ROAS
2. Break-Even ROAS Formula:
1 / (Profit Margin % as decimal)
Example: 25% Margin = 1 / 0.25 = 4.0 Break-Even ROAS
The Insight: If your Actual ROAS is lower than your Break-Even ROAS, you are in the red.
What is a "Good" ROAS?
While "Profitability" depends on your margin, here are general benchmarks for 2025 across major industries:
| Industry | Average ROAS | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| E-Commerce | 2.5 – 4.0 | Requires volume. Low margins usually demand a ROAS of 3.0+ to be safe. |
| SaaS / B2B | 1.5 – 2.0 | Lower initial ROAS is acceptable because the "Lifetime Value" (LTV) of a subscriber is high. |
| Dropshipping | 3.0 – 5.0 | Margins are often razor-thin due to shipping/product costs, requiring a very high ROAS. |
Frequently Asked Questions
ROAS measures Gross Revenue relative to Ad Spend. It ignores other costs (COGS, shipping, tools).
ROI (Return on Investment) measures Net Profit relative to all costs.
ROAS is a metric for the ad campaign; ROI is a metric for the business.
Yes, IF your profit margins are extremely high (over 67%). For digital products or courses with near-zero delivery costs, a 1.5 ROAS can still result in decent profit.
You need to increase your Profit Margin. You can do this by: 1) Increasing your product price. 2) Lowering your Cost of Goods (COGS). 3) Increasing Average Order Value (AOV) via upsells.
Standard ROAS does not. However, if you want to be safe, you should include agency fees or software costs into your "Ad Spend" input or lower your "Profit Margin" input to account for that overhead.
Disclaimer: This calculator provides estimates based on the inputs provided. It assumes a static profit margin and does not account for variable costs like credit card processing fees, returns, or chargebacks unless factored into your margin percentage manually.