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White-label margin calculator for agencies
Plug in your partner quote, set your markup, and see what you actually keep once your team’s time is counted. Works for one-off builds and recurring care plans.
1
What are you pricing?
2
Your costs
The fixed quote from your white-label partner for the build.
Premium plugins, licenses, stock images: anything you pay for and bill on.
Discovery, account management, client calls, review rounds, QA.
Loaded internal cost, not the rate you bill clients.
3
Your price
Applied to the partner quote plus pass-through costs.
What you are charging, or plan to charge, the client.
Counts the partner quote, pass-through costs and your team's time. Must be under 100.
2
Your care plan book
What your white-label partner charges you for each site.
Total across the book: monitoring, backups storage, plugin licenses you cover.
Client requests, reporting, check-ins across all plan clients.
Loaded internal cost, not the rate you bill clients.
Client price
$0
- Partner quote plus pass-through
- $0
- Gross profit
- $0
- Markup on cost
- 0%
- Gross margin
- 0%
Profit after your team's time
$0
- Your team's time
- $0
- Net margin
- 0%
- Gross profit per team hour
- $0
Monthly profit
$0
- Monthly recurring revenue
- $0
- Monthly cost, including team time
- $0
- Margin
- 0%
Profit per year
$0
- Profit per site, per month
- $0
- Break-even price per site
- $0
Your numbers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent or saved.
Need a real partner quote to plug in?
Send us the scope and John sends back a fixed white-label quote within 2 business hours, Monday to Friday. You set the markup, you own the client.
Get a fixed partner quoteEvery field starts blank because every agency’s numbers are different. Enter your own partner quote, your own hours and your own internal cost, and the calculator shows markup, gross margin, and the profit left after your team’s time. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
How do you calculate markup on white-label web work?
Add up what the work costs you (the partner quote plus any pass-through costs), multiply by one plus your markup, and that’s the client price. Your gross margin is the profit divided by the client price, not by the cost. Those two numbers get mixed up constantly, and the mix-up is where agencies quietly underprice.
Markup
Profit ÷ cost
How much you add on top of what the work costs you. This is the number most agencies quote internally.
Gross margin
Profit ÷ client price
How much of every dollar the client pays you keep. Always a smaller percentage than the markup.
Price for a target margin
Cost ÷ (1 minus margin)
Work backward from the margin you need. Use total cost, including your team’s time, for an honest number.
The calculator runs markup on the partner quote plus pass-through costs, because that’s how most agencies build a price. The target margin mode works from total cost instead, your team’s hours included, since a margin that ignores your own time isn’t really a margin.
Markup vs margin: what’s the difference?
Markup is measured against cost and margin is measured against price, so the same deal always shows a bigger markup than margin. A 50% markup is a 33.3% margin, and doubling your cost (a 100% markup) is a 50% margin. If you’ve set a margin goal and priced with markup, check the conversion before you send the proposal.
| Markup on cost | Gross margin | Client price |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | 20% | Cost × 1.25 |
| 33.3% | 25% | Cost × 1.33 |
| 50% | 33.3% | Cost × 1.5 |
| 66.7% | 40% | Cost × 1.67 |
| 100% | 50% | Cost × 2 |
| 150% | 60% | Cost × 2.5 |
The conversion is plain arithmetic: margin equals markup divided by one plus markup. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
What should you count as cost on a white-label project?
The partner quote is only part of it. Count the pass-through costs you pay for, and count your own team’s hours on discovery, account management, client calls and review rounds. Those hours are why a healthy-looking markup can still leave a project barely profitable.
The partner builds the site, but your team still owns the relationship. Someone runs the kickoff, translates feedback, chases approvals and checks the work before the client sees it. Put a real internal hourly cost on that time (salary plus overhead, not the rate you bill) and the calculator shows gross profit per team hour, which is the number that tells you whether a project was worth taking. If the scope is still fuzzy, tighten it first with our guide on how to scope a website project, because a loose scope is the fastest way to burn those hours.
Costs agencies forget to count
- Discovery calls and writing the brief
- Account management and status updates
- Premium plugin and license renewals you cover
- Client review rounds and your own QA pass
- Launch day and the first weeks of questions
How do you price white-label care plans for profit?
Multiply the sites on a plan by what you charge each month, then subtract the partner cost per site, your tools and licenses, and the hours your team spends on plan clients. Divide that monthly cost by the number of sites and you have your break-even price per site. Anything above break-even is profit, and it repeats every month.
Recurring work behaves differently from projects. The partner cost scales with each site, but tools and your team’s check-in time are spread across the whole book, so margin usually improves as you add clients. It also means a plan priced too close to break-even gets eaten by a few demanding clients. Switch the calculator to recurring mode, enter your book, and look at profit per site before you set or renew plan prices. For what a partner-run plan should include, see our guide to white-label WordPress care plans.
Where does the partner quote come from?
From a fixed quote your white-label partner gives you against a written scope, before any work starts. A fixed number is what makes this math reliable. An hourly estimate that drifts turns your markup into a guess.
That’s how we work: you send the scope, John sends back a fixed quote within two business hours, and you mark it up and bill your client under your own brand. If you’re still weighing the pricing model itself, our comparison of fixed-price vs hourly web design walks through the tradeoffs. And if the client’s question is what the whole site should cost in the first place, our website cost calculator gives you a market range to start from.
Frequently asked questions
Is markup the same as margin?
No. Markup is profit divided by cost, and margin is profit divided by the selling price. The same deal always shows a higher markup than margin: a 100% markup is a 50% margin.
What markup should an agency put on white-label development?
There isn’t one right number. Start from the margin your agency needs after your team’s time, then use the target margin mode to find the price. A project that needs heavy account management or carries more risk needs a bigger markup than a clean, well-scoped build.
Should I mark up pass-through costs like plugin licenses?
Many agencies do, since buying, tracking and renewing licenses takes time and carries risk. Others bill them at cost and charge for management separately. Either works as long as it’s consistent and your contract says which one you do.
Do my clients see what the white-label partner charges?
No. In a white-label setup the client buys from your agency at your price, and the partner works behind your brand. The partner quote is your cost of delivery, the same as any other supplier cost.
How do I find the break-even price for a care plan?
Add the partner cost for every site, your monthly tools and licenses, and your team’s monthly hours times their internal cost. Divide that total by the number of sites on plans. That’s the lowest price per site that doesn’t lose money.
Does this calculator save or share my numbers?
No. The math runs in your browser and nothing is sent to us or stored. Refresh the page and the fields clear.
Get a fixed partner quote to plug in
Send us the scope and John will reply with a fixed white-label quote within two business hours, Monday to Friday. You set the markup, you bill the client, and our white-label WordPress team builds it under your brand.