Candle Cost & Pricing Calculator

What each candle costs to make, and the profit at your selling price.

Per Candle

Your results will appear here

Enter your material costs below to see the cost per candle

True Product Cost

—

materials + labor + waste + overhead

Profit per Candle

—

no selling fees

Actual Margin

—

profit ÷ selling price

Enter your numbers first — then save the calculation or download it as a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Your materials

Materials per candle

Wax per candle (oz)

Wax price ($/lb)

FO per candle (oz)

FO price ($/oz)

Per-candle costs ($)

Vessel

Wick

Label + packaging

Other

“Other” is the small stuff: wick stickers, dust covers, warning labels.

Step 2: Labor, waste & overhead

Step 3: Your selling price

Selling price

—

Simple starting points on your true product cost. Fees come out below in “What you keep” — pick the multiple that leaves a profit you're happy with.

Step 4: Where are you selling?

No selling fees — you keep the whole price.

Planning to sell through shops? Calculate wholesale and MSRP.

How the math works

True product cost comes first

Everything it takes to make one candle, and nothing about selling it: wax and fragrance by the amounts you actually pour, the vessel, wick, label and packaging, your labor spread across the batch, a waste allowance for the pours that fail, and overhead if you track it. Selling fees never mix into this number — they come out later, where you can see them.

Labor: $30/hr × 30 min ÷ 12 sellable candles = $1.25 per candle

Your price is your pick

Start from a simple multiple of true cost — 2×, 2.5×, 3×, 4× — or type the price you have in mind. No formula knows your market; the multiples are starting points, and the “What you keep” ledger shows what each one leaves you. Sanity-check the result against similar candles where you sell.

$14.35 true cost × 3 = $43.05 selling price

What you keep is the honest number

Selling price, minus the channel's fees, minus your share of a market's booth and travel, minus product cost — that is your profit per candle, and margin is that profit as a share of the price. Margin and markup are not the same thing: doubling your cost is a 100% markup but only a 50% margin. The one warning this calculator raises is a real loss, with the price you would need to break even.

$43.05 on Etsy: fees ≈ $4.54 → profit $24.16, margin 56%
Vendor market: $175 booth + travel ÷ 50 candles = $3.50 per candle

Selling to shops is different math

Wholesale = your cost ÷ (1 − your margin), and the shelf price a shop can charge is wholesale ÷ (1 − the retailer's margin). At 50% and 50% that lands on cost × 4 — the familiar “keystone” — which is a wholesale benchmark, not a direct-retail minimum. No marketplace fees apply to wholesale, and the wholesale section stays tucked away until you need it.

Know your cost, name your price — and sell them with confidence.

Ready to go beyond the numbers?

CandleEasy saves your formulas, walks your burn tests, tracks your supplies, sizes whole batches from your approved recipes automatically, and scans fragrance oils for blend compatibility before you buy.