Raising prices: how many customers can I lose?
A price rise is pure profit on every sale you keep. See how many customers you could lose and still be no worse off, or what a price cut would need.
Your answer
Enter your price, your costs, your sales and the price change.
About this calculator
For any business thinking about putting its prices up (or down). It shows how many sales you could lose after a rise and still make the same profit, and how many extra sales a cut would need.
If you're VAT-registered, use prices without VAT: the VAT goes to HMRC either way.
What happens to your answers
We don’t keep them. Your answers go to our server to do the sums and aren’t stored or logged. If you copy a link to your answers, they’re in the link itself, so only share it with people you trust.
How it’s worked out
Your profit on each sale is the price less what the sale itself costs you (stock, materials, delivery). Gross profit is that times your sales. At a new price we work out the sales that make the same gross profit: your gross profit now divided by the new profit on each sale.
Fixed costs like rent and salaries stay the same at either price, so they don't change the answer. Add them if you'd like to see your profit after them. We assume every sale is the same size, so if your biggest customers are the ones likely to leave, allow for that.
Worked example
At £55 you could lose up to 200 of your 1,000 sales (20%) and still make the same gross profit.
Prices and costs without VAT · fixed costs stay the same · every sale is the same size
| Your price now | £50 |
|---|---|
| Cost of each sale | − £30 |
| Profit on each sale now | £20 |
| Gross profit now: 1,000 sales × £20 | £20,000 |
| Profit on each sale at £55: £55 − £30 | £25 |
| Sales for the same gross profit: £20,000 ÷ £25 | 800 |
| Sales you could lose: (£55 − £50) ÷ (£55 − £30) = 20%, or 200 whole sales | 200 |
Worked out using HMRC's published rates for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027), on a yearly basis.
Questions people ask
Why can I lose so many customers?
Because all of a price rise is extra profit. If you make £20 on a £50 sale, a £5 rise lifts that to £25, so 4 sales at the new price make what 5 did before: you could lose 1 in 5.
Does this work for a price cut?
Yes. Choose Cut and it shows how many extra sales you'd need just to stand still. If the new price is at or below the cost of each sale, no amount of extra sales will help.
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