When to use this: at the bid stage, after you have hard cost numbers from your estimators and subs but before you commit a price to the customer. The calculator separates direct costs, overhead, and profit so you can see whether your markup percent is actually delivering the margin you intended (they are not the same number).

Construction Markup Calculator

Enter your direct costs and the overhead and profit percentages you target. The calculator returns the bid price, the actual markup percent, and the realized margin percent.

Results

Total direct costs—
Overhead amount—
Total cost (direct + overhead)—
Profit amount—
Total bid price—
Markup percent—
Margin percent—
Break-even point—
Direct costs Overhead Profit

Markup is profit divided by cost. Margin is profit divided by bid price. A 25% markup is only a 20% margin. If your accountant talks margin and you bid markup, you will end up under target on every job.

Last reviewed: April 2026

Tools we used or recommend for this work: an estimating workbook template (we use a hand-rolled one in Google Sheets, free), a Bluebeam Revu license for marking up takeoff PDFs, and any of the construction-specific accounting packages (QuickBooks Contractor, Buildertrend) for tracking whether your bid markup actually hit the wall. Links may be affiliate-tagged where the brand has a program.

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