A 3× ROAS can still lose money. Your real break-even depends on the margin left after product cost, shipping, payment fees and returns. Enter your own numbers and see the exact ROAS where ads break even — and the ROAS you need for the profit you actually want.
| Per order, before ad spend | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue Your average order value | $0 |
| Product cost (COGS) Order value × COGS % | −$0 |
| Shipping & fulfillment The label, pick-pack and packaging you pay | −$0 |
| Payment fees % of revenue + fixed per-order fee | −$0 |
| Returns & refunds provision Order value × return rate | −$0 |
| Contribution margin (funds ads + profit) | $0 |
ROAS is revenue ÷ ad spend. An order breaks even when your ad spend equals the contribution margin — the money left after product cost, shipping, fees and returns. If a $65 order has $26 of contribution margin, you can spend up to $26 to acquire it, so the break-even ROAS is $65 ÷ $26 = 2.5×. Anything below that loses money on every order, no matter how big the "ROAS" number looks.
To keep a target net margin t (as a % of revenue), you need the contribution margin to cover both ads and that profit, which gives target ROAS = 1 ÷ (CM% − t). If your target is higher than your contribution margin, no ROAS can reach it — you'd need better unit economics first, not better ads.
The trap isn't the ROAS target you set — it's the contribution margin quietly eroding underneath it. Carrier surcharges creep in, a supplier raises COGS, returns tick up after a launch, payment fees shift on a plan change. None of that fires an alert; your "break-even ROAS" silently rises while your ad targets stay the same, and you find the gap at month-end when the profit isn't there.
Ops Monitor connects to your Shopify and Stripe with read-only API keys and watches for the silent operational failures that erode the margins this calculator assumes — payout and settlement gaps, oversells, orders stuck past SLA, broken syncs — then alerts you by email or Slack the moment one shows up. It's read-only: it never writes to your store and never moves money. It detects and alerts — it does not prevent or guarantee anything.
Start monitoring in minutes with read-only keys — $149/month, self-serve, cancel anytime.
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