What is Landed Cost Calculator?
Landed cost is the total cost of getting a unit to your warehouse and ready to sell: the supplier price plus freight, insurance, import duty, customs brokerage, port charges and any last-mile delivery. Suppliers quote ex-works or FOB prices that exclude all of it, so sellers who price from the invoice routinely find their real margin is 15–25% lower than expected. This calculator spreads every shipment cost across the units in the shipment, returns the landed cost per unit, and shows what your selling price leaves after that. It also runs the same shipment at a range of duty rates so you can see how exposed the product is to tariff changes.
Common Uses for Landed Cost Calculator
- Price a product from a supplier quote that excludes freight and duty
- Compare the landed cost of an air restock against a sea shipment
- See how much a tariff change would cost across a whole product line
- Check whether a cheaper supplier is really cheaper once shipping is included
- Set a resale-friendly margin before you commit to an order
The hidden 18%
On a 500-unit order: $3,400 of goods, $420 of freight, $221 of duty and $180 of handling totals $4,221 — $8.44 per unit against a $6.80 invoice price. Every price list built on the invoice figure is 24% optimistic, which is exactly the gap between a healthy margin and a marginal one.
Air versus sea in landed cost terms
Air freight raises landed cost per unit but not always by as much as it seems, because it also reduces the inventory you need to hold and shortens the cash cycle. Model both: on a $6.80 unit, air might add $1.20 per unit while cutting two months of tied-up stock — often the better trade for fast-moving products.
Margin is decided here, not at the checkout
Once you know the landed cost, the target margin sets the price: price = landed cost ÷ (1 − target margin). A 55% margin needs $17.80 for an $8.01 unit. Anything below that and the price list cannot deliver the margin the business plan assumed.