Most t-shirt sellers arrive at their price the same way. They look at what competitors are charging, pick a number somewhere in that range, and assume that if the business is busy it must be profitable. Then they check their bank account at the end of the month and wonder where the money went.
The problem is not the price. The problem is not knowing what that price actually needs to cover. Pricing a t-shirt correctly is not guesswork — it is arithmetic. And the arithmetic is simple once you know all the numbers you need to include.
This guide walks through the complete calculation from blank garment to net profit, including every cost that most pricing guides conveniently leave out.
There are three categories of cost that sellers routinely undercount or miss entirely. They are not the obvious ones — most people remember to include the blank garment and the print cost. The ones that quietly destroy margins are the fees, the marketing costs, and the overhead.
A Stripe payment processing fee of 2.9% plus €0.30 does not sound like much on a single sale. On a €25 t-shirt that is €1.025 per transaction — every transaction, all year. If you sell 500 shirts a year that is €512 gone before you have even thought about your Shopify subscription, your poly mailers, or the €15 you spent on Facebook ads to get that customer to buy.
None of these costs are hidden. They are all knowable and countable. The issue is that most pricing advice focuses only on product cost, which gives sellers a false sense of margin that evaporates the moment they look at their actual bank balance.
Every unit you sell needs to cover its share of eight distinct cost categories. Here they are in order, with realistic example figures for a typical Shopify seller using DTF printing in Europe.
This is what you pay for the unprinted shirt. A Gildan 64000 in Europe typically costs €4.50 to €7.00 depending on your supplier and order volume. A Bella+Canvas 3001 runs €8.00 to €12.00. Stanley/Stella organic options sit at €12.00 to €18.00. Use your actual cost, not an optimistic estimate.
This varies significantly by method. DTF printing in Europe currently costs around €3.50 to €6.00 per piece for a standard front chest print, depending on size and supplier. DTG sits in a similar range but tends to be higher at low volumes. Screen printing has a setup cost spread across the run, which makes it cheaper per unit at volume but expensive for small orders. Embroidery adds a digitising fee on top of a per-piece charge. Whatever method you use, include the full cost per unit including any amortised setup fees.
A poly mailer costs €0.15 to €0.40. If you use tissue paper, stickers, or branded packaging, add those. A simple poly mailer and thank-you card typically comes to €0.50 to €0.80 per order. Small, but real.
Include what you actually pay the courier, not what you charge the customer. If you offer free shipping, the full postage cost sits here. Domestic shipping within Cyprus runs €3.00 to €5.00 for a tracked parcel. EU shipping ranges from €6.00 to €14.00 depending on destination and carrier. Use your real average cost per shipment.
This is where many sellers have a blind spot. Etsy charges a transaction fee of 6.5% plus a listing fee of €0.20 per item plus a payment processing fee. Add those together on a €25 sale and you are giving Etsy around €2.00 to €2.50 per transaction. Shopify charges 2.9% plus €0.30 for payment processing via Shopify Payments, plus the monthly subscription cost spread across your unit volume. Amazon Merch takes 15% off the top. Knowing your effective per-unit platform cost is essential.
If you use Stripe directly — either on your own site or through Shopify — the fee is 2.9% plus €0.30 per successful transaction in most European countries. PayPal charges a similar rate. These fees are separate from platform fees on most direct-sales setups. On a €25 sale, Stripe takes €1.025. Over a year of selling, this is a meaningful number.
How much did you spend on marketing to get that customer? If you spent €200 last month on Facebook and Instagram ads and sold 40 shirts, your CAC is €5.00 per shirt. If you rely entirely on Etsy organic search, your CAC is effectively zero — but you are paying Etsy's fees for that traffic instead. If you do email marketing, factor in the cost of your ESP divided by your monthly sales volume. Every shirt sold needed a customer to find it, and that usually costs something.
Your Shopify subscription, your design software, your Canva subscription, your accounting software, your internet connection (proportionally), and any other recurring business cost — divide the monthly total by your monthly unit sales to get an overhead allocation per shirt. If you spend €120 per month on software and tools and sell 40 shirts, that is €3.00 per shirt in overhead before you have printed a single one.
Here is a worked example for a seller on Shopify using DTF printing, shipping domestically within Cyprus, running a small monthly ad budget.
Blank garment (Bella+Canvas 3001): €9.00. DTF print front chest: €4.50. Packaging (poly mailer and card): €0.60. Domestic shipping: €4.00. Shopify payment processing (2.9% plus €0.30 on €25): €1.025. Platform fee (Shopify, nil on Basic plan with Shopify Payments): €0.00. Monthly ad spend (€150 divided by 40 units): €3.75. Monthly overhead (€120 divided by 40 units): €3.00.
Total cost per unit: €25.875.
If you are selling that shirt for €25.00, you are losing €0.875 on every sale before VAT even enters the picture.
Raise the price to €32.00 and the picture changes. Revenue after Stripe (2.9% plus €0.30) becomes €30.772. Total cost stays at €25.875 (adjusted for the slightly higher gateway fee). Profit per unit: approximately €4.65. Margin: approximately 15.1%. Still not spectacular, but in profit.
To hit a healthy 40% margin on this cost base you need a selling price of around €43.00 to €45.00 — which is entirely achievable for a premium blank with a strong design and brand positioning, but impossible if you are trying to compete on price with mass-market alternatives.
These two terms are used interchangeably in casual conversation but they mean different things and the difference matters when you are setting prices.
Markup is how much you add on top of your cost. If your total cost is €20 and you charge €30, your markup is 50% — you added half of the cost price on top.
Margin is your profit as a percentage of the selling price. On that same transaction, your profit is €10 and your selling price is €30, so your margin is 33.3%.
A 50% markup gives you a 33.3% margin. They are not the same number. Many sellers target a 50% markup thinking they are achieving a 50% margin and then cannot understand why the business feels tight. Always express your targets as margin, not markup, and make sure everyone on your team uses the same definition.
As a general benchmark: below 20% is a warning sign. Between 20% and 35% is workable but leaves little room for discounts, returns, or ad spend increases. Above 40% gives you genuine flexibility. Above 50% is excellent and typically requires either very low production costs, a strong brand premium, or both.
POD sellers on Etsy or Redbubble often operate at effective margins of 10% to 20% after platform fees — which is why many of them work hard and earn little. The business model works at scale but the per-unit economics are thin.
Direct-to-consumer brands with their own fulfilment, a strong organic following, and efficient ad spend can achieve 45% to 60% margins. That gap is the entire business case for building a brand rather than just listing products on a marketplace.
The T-Shirt Profit Margin Calculator on this site is built to cover all eight cost categories described above. Enter your real numbers — not optimistic estimates — and the tool will show you your margin, your markup, your break-even quantity for the month, and a plain-language verdict on whether your current pricing is healthy, marginal, or losing money.
It also handles VAT and sales tax for EU, UK, US, Canadian, Australian, and other markets — because tax affects your effective revenue per sale and needs to be factored into the margin calculation, not treated as an afterthought.
If you are selling custom printed t-shirts in Cyprus or anywhere in the EU, the team at TshirtJunkies.co built this tool from direct experience in the same market. We know what DTF costs, what couriers charge, and what a healthy margin looks like for a small apparel brand. Use the calculator, know your numbers, and price with confidence.
Enter your actual costs into the free calculator and find out in 60 seconds whether your current pricing is working for you or against you.