Every "is 3× a good ROAS?" thread ends the same way: it depends on your margin. This page ends the argument with a formula. Break-even ROAS is the single number that separates campaigns that make money from campaigns that only look like they do — and it's set entirely by your unit economics, not by industry benchmarks.
What is break-even ROAS?
Break-even ROAS is the return on ad spend at which a campaign generates exactly zero profit — every dollar above it is contribution, every dollar below it is a loss dressed up as revenue. The formula is one line:
The same line can be expressed per order instead of per dollar: your maximum spend per order (break-even CPA) simply equals your contribution dollars per order. Two units, one boundary.
How to calculate contribution margin
Contribution margin is what's left of an order after every cost that scales with the order — before fixed costs and before ad spend:
Contribution margin = contribution ÷ AOV
The percentage line is where sellers most often undercount. Typical marketplace and payment costs to include:
| Channel | Typical variable fees |
|---|---|
| TikTok Shop | ≈ 6% referral (incl. payment processing) |
| Shopify (own store) | ≈ 2.9% + $0.30 payment processing |
| Amazon | ≈ 8–15% referral, category-dependent |
| Etsy | 6.5% transaction + payment processing |
Rates checked July 2026; always confirm your exact category. Add returns, discounts and packaging under "other variable costs" — ignoring a 5% return rate flatters your margin by the same 5 points.
Break-even ROAS formula in action
Because break-even is the inverse of margin, small margin differences produce dramatically different lines:
| Contribution margin | Break-even ROAS | $100 of ad spend must return |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 5.00× | $500 revenue |
| 30% | 3.33× | $333 revenue |
| 40% | 2.50× | $250 revenue |
| 50% | 2.00× | $200 revenue |
| 60% | 1.67× | $167 revenue |
| 70% | 1.43× | $143 revenue |
This one table explains most of the disagreement about what a "good" ROAS is: a supplements brand at 70% margin and a food brand at 25% margin are not playing the same game, even on the same platform with the same creators.
Why "what is a good ROAS?" is the wrong question
Universal grading scales — the kind that call anything above 100% return "good" and above 200% "excellent" — quietly assume everyone's margin is the same. It isn't. A 3× ROAS is comfortably profitable at 50% contribution margin, exactly break-even at 33%, and a money-losing campaign at 25%. Any tool that grades your campaign without asking about your margin is grading someone else's business.
Break-even vs target ROAS
Break-even keeps you alive; targets make you money. To bank a chosen share of campaign revenue as profit, raise the line:
At 47.5% contribution margin, break-even is 2.11× — but keeping 15% of revenue as profit requires 3.08×. That gap between surviving and earning is where most "successful" campaigns quietly disappoint: they clear the first line and never approach the second. Set the target before launch and judge creators against it, not against zero.
Applying break-even ROAS to creator campaigns
Two accounting rules keep creator math clean. Flat creator fees are ad spend — they belong in the ROAS denominator alongside any paid amplification. Affiliate commissions are variable costs — they scale with each order, so they belong inside the contribution-margin calculation, lowering it and raising your break-even line. Mixing the two is the most common way sellers convince themselves a losing campaign worked.
Once the line is set, the campaign question becomes brutally simple: which creators will clear it? On benchmark averages, most sit near it — the Influencer Marketing ROI Calculator shows how close. The spread around that average is enormous, and predicting which side of your line a specific creator lands on, in dollars, before you commit budget — that's the problem Grapzy exists to solve.