SaaS Gross Margin Calculator & COGS Itemizer
Calculate your SaaS gross margin by itemizing hosting, APIs, payment processing, and support costs. Benchmark against VC standards.
Revenue & COGS Inputs
Gross Margin
72.6%
Average
Average
Gross Profit
$726,000
Revenue minus Total COGS
Total SaaS COGS
$274,000
COGS as % of revenue: 27.4%
VC Benchmark Gauge
Where your gross margin falls on the VC spectrum
COGS Breakdown
SaaS COGS vs. OpEx Cheatsheet
Include in COGS
Hosting & cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Vercel), third-party API costs (OpenAI, Twilio, SendGrid), payment processing fees (Stripe, Paddle), direct customer support salaries, DevOps salaries for maintaining production infrastructure, and any cost that scales directly with revenue or usage.
Include in OpEx (NOT COGS)
R&D (engineering, product, design — building new features), Sales & Marketing (ad spend, SDR salaries, content), G&A (finance, legal, HR, office), executive salaries, and any cost that does not scale directly with revenue. These are operating expenses, not cost of goods sold.
How the SaaS Gross Margin Calculator Works
This calculator itemizes your SaaS Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) — hosting, third-party APIs, payment processing fees, and direct support salaries — and computes your gross margin. VCs use gross margin as a primary indicator of SaaS business quality and scalability. A margin above 75% is considered healthy; above 85% is elite.
Gross Margin Formulas
VC Gross Margin Benchmarks
VCs expect SaaS companies to maintain high gross margins because the core value proposition of SaaS is scalability — revenue grows faster than costs. Below 60% suggests infrastructure or support costs are too high relative to revenue. The 75-85% range is the VC standard for healthy SaaS companies. Above 85% is elite and typically seen in pure-software SaaS with minimal variable costs.