Stock Profit & Loss Calculator
Calculate net profit or loss on any stock trade including broker commissions. See your ROI and break-even price.
Buy
Sell
Net Profit / Loss
$1,500.00
+30.00% ROI
Total Cost
$5,000.00
Total Revenue
$6,500.00
Gross P&L
$1,500.00
Break-Even Price
$50.00
How to Use This Stock Profit & Loss Calculator
1. Enter Your Buy Price / Share. Enter the price you paid per share when you opened the position.
2. Enter Your Number of Shares. Enter how many shares you bought (or plan to buy).
3. Enter Your Buy Commission. Enter any flat fee or commission your broker charged on the purchase. Enter $0 if you traded commission-free.
4. Enter Your Sell Price / Share. Enter the price you sold at, or a price you're considering selling at.
5. Enter Your Sell Commission. Enter the fee your broker charges on the sale side. Some brokers charge this even if the buy side was free.
6. Read Your Results. Net Profit/Loss and ROI give you the bottom line after both commissions. Total Cost and Total Revenue show the full picture behind that number. Gross P&L (before commissions) versus Net P&L (after) shows exactly how much commissions ate into your result. Break-Even Price is the number that actually matters before you sell — not your buy price, but the price that covers your original cost plus the sell commission you're about to pay.
Tom buys 20 shares at $50 each, paying a $15 buy commission — a $1,015 total cost. A few weeks later, the stock is trading at $51, a full dollar higher than what he paid. Feeling good about the trade, he sells, paying another $15 commission on the way out. When he runs the numbers, Net Profit/Loss comes back at -$10 — a loss, despite the stock price being higher than what he paid for it. Total Revenue only comes to $1,005 once the sell commission is subtracted, less than his original $1,015 cost. What catches Tom off guard is realizing his Break-Even Price was actually $51.50, not $50 — $1.50 above his purchase price once both commissions are factored in. The stock going up wasn't the same as him being in profit.
Key Terms
Total Cost
Your buy price multiplied by your number of shares, plus the buy commission — the full amount that actually left your account to open the position.
Total Revenue
Your sell price multiplied by your number of shares, minus the sell commission — the actual amount that lands back in your account when you close the position.
Gross P&L vs. Net P&L
Gross P&L is your profit or loss based purely on the price difference, ignoring commissions entirely. Net P&L subtracts both the buy and sell commissions, giving you the number that actually reflects your account balance.
Break-Even Price
The minimum sell price needed to cover your Total Cost plus the sell commission you'll pay when you close the position. This is always higher than your buy price whenever any commission is involved.
ROI
Net Profit/Loss divided by Total Cost, expressed as a percentage — your actual return once every fee is accounted for.
Why Your Stock Can Be Up in Price and You're Still Losing Money
Checking a stock's price against what you paid feels like the obvious way to know if you're winning. It's not quite the right question, and the gap between the two can be bigger than it looks.
The Number That Actually Decides Whether You're Ahead
Your real threshold isn't your buy price — it's your Break-Even Price, which adds in both the commission you already paid and the one you're about to pay on the way out. On a $50 buy price with $15 in commission on each side across 20 shares, Break-Even Price comes out to $51.50. A stock sitting at $51 looks like a win on the surface, but it's still $0.50 below what you'd actually need to come out even.
Why This Catches People Off Guard More on Smaller Trades
The gap between buy price and Break-Even Price shrinks as a percentage on larger trades, since a fixed commission gets spread across more shares. On a 200-share version of the same trade, that same $30 in total commissions adds just $0.15 to the Break-Even Price instead of $1.50 — which is exactly why the effect is easy to miss on a small position and easy to underestimate on a large one.
Check Break-Even Before You Check the Price Chart
Before deciding a position is profitable, run your numbers through this calculator and compare the actual Break-Even Price against the current quote — not your original buy price. It takes the guesswork out of a decision that's easy to get wrong just by eyeballing the chart.