How to Calculate Your Allegro Margin After Fees (Step by Step)

Gross margin on Allegro can look great while hiding the fact that you barely earn anything per unit. We show you, step by step, how to calculate the real net margin after commissions, fees, and VAT — with a ready-to-use formula and a worked example in a table.

How to calculate your Allegro margin after fees — the short answer

To work out your real Allegro margin, take the price the buyer pays and subtract, one by one: output VAT (if you’re an active VAT payer), the cost of purchasing the goods, the Allegro commission for your category, the transaction fee, the Allegro Smart delivery surcharge, and the actual cost of shipping and packaging. Whatever is left is your net profit per unit, and your net margin is that profit divided by your net sales revenue.

In short, the formula looks like this:

Net margin = (net revenue − all costs and fees) ÷ net revenue × 100%

It sounds simple, but the problem is that most sellers only calculate the difference between the price and the purchase cost. That’s the gross margin — and it can be as much as twice the real figure. Below we break it down to the basics: every Allegro fee in 2026, the role of VAT, a ready-to-use formula, and a worked example with a table in which a seemingly 56% margin turns into 22%.

Why gross margin lies

Gross margin (also called trading margin) is the simplest accounting difference: (selling price − purchase price) ÷ selling price. You buy something for 65 zł, sell it for 149 zł, and enjoy a 56% margin. The problem is that this number doesn’t see a single one of the fees that actually leave your account.

Gross margin ignores:

• output VAT — out of the gross price the customer sees, a portion belongs to the tax office right away, not to you;
• the Allegro commission — from a few to over a dozen percent of the transaction value, depending on the category;
• the transaction fee for payment processing;
• the delivery surcharge under the Allegro Smart program and the actual cost of the courier or parcel locker if you offer free shipping;
• the cost of packaging, labels, returns, and advertising (Allegro Ads).

Each of these items takes a bite. Add them all up, and it turns out that a flashy 56% really comes down to 20–25%. That’s why gross margin isn’t a calculation error — it’s simply a completely different number from the one that decides whether your business makes money. To make pricing decisions, you need net margin, after all costs.

Every Allegro fee that eats into your margin (2026)

Before you calculate your margin, you need to know exactly what you’re paying for. In 2026, the cost of selling on Allegro is made up of several independent fees. The rates below are indicative — Allegro varies them by category and updates them regularly, so always check the current pricing for your specific category.

Two things in this table surprise sellers most often. First, the commission isn’t a single number — the transaction fee and the Smart surcharge get added on top, so the real platform cost is higher than the category rate alone. Second, as of March 2, 2026, Allegro tied Smart surcharges to the order value and introduced maximum commission amounts in selected categories (a cap above which the commission stops growing), so for expensive goods it’s worth checking whether your category has such an upper limit. We break the commission down to the basics in more detail in Allegro Commissions 2026 — How Much You’ll Really Pay.

Commission is charged on the gross amount — and on delivery

This is one of the most important details that ruins calculations. The Allegro commission is charged on the entire gross transaction amount — that is, on the product price the buyer sees, and on the delivery cost if the buyer pays for it. In other words: if, in a category with a 10% commission, you sell a product for 100 zł and add 15 zł for shipping charged to the customer, the commission is calculated on 115 zł, not on 100 zł.

The second trap is net versus gross on the commission itself. Allegro quotes its commission rates as net values. If you’re an active VAT payer, the VAT on Allegro’s fees is input tax for you, which you deduct — so your real cost is the net commission amount. But if you use the VAT exemption, you won’t deduct that tax, so your actual cost is the gross commission (net × 1.23). The same offer is therefore about 23% more expensive on the fee side for a VAT-exempt seller — it’s easy to forget about this.

VAT — the silent margin killer

The biggest “loss” that gross margin doesn’t show isn’t the commission — it’s the VAT on the sale itself. The price the customer pays is a gross price. If you’re an active VAT payer, out of every 100 zł gross you have to remit 23% in output tax, and your revenue is only the net amount — about 81.30 zł out of 100 zł (100 ÷ 1.23). That means that before you add any commission at all, nearly one-fifth of the price already isn’t yours.

That’s why a correct margin is always calculated on net values: net revenue (after subtracting output VAT) minus net costs. Mixing gross and net amounts in a single equation is the most common cause of “margins” that look good on paper but don’t add up in the company account. If you sell on Allegro and issue invoices, we expand on VAT settlement and KSeF in KSeF and Selling on Allegro — How to Issue Invoices.

Margin step by step — the formula

Calculating the real net margin per unit takes six steps. Do them in this order:

1. Establish the gross price — the amount the buyer actually pays (including delivery, if you charge for it).
2. Subtract output VAT — divide the gross price by 1.23 (for the 23% rate) to get net revenue. If you’re VAT-exempt, skip this step, but remember that you also won’t deduct the VAT on the fees.
3. Subtract the cost of purchasing the goods — at net value (excluding the VAT you deduct).
4. Subtract the Allegro fees — the category commission (on the gross transaction value), the transaction fee, and the Smart surcharge.
5. Subtract logistics and handling costs — the actual cost of the courier/parcel locker, packaging, and possibly an averaged cost of returns and advertising.
6. Calculate the margin — whatever is left is your net profit per unit. Divide it by net revenue and multiply by 100%.

It’s worth doing this properly once for a representative product, then reusing the pattern. The key is not to “round any item down to zero” — a 9.99 zł Smart surcharge on a 60 zł product is over ten percent of the price.

A worked example: a 149 zł product on Allegro

Let’s take a seller who is an active VAT payer, selling a product with free delivery (absorbing the courier cost themselves). All the fee rates are indicative — they may differ in your category, so plug in your own numbers.

Now compare the three “margins” for the same product:

• Naive margin on the gross price: (149 − 65) ÷ 149 = 56.4% — this is the number most beginner sellers quote.
• Trading margin after VAT: (121.14 − 65) ÷ 121.14 = 46.3% — closer to the truth, but still without the platform fees.
• Real net margin: 26.93 ÷ 121.14 = 22.2% — only this is a number you can rely on when setting a price.

The difference between 56% and 22% is no small thing — it’s the difference between “a great deal” and “barely worth it.” If this seller set promotional prices based on gross margin and cut them by 20%, they’d end up in the red without even realizing it.

Margin vs. markup — don’t confuse the two

By the way: margin and markup are not the same thing, and confusing them is a classic mistake. Margin measures profit relative to the selling price, while markup measures it relative to the purchase cost. From the example above: a profit of 26.93 zł on net revenue of 121.14 zł is a 22.2% margin, but the same profit relative to the 65 zł cost of goods is a markup of about 41%. The same transaction, two different numbers. If you negotiate with a supplier in terms of markup but report margin off the price, it’s easy to get lost — stick consistently to one definition.

How promotions, coupons, and advertising eat into your margin

The real net margin from the example is a starting point, not a final destination. In practice, on Allegro you do things every day that lower it, often without recording them in any table. The most common “hidden” losses are:

• Discounts and coupons — a 15% reduction on a product with a 22% net margin leaves you with about 7 percentage points, not 22. With deeper promotions it’s easy to drop below zero if you calculate from gross margin.
• Allegro Ads — advertising is a real cost per unit. If you spend 6 zł on ads to sell a product with a 27 zł profit, your net margin after advertising drops from 22% to about 17%. Keep an eye on ROAS and add an averaged advertising cost to your calculation.
• Returns — with free shipping, the round-trip courier cost stays on your side. Even 3–4% of returned orders can shave 1–2 percentage points off your average margin.

That’s why it’s good practice to calculate two versions of the margin: a “catalog” one (regular price, no advertising) and an “effective” one (after the average discount, Ads cost, and returns). The second number tells you how much you really earn over the course of a month — and it’s the one to base decisions on about which products are even worth keeping in your offer.

The most common mistakes when calculating margin on Allegro

Before you trust your calculation, check whether you’re making any of these mistakes:

• Calculating from the gross price instead of the net price — ignoring output VAT inflates the margin by over ten percentage points.
• Omitting the transaction fee and the Smart surcharge — the category commission alone isn’t the full platform cost.
• Forgetting that the commission is also charged on delivery collected from the buyer.
• Not accounting for returns — even 2–5% of returned orders really lowers the average margin, because the round-trip shipping costs remain.
• Zero cost for packaging and handling time — the box, the film, the label, and the minutes of work cost money too.
• Confusing margin with markup when setting the minimum price.

If you sell across multiple channels, another layer is added: different commissions on Allegro, Empik, or Amazon and different courier costs mean the same product has a different margin in each channel — it’s worth lining them up side by side, which we write about in Comparing Couriers for E-commerce 2026.

How to avoid calculating margin by hand across hundreds of listings

Calculating a single listing in a table is easy. The problem begins when you have several hundred SKUs, different commission categories, seasonal changes in purchase prices, and Smart surcharges that depend on the order value. A manual spreadsheet quickly goes out of date, and you end up making pricing decisions on old numbers.

That’s why it’s worth calculating your margin where your orders and fee data already flow in — that is, in a panel that connects Allegro sales with your warehouse and invoices. Nimo, currently in development, plans exactly this approach: one panel for orders, stock, and marketplace integrations, so that profitability is visible without manually re-entering data. Whatever the tool, the principle is the same: set prices on net margin, not gross. If you’re just setting up your Allegro sales process, start with a solid Allegro integration with your warehouse, so that order and fee data flow into one place.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Allegro commission charged on the gross or net price of the product?

The commission is charged on the transaction value the buyer pays, that is, on the gross price — and additionally on the delivery cost if you charge it to the customer. The commission rate itself, however, is quoted as a net value, so an active VAT payer deducts the VAT from it, while a VAT-exempt seller bears its gross cost.

What’s the difference between gross margin and net margin?

Gross margin is the difference between the selling price and the cost of purchasing the goods, divided by the price. Net margin additionally accounts for VAT, the Allegro commission, the transaction fee, delivery surcharges, and logistics and handling costs. Use net margin for pricing decisions — gross is almost always overstated.

How much is the Allegro commission in 2026?

Roughly from about 1% to 17% net of the transaction value, depending on the category — electronics tend to be lower, fashion and accessories higher. On top of that comes the transaction fee (indicatively about 1.2%) and the Smart surcharge. Always check the exact rate for your category in the current Allegro pricing, because these figures are updated from time to time.

Do you need to account for VAT when calculating margin?

Yes, if you’re an active VAT payer. The price the customer pays is a gross price, and out of every 100 zł about 18.70 zł is output VAT that you remit to the tax office. So you calculate the margin on net values — net revenue minus net costs. Omitting VAT is the most common reason for overstated margins.

How can I quickly calculate the minimum price below which I lose money?

Add up all the net costs per unit: the purchase cost, the commission, the transaction fee, the Smart surcharge, shipping, and packaging. Treat the resulting amount as your net break-even point, add VAT (× 1.23), and treat the gross price calculated this way as the absolute minimum — at that price you earn zero. Every promotion should leave a safe buffer above this threshold.