Free tools
Ad spend calculator for Meta ads
Can this budget work before you spend it? Use a few planning assumptions to see whether your campaign economics look healthy enough to launch.
Inputs
Start with the assumptions you already know.
Outputs
The budget story at a glance.
Fill in your assumptions to see whether the campaign has room to work.
How this works
A worked example
Take the default numbers: a $1,000 budget at $1.20 per click buys about 833 clicks. At a 2.5% conversion rate that is roughly 21 sales, so each sale costs $48. Twenty-one sales at $120 brings in about $2,500 — a 2.5x ROAS.
The number that decides whether that is good is the break-even CPA. With a 65% margin, each $120 order leaves $78 to spend on winning it. A $48 CPA sits comfortably under $78, so this plan has room to absorb a worse result than expected.
Now halve the conversion rate to 1.25%. CPA doubles to $96 — above break-even — and every sale loses money even though the campaign still reports revenue. That is the point of running the numbers first: conversion rate and click cost move the outcome far more than budget does.
Questions
Ad spend calculator FAQ
How do you calculate ad spend from a target number of sales?
Work backwards from cost per acquisition. Divide your cost per click by your conversion rate to get CPA — $1.20 per click at a 2.5% conversion rate is $48 per sale — then multiply CPA by the number of sales you want. Twenty sales at $48 needs about $960 of ad spend. The calculator above runs the same sum forwards from a budget.
What is break-even CPA?
The most you can pay to win one sale before the ad loses money on it. It is your average order value multiplied by your gross margin: a $120 order at a 65% margin leaves $78 to spend on acquiring it. If your real CPA lands above that number, every extra sale makes the campaign less profitable, however good the ROAS looks.
What is a good ROAS for Meta ads?
There is no universal figure — the right one comes from your margin. Your break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your gross margin, so a 65% margin breaks even at about 1.54x and a 30% margin needs 3.33x just to stand still. Judge any target against your own break-even, not a number from an industry benchmark.
How accurate is an ad spend calculator before launch?
Only as accurate as the click cost and conversion rate you put in, and both are guesses until the campaign runs. Use it to see whether the economics can work at all and which input matters most. If the plan only works with an optimistic conversion rate, that is the number to test cheaply before committing the full budget.
Important
Start free
This is a planning tool, not a prediction engine.
If your tracking is weak, your audience is too broad, or your offer misses the mark, the live result can drift far from these assumptions. That’s exactly why validation matters before launch.
Other free tools: Learning phase budget calculator. Or read which Meta ad metrics matter.