Free tool
Tester round timeline and cohort size planner
Work out how many testers to accept, how many hours the reports will take to read, and how many calendar days sit between the call and a corrected file.
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Pattern release break-even calculator
Enter what one release actually costs you and see how many copies it has to sell before it pays for the cash and then for your time.
Most pattern pricing conversations stop at what the market will bear for a PDF. The more useful number is the copy count. A pattern priced at twelve dollars with a full tech edit, a sample garment and forty five hours of drafting and grading behind it has a break-even that is often several times what a first release actually sells, and knowing that figure before you start changes which designs you take on.
This calculator separates two break-even points on purpose. The first covers only the money that left your account: the tech editor, the yarn or fabric, the photography. The second adds your own hours at a rate you choose. Designers who only ever track the first one end up funding the trade out of unpaid labor without ever seeing the number that says so.
Your result
You keep per copy sold
$11.04
What actually lands in your account per download after store and processing fees.
Copies to cover cash spent
46
Copies needed before the tech editor, fabric or yarn and photography are paid back.
Total cost of the release
$1,940
Cash outlay plus your own hours valued at the rate you set above.
Copies to pay you as well
176
Copies needed before the pattern has paid for your drafting and grading time.
Compare the second copy count against what your last three patterns actually sold in their first year, not against what you hope this one will do.
Reading the two break-even numbers
The cash figure is the one that decides whether a release is survivable. If a pattern needs forty six copies to pay the tech editor and the sample yarn, and your mailing list reliably buys a hundred in the first week, the release is safe to fund. If it needs three hundred, the design has to earn its place ahead of the others in your queue.
The paid figure is the one that shapes your catalog over a year. A pattern needing a hundred and seventy six copies to pay you thirty two dollars an hour is not a failure, but it tells you which designs need to be evergreen and which can be seasonal. Cardigans with a wide graded range carry more editing and grading hours than an accessory, and the copy count shows it plainly.
What designers usually leave out of the stack
Three costs get forgotten almost every time. The first is the second sample, because the first one proved the grading was wrong. The second is the file rebuild after the tester round, which for a pattern shipping letter, A4, A0 and projector versions is rarely under three hours. The third is the comp copies given to testers, which is real inventory even when the marginal cost of a PDF is zero.
Put those into the hours field rather than pretending they belong to some other budget. A release calendar built on the honest hour count is the one that survives a summer, and it is also the one that tells you when to raise a price instead of adding another pattern.
Questions about this calculator
Should I include tester comp copies as a cost?
Not as cash, since the marginal cost of another PDF is nothing. Include the hours instead: the round itself, the reports you read and the corrections you make. That is where a tester round actually costs you, and it belongs in the hours field.
What fee percentage should I use if I sell in several places?
Use the blended rate across your channels, weighted by where copies actually sell. A designer selling mostly through a marketplace and partly direct will land noticeably higher than one selling only from their own store. Run the calculator twice if your split is close to even.
How do I price my own hours if I have never set a rate?
Start from what you would pay someone else to do the grading, then add the part nobody else can do. Most independent designers who work this out land well above the number they had in their head. The point is not the exact rate, it is seeing the copy count move when you change it.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
Tester round call file and correction log template
A working template for the two documents every pattern tester round needs: the call you post and the log every correction lands in.
Take that number into a real release
The figure on this screen is only worth what you do with it in the next round. Book a demo and we will build that release while you watch: the graded sizes, the dated make window, and the correction log every tester note lands in with its page and size range attached. Twenty five minutes, your pattern, your dates.