Know exactly what to charge
Add your ingredients, your time, and your overhead. Get a price that actually covers them, plus the profit you want.
Cake price
BakerInbox
Start with a template
Cake size
Every layer past two adds levelling, filling, and stacking. Fondant adds rolling and covering. Both land on your labour, not your ingredients.
Ingredients
£0.00
£0.00
Labour
Overhead
Adds 20% of your ingredient cost to cover rent, utilities, and equipment. Switch to Per cake for your real figure.
VAT registered
Adds the price your customer pays, inc VAT
Per serving
£3.11Profit
£13.06Close, a couple of costs still estimated
- Add your ingredients
- Swap the 20% overhead estimate for your real figure
Aim for food cost between 25% and 35% of your selling price. Above that, your margin for labour and profit gets thin.
Made with BakerInbox. Free cake tools at bakerinbox.com/tools
How to price a cake
The short version
Why guessing costs you
Most home bakers charge too little
It is easy to price a cake off the ingredients alone. But ingredients are usually the smallest part of the real cost. Once your time, energy bills, and packaging are counted, a cake that looks like it made a profit can actually be close to free labour.
The formula
Work backward from your margin
Add up everything a cake costs you: ingredients, your time, a share of your overhead, and packaging. That is your total cost. Then divide by (1 minus your target margin) to get your selling price. A £20 cost at a 35% margin becomes £20 ÷ 0.65, or £30.77, not £20 plus a bit.
What gets missed
Three costs bakers forget
Your time at a real hourly rate, not free. A share of rent, utilities, and equipment, spread across the cakes you actually sell each month. And packaging, boxes, boards, and ribbon add up faster than they look.
A target to aim for
Keep food cost between 25% and 35%
Food cost is your ingredient cost as a share of your selling price. Most profitable bakeries keep it in the 25 to 35% range. Above that, there is little left over once your time and overhead are paid for.
FAQ
Common questions
Is this cake pricing calculator really free?
Yes. Use it as many times as you like, for as many cakes as you like. No signup, no card.
Does it work for wedding cakes and tiered cakes?
Yes. Pick a bigger size, raise your prep minutes, and set the complexity to Elaborate or Sculpted so the labour cost reflects the extra work.
What if I don't know my hourly rate?
Start with what you would want to earn per hour at any job, then adjust once you see how the price lands against what customers actually pay locally.
Where does my information go?
Nowhere. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
Now put every enquiry in one place too
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