Craft fair booth break-even tables: how many items do you have to sell?
A booth fee is paid before the first customer walks up. These tables turn that fee into a number you can check during the day: the count of items that covers the booth, and the count that also pays your own hours. It is one static page: no sign-up, nothing to install.
What the tables assume: one average price and one average cost per item, and one item per sale. The card fee used in Table 2 (2.6% plus $0.15 per sale) is an example chosen in October 2026, not a quote from any card reader company and not confirmed on any company's fee page: check the rate your own reader charges on its official pricing page. Sales tax is left out.
Table 1: items to sell to cover the event costs
Event costs are everything you pay only because of this event: booth fee, fuel, parking, a permit. Profit per item is the price minus what the item cost you to make, minus the card fee on it.
| Event costs | $3 profit per item | $5 | $8 | $10 | $15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | 17 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 4 |
| $75 | 25 | 15 | 10 | 8 | 5 |
| $100 | 34 | 20 | 13 | 10 | 7 |
| $150 | 50 | 30 | 19 | 15 | 10 |
| $250 | 84 | 50 | 32 | 25 | 17 |
items to break even = event costs / profit per item, rounded up
Divide the result by the hours the fair is open to get a pace. At $100 of costs and $8 of profit per item, 13 items over a 6 hour fair is a little more than 2 items an hour.
Table 2: profit per item after a card fee
| Price | Cost to make | Card fee | Profit per item |
|---|---|---|---|
| $8.00 | $2.50 | $0.36 | $5.14 |
| $12.00 | $4.00 | $0.46 | $7.54 |
| $14.00 | $4.50 | $0.51 | $8.99 |
| $20.00 | $6.00 | $0.67 | $13.33 |
| $30.00 | $10.00 | $0.93 | $19.07 |
| $45.00 | $15.00 | $1.32 | $28.68 |
The card fee is rounded to the nearest cent. A cash sale has no card fee, so its profit is simply price minus cost. The fixed part of the fee weighs most on cheap items: $0.36 is 4.5% of an $8.00 sale, and $1.32 is 2.9% of a $45.00 sale.
Worked example: covering the booth, then your hours
- Event costs: booth fee $75, fuel and parking $18, other costs $12. Total $105.
- Your time: 8 hours including setup, teardown and the drive, at a wage of $15 an hour. Total $120.
- Average price $14.00, average cost to make $4.50, and 70% of sales paid by card at 2.6% plus $0.15.
- Average card fee per item: 0.7 x (14.00 x 0.026 + 0.15) = 0.7 x 0.514 = $0.36.
- Profit per item: 14.00 - 4.50 - 0.36 = $9.14.
- Items to cover the event costs: 105 / 9.14 = 11.5, so 12 items, or $168 in sales.
- Items to also pay your hours: (105 + 120) / 9.14 = 24.6, so 25 items, or $350 in sales.
Between 12 and 25 items the event makes money on paper but pays you less than the wage you set. That gap is the figure to look at when you decide whether to book the same fair again.
What these tables leave out
- Sales tax, and any commission the organizer takes on top of the booth fee.
- Sales with several items: the fixed part of the card fee is charged once per sale, so the fee per item is lower.
- Unsold stock, displays and equipment you reuse at other events.
- Orders that arrive after the fair from people who took a card.
Want this worked out for your own event? The Craft Fair Booth Profit Kit is a paid download on Gumroad: four CSV files you import into Google Sheets. You type your booth fee, travel, prices and costs, log each sale during the day, and it shows the profit so far and the items still to sell. It is our own product: we sell it and earn money from each purchase, so this is a commercial link and not a neutral recommendation.