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Landed cost calculator

A free landed cost calculator for importers - add freight, insurance, duty and import tax to your product cost and see what a unit really lands at.

From your broker or your country's tariff schedule. This tool does not guess it.

VAT, GST or equivalent.

Broker, port, inland delivery. Added after tax.

Add this for the landed cost per unit.

Enter your product value to start. Freight, duty and tax build on top of it.

How this is calculated

CIF value     = product value + freight + insurance

Customs value = CIF   (EU, UK, China, most countries)
              = FOB   (United States - goods value only)

Duty          = customs value × duty %
Tax base      = customs value + duty     ← common, NOT universal
Tax           = tax base × tax %
Total         = CIF + duty + tax + other fees
Per unit      = total ÷ units

Assumptions

  • The duty basis is yours to choose and it matters more than any other setting here. The EU, UK, China and most countries assess duty on the CIF value. The United States assesses on FOB - the goods value alone, with international freight and insurance excluded. Leaving this on CIF for a US import overstates the duty on every shipment.
  • Import tax is applied to the customs value plus duty. That is the common pattern in VAT and GST systems, but it is not universal - some countries tax the customs value alone. Check your own before relying on the tax line.
  • Duty and tax percentages are yours to supply. This calculator has no HS code database and does not guess a rate from a product description. Get the rate from your customs broker or your country's own tariff schedule.
  • Duty is calculated on the whole customs value. Preferential rates under a trade agreement, de minimis thresholds, and anti-dumping duties are not modelled.
  • Other fees is a flat amount added after tax - broker fees, port charges, inland delivery. It is not included in either the duty base or the tax base.
  • Every figure is in one currency. Exchange rate movement between order and clearance is not modelled, and on a long lead time it can move the landed cost by more than the duty line does.

How to use this landed cost calculator

Enter the product value, the freight and the insurance, then your duty and import tax percentages. Add any flat broker, port or inland delivery charges under other fees, and the unit count if you want the per-unit figure as well as the total.

Two controls matter more than the numbers. Duty is assessed on sets whether the duty rate is applied to the CIF value or to the goods value alone, and import tax is charged on sets whether the tax base includes the duty. Both differ by destination, and both are the difference between a total landed cost you can quote and one you cannot.

The result updates as you type, with every step of the cascade printed underneath. Nothing is sent to a server, and the numbers live in the page address, so copying the link sends the exact calculation to a broker or a colleague with the fields already filled in.

Worked example

You are importing 1,000 units. The numbers on the table are:

  • Product value: 12,000
  • Freight: 2,400
  • Insurance: 90
  • Duty rate: 6.5%
  • Import tax rate: 20%
  • Broker and handling fees: 250

Work through it in order.

CIF value. 12,000 + 2,400 + 90 = 14,490. This is the value the border sees, not the 12,000 on the supplier’s invoice.

Duty. 14,490 × 6.5% = 941.85.

Tax base. 14,490 + 941.85 = 15,431.85. The duty is inside the tax base, which is why the tax line is larger than a naive calculation would suggest.

Import tax. 15,431.85 × 20% = 3,086.37.

Total landed cost. 14,490 + 941.85 + 3,086.37 + 250 = 18,768.22.

Per unit. 18,768.22 ÷ 1,000 = 18.77.

The unit you bought for 12.00 lands at 18.77 - 56 per cent above the purchase price. If you had priced this product off the supplier invoice with a target 40 per cent margin, you would be selling at 20.00 and making 1.23 a unit, not 8.00.

The cascade is where people go wrong

Notice that duty is calculated on the customs value rather than the invoice value, and that tax is calculated on the customs value plus duty, not on the customs value alone.

Both compound. Applying tax to the customs value alone rather than to customs value plus duty understates the tax by 188 in the example above. It is not a dramatic error on its own, but it quietly removes money from a calculation you were relying on for pricing, and the order of operations is the whole reason to do this in a calculator rather than in your head.

CIF or FOB: the setting that moves the number most

The example above uses CIF, which is what the EU, the UK, China and most countries assess duty against. The United States does not. US Customs appraises on transaction value - the price paid for the goods - and states directly that duty is not assessed on cost, insurance and freight charges. In practice that means the FOB goods value.

Run the same shipment both ways:

The same shipment appraised on each basis
Line CIF basis FOB basis (US)
Customs value14,49012,000
Duty at 6.5%941.85780.00
Tax base15,431.8512,780.00
Tax at 20%3,086.372,556.00
Other fees250.00250.00
Total landed18,768.2218,076.00

That is 692 of difference on a single shipment, from one dropdown - and it is 692 the US importer never actually owed. The gap scales with freight, so the more expensive the lane, the more a CIF-based calculator overstates the bill.

This is why the duty basis is a control on this page rather than a hidden assumption. If you are importing into the United States, set it to FOB.

Using it as a US, UK or B2B landed cost calculator

The arithmetic is the same everywhere. What changes is the two basis settings and what you do with the answer.

United States. Set the duty basis to FOB. US importers also face merchandise processing and harbour maintenance charges, which are not duty and belong under other fees rather than in the rate. There is no federal import VAT, so the tax line is often left at zero and the total is product plus freight plus duty plus fees.

United Kingdom and the EU. Leave the duty basis on CIF and the tax base on customs value plus duty, which is the standard VAT treatment. If you are VAT registered you will usually recover the import VAT as input tax, so run the total once with the tax line and once without - the first is the cash you have to fund at clearance, the second is the cost your margin actually carries.

B2B and wholesale. When you are quoting a trade customer rather than pricing a retail line, the number they want is the per-unit landed cost with the recoverable tax stripped out, plus your margin. Enter the unit count so the per-unit figure comes back with the total, and keep the working - a B2B buyer who queries a quote is usually querying the duty line, and showing the cascade settles it faster than a revised invoice does.

What makes a landed cost calculator accurate

Most tools get the arithmetic right and the assumptions wrong, which is worse than being obviously broken - a wrong total still looks like a total.

Three things separate an accurate calculation from a plausible one. The duty basis has to be yours to set. The tax base has to be yours to set. And the duty rate must not be guessed for you.

That last one is why there is no HS code lookup here. Duty rates hang off tariff classification, and classification is genuinely hard - the same physical product can fall into different headings depending on material composition, intended use and how it is presented for sale, and the rate difference between neighbouring codes can be more than ten percentage points. A calculator that infers a code from a product name would be confidently wrong a meaningful share of the time, and a confidently wrong duty rate gets used. Your customs broker gives you the classification and your country’s tariff schedule gives the rate against it. This tool does the cascade once you have both.

What this does not cover

Preferential duty rates under a free trade agreement can reduce the duty line to zero if your goods qualify and you have valid origin documentation. Anti-dumping and countervailing duties can add rates far above the standard tariff on specific goods from specific origins. De minimis thresholds may exempt small consignments entirely.

None of those are modelled here, and all of them can matter more than the arithmetic on this page. Treat the result as the standard-case figure, and confirm the exceptions with a broker before committing to a purchase order.

Currency movement is the other uncovered risk. On a ninety-day lead time, a five per cent move against you costs more than the entire duty line in this example.

Frequently asked questions

What is landed cost?
Landed cost is everything you pay to get goods from a supplier into your warehouse, ready to sell. It is the product price plus freight, insurance, import duty, import tax and any handling or broker fees. It is the only cost figure that gives you a real margin, because the purchase price on its own routinely understates the true cost by a quarter or more.
How do I use a landed cost calculator?
Enter the product value, freight and insurance, then your duty and import tax percentages, any flat broker or port fees, and the number of units. Set the duty basis to match the destination - CIF for the EU, the UK and most countries, FOB for the United States - and set the tax base to whichever your country uses. The total and the per-unit figure appear immediately, with every step of the cascade printed underneath so you can hand the working to a broker or an accountant.
How do you calculate landed costs?
Work in order, because the steps compound. Add product value, freight and insurance to get the CIF value, apply the duty rate to whichever basis your destination assesses on, add that duty into the tax base, apply the import tax rate, then add flat fees such as broker and port charges. Divide by the unit count at the end for the per-unit figure.
What is the most accurate landed cost calculator?
Accuracy here is not about the arithmetic, which is trivial, but about three settings most tools hide. It has to let you choose the duty basis, because anything hardcoded to CIF overstates duty on every United States import. It has to apply import tax to the customs value plus duty rather than to the customs value alone, since that is what most VAT and GST systems actually do. And it must not guess a duty rate from a product description, because tariff classification turns on material, use and presentation, and a wrong HS code produces a confidently wrong number that then gets used. A tool that buries those three behind defaults is precise, not accurate.
What is an example of landed cost?
Take 1,000 units bought for 12,000, with 2,400 of freight and 90 of insurance. The CIF value is 14,490, duty at 6.5% adds 941.85, import tax at 20% on customs value plus duty adds 3,086.37, and 250 of broker fees brings the total landed cost to 18,768.22. That is 18.77 a unit against a 12.00 purchase price, or 56 per cent above what the supplier charged.
What is a landed cost price?
Landed cost price is the per-unit version of landed cost, meaning the total delivered cost of a shipment divided by the units it contained. In the worked example on this page, 18,768.22 across 1,000 units gives a landed cost price of 18.77 against a purchase price of 12.00. It is the figure your selling price has to clear, and it is never the supplier's invoice line.
What does landed cost mean in accounting?
In accounting, landed cost is the full capitalised cost of inventory - the purchase price plus the freight, duty, insurance and handling needed to bring the goods to their present location and condition. Those costs sit on the balance sheet inside inventory value rather than being expensed when paid, and they flow into cost of goods sold when the item is sold. Allocating them wrongly misstates both inventory and gross margin.
How to calculate landed cost in Excel?
Build it as a column of steps rather than one nested formula, so the cascade stays visible. Row one adds product value, freight and insurance for the CIF value. Row two multiplies that by the duty rate. Row three adds rows one and two for the tax base, row four multiplies by the tax rate, and row five sums everything plus flat fees. Divide by the unit count in row six. Keeping the steps apart is the point, because a single long formula hides which line is wrong when the total looks off.
How to use Excel to calculate cost?
Put every rate and assumption in its own labelled cell and reference those cells from your formulas instead of typing numbers into them. Changing a duty rate then updates the whole sheet rather than leaving a stale figure buried three columns over. Use SUM for the cost pool, absolute references for the rate cells, and one row per step. Most broken cost sheets fail because somebody hardcoded a value inside a formula months earlier and nobody could see it.
How do you calculate cost?
It depends which cost you mean, and that distinction matters more than the arithmetic. Purchase cost is what the supplier invoices. Landed cost adds everything needed to get the goods into your warehouse, including freight, duty and import tax. Cost of goods sold is the landed cost of the units you actually sold in a period. Pricing off the first of those rather than the second is the most common way importers find out a product was never profitable.
How to calculate land cost per square foot?
That is a property question rather than a shipping one, and land cost is a different thing from landed cost despite the similar name. Land cost per square foot is the purchase price of a plot divided by its area, so 250,000 for a 5,000 square foot plot is 50 per square foot. Landed cost, which is what this calculator works out, is the total delivered cost of imported goods.
Is duty calculated on CIF or FOB value?
It depends on the destination and the difference is not small. The EU, UK, China and most countries assess duty on CIF - goods plus international freight plus insurance. The United States assesses on FOB, the goods value alone; US Customs states plainly that duty is not assessed on CIF charges. On a shipment with 2,400 of freight at a 6.5% rate, using the wrong basis moves the duty by around 156.
Is import tax charged on top of duty?
In many countries yes - the tax base is the customs value plus duty, so you effectively pay tax on the duty. That is what this calculator does by default, and there is a control to switch it. It is not universal though, and getting it wrong shifts the total by a few per cent, so confirm the base your country actually uses before quoting a landed cost to anyone.
Should I include landed cost in my selling price calculation?
Yes, always. Pricing off the supplier invoice is the single most common way importers discover a product was never profitable. Freight and duty together commonly add twenty to forty per cent to the unit cost, and a margin calculated without them is fiction.
Can I reclaim the import tax?
In many VAT and GST systems a registered business can reclaim import tax as input tax, which makes it a cash flow cost rather than a true cost. Duty is generally not reclaimable. If you can reclaim the tax, look at the total excluding the tax line for margin purposes - but remember you still have to fund it at clearance.

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Results are estimates for planning purposes. Verify with your carrier or customs broker before committing. This is not professional advice - see the disclaimer.

Every calculation runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server or stored anywhere.