Landed Cost Calculator

What a unit costs by the time it reaches you — factory price, freight, duty, packing and clearance, with each layer of the 2026 duty stack broken out.

FOB unit price

The base of the customs value duty is charged on.

Inbound freight per unit

Packing paid before import

Packing you pay for separately from the goods. Customs values it, so duty applies to it too.

Packaging added after import

Gift boxes, relabelling, mailers. No duty — it does not exist yet at the border.

Customs clearance per unit

Country of origin

Product category

Section 301 list (China)

Applies per HTS code — check yours, we won't guess it.

Section 232 goods (steel, aluminium, copper, vehicles)Exempt from the forced labor duty, but carry their own Section 232 rates this tool does not model.

Landed cost per unit

$15.83

1.76x what you pay the factory.

Customs value: $9.40
Duty: $3.43

What makes up that cost

FOB$9.0056.9%
Freight$2.4015.2%
Duty$3.4321.7%
Packing$0.402.5%
Clearance$0.603.8%

How that 36.5% duty rate is built

What this estimate can get wrong (2)

MFN is a category approximation from 6109.10.00. Rates apply per 10-digit HTS code and range 2.6%–32% across HTS 6109–6110.
Annex I of the USTR notice exempts civil aircraft parts, articles for pharmaceutical use, steel/aluminium/copper articles and passenger vehicles and their parts (goods already covered by Section 232), and charitable relief donations. Nothing in the consumer categories here is exempt — but if you import metal drinkware, aluminium cases or similar, check whether your code falls under the Section 232 carve-out.

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What landed cost is

Landed cost is everything you spend to get one sellable unit into your warehouse. Not the factory price — the factory price is where it starts.

Landed cost = FOB + freight + duty + packing + clearance

It matters because it is the number that belongs in your margin calculation, and because the gap between it and the factory price is usually much larger than people expect. On a low-value import from China in 2026, landed cost commonly runs 60–80% above FOB once freight and the duty stack are in.

Every margin, every break-even, every bid target downstream inherits whatever error you make here. Getting FOB and landed cost confused is the single most common reason a product that looked profitable in a spreadsheet loses money in the market.

How each input works

FOB unit price: What you pay the factory per unit, free on board. This is the base of the customs value.
Inbound freight per unit: Total international freight divided by units in the shipment. If you ship a mixed container, apportion by volume or weight rather than by unit count — apportioning a heavy SKU and a light SKU equally flatters one and punishes the other.
Packing before import vs packaging after: Two different lines, and the distinction is not pedantry. Packing you pay for separately from the goods is part of the dutiable value, so duty applies to it. Gift boxes and mailers added once the goods are in your warehouse are not, because they did not exist at the border. Lumping them together understates duty on every unit.
Customs clearance per unit: Broker fees, entry filing, merchandise processing. Largely fixed per shipment, so it falls sharply per unit as order size rises — one of the few real economies of scale in importing.

A worked example

A knit apparel SKU from China: $9.00 FOB, $2.40 inbound freight per unit, $0.40 of packing paid separately from the goods, $0.60 clearance. Category duty for knit apparel from China is 36.5% combined.

Customs values it at $9.40 — the goods plus that separately-paid packing. Duty is $3.43. Landed cost comes to $15.83, which is 1.76× the factory price.

Duty is $3.43 of that $6.83 gap, and freight is $2.40. Neither appears anywhere in a supplier quote, and neither shows up in an ad platform. If you have been planning against $9.00, every margin you have calculated is overstated by nearly 76%.

Reading the composition bar

The bar in the result panel is worth more than the total. What you are looking for is which component dominates, because that tells you where negotiating actually pays.

If freight dominates, you have a volume or a packaging-density problem, and consolidating shipments will move the number more than haggling over unit price. If duty dominates, unit-price negotiation is working against a multiplier — every dollar off FOB saves you the dollar plus the duty on it — and origin becomes a strategic question rather than a logistics one. If FOB dominates, your landed cost is mostly honest and the lever is the product itself.

Once the landed figure is stable, put it into the break-even calculator. Landed cost is an input to a decision, not the decision.

Next steps

Import Tariff Calculator

Estimated duty by origin and product category.

Break-Even ROAS Calculator

The ROAS below which every sale loses money.

Dropshipping Profit Calculator

Net profit per order after 2026 tariffs.

Questions

What is the difference between FOB, CIF and landed cost?: FOB is the goods loaded at the origin port; you pay freight and insurance from there. CIF includes freight and insurance to the destination port, so the seller has bundled them into the price. Landed cost is neither incoterm — it is your all-in cost at your own warehouse door, including duty and clearance, which no incoterm covers.
Is duty calculated on FOB or on landed cost?: On the customs value, which under FOB terms is the goods plus certain buyer-paid additions such as separately-invoiced packing. It is not calculated on landed cost — charging duty on the freight you paid to bring the goods in would be circular. Under CIF terms the customs value is defined differently, which is worth checking with your broker.
How do I apportion freight across a mixed shipment?: By volume or chargeable weight, not by unit count. A container carrying 2,000 t-shirts and 200 jackets does not owe equal freight per item. Splitting evenly makes the light SKU look worse than it is and the heavy one better, which is exactly backwards for deciding what to scale.
Should currency movement be in here?: If you pay your supplier in a currency other than the one you sell in, yes — but as a scenario rather than a line. Run your landed cost at the rate you actually contracted at, then run it again at a rate 5–10% worse. If the second number breaks your margin, you have a currency exposure to hedge, not a cost to average.
Does this include the cost of returns?: No, and it should not. Landed cost is a per-unit inbound figure. Returns are a per-order outcome and belong in the break-even calculation, where the return rate and how much of the unit you recover both matter. Duty, notably, is not refunded when a customer sends something back.

Sources and last update

Last verified 2026-08-22.

Figures here are planning estimates. Duty applies per 10-digit HTS code and platform fees change without much notice — check your own broker and your own seller account before committing spend. Full workings on the methodology page.