Discount Calculator

How it works

A percentage discount takes a slice off the original price. This calculator works out the dollar amount of that slice and subtracts it to give the price you actually pay:

With the defaults, a 25% discount on $80 is $20.00 off, which brings the price down to $60.00. The percentage is the headline, but the sale price and the dollar saving are what matter at the register.

✓ Every result is checked against independent reference math. See how we test the calculators →

A worked example: 25% off an $80 jacket

You spot a jacket on the rack marked $80.00, and a sign promises 25% off at the register. Before you even reach the front of the line, the calculator shows it will actually ring up at $60.00.

The math is quick. Taking a quarter off $80.00 trims $20.00 from the price, and that $20.00 is the money that stays in your pocket. What you hand over at the counter is the $60.00 sale price, not the number printed on the tag.

Swap in any original price and discount percentage to test a deal before you commit. A bold "percent off" banner becomes a real dollar figure you can compare across stores instead of a rough guess.

Not every sale is a deal

A percentage off is only as good as the price it starts from. Retailers know a big number grabs attention, so a deep discount on an inflated tag can still cost more than a modest discount on a fair one. Compare final prices, not percentages, and never let the size of the discount talk you into buying something you did not want.

The best sale on a thing you will not use is still money spent, not saved.

Do the percentage in your head

You rarely need a calculator to get close on a discount; a couple of tricks handle most of them at the shelf. Anchor everything to ten percent, which you find by moving the decimal one place, then build up or down from there:

• Ten and its multiples. Ten percent of $80 is $8, so twenty percent is $16 and thirty percent is $24. Scale the easy number.
• Halve for the fives. Five percent is half of ten percent, so twenty-five percent off $80 is $16 plus $4, which is $20 off.
• Meet in the middle. Fifteen percent is ten plus five, so $8 plus $4 is $12 off $80.

Those cover the discounts you meet most, close enough to judge a deal on the spot. When you want the figure to the cent, the calculator above finishes the job.

Discount first, then sales tax

The price you see here is the pre-tax sale price, and at the register sales tax lands on top, so your receipt runs a little higher than the number above. The order matters, and happily it works in your favor. Stores take the percentage off first and then apply tax to the reduced amount, which means the discount also shrinks the tax you pay.

Work an example: a $60 sale price at an eight percent tax rate becomes $64.80 at the till, not the $60 shown. Had the tax been charged before the discount, on the original $80, you would have paid tax on the full tag and then taken money off, coming out a touch worse. Because tax follows the discount, a bigger discount quietly trims the tax bill along with the price.

Just remember, when you compare a sale price here to the cash you actually need, to add your local tax rate to the result.

Discount and markup are not mirror images

It is tempting to think a discount undoes a markup of the same percentage, but the two are taken from different starting points, so they do not cancel out. A markup grows a smaller base; a discount shrinks a larger one. Walk it through:

• A markup then an equal discount lands low. Mark $100 up by twenty percent to $120, then take twenty percent off, and you get $96, not $100, because the discount comes off the bigger number.
• Undoing a markup needs a smaller discount. To get from $120 back to $100 you take off about sixteen point seven percent, not twenty.
• Percent off is not the reverse of percent on. The base shifts each time, so equal percentages never quite meet.

This is the same quirk that makes a store’s percent off its own inflated price look better than it is, so always check the final dollar figure, not the percentage.

A worked example: from tag to receipt

A jacket is tagged at $45 with a sign reading thirty percent off, and you want the real out-the-door cost. Start with the discount: thirty percent of $45 is $13.50, so the sale price is $45 minus $13.50, which is $31.50. That is the figure the calculator shows.

Now add your local sales tax, say seven percent, applied to the reduced price rather than the original. Seven percent of $31.50 is about $2.21, so you actually hand over roughly $33.71. Notice what happened: the headline was thirty percent off, but between the discount and the tax the number that leaves your wallet is $33.71 on a $45 tag.

Running it the whole way, from tag to sale price to receipt, is the only way to know what a sale truly costs. The percentage on the sign is where the calculation starts, not where it ends.