Landed Cost Calculator

What Is Landed Cost?

Landed cost is the full price of getting a product from a supplier's warehouse to a buyer's door, once every charge along the way is added up - not just what the product costs on the invoice. It's the number that actually determines whether an import is profitable, and it's routinely 20-40% higher than the purchase price alone once VAT, duty, freight, and fees are all counted.

For a single consumer order, landed cost is what decides whether that "great deal" from an overseas store is still a deal once it clears customs. For a wholesaler or dropshipper pricing inventory, it's the number that has to sit below the selling price for the shipment to make money at all - which is why the calculator above includes a per-unit cost and a margin field, not just a single grand total.

The Landed Cost Formula

At its simplest, landed cost breaks into five components, most of which stack on top of each other rather than adding independently:

Component	What it covers
Product cost	Unit cost × quantity - the base value everything else is calculated from
Freight & insurance	Shipping the goods from origin to destination, plus cargo insurance if purchased
Customs duty	A percentage of the customs value, set by the destination's tariff schedule and the product's category or HS code
Import VAT / GST / sales tax	Charged on top of the goods value - and in many destinations, on top of duty and freight too, not just the product price
Handling, brokerage & delivery fees	Customs clearance, port/terminal handling, and last-mile delivery - charged by the courier or broker, not the government

The tricky part isn't the arithmetic, it's that duty is usually calculated on the customs value (goods plus freight and insurance, a shape often called CIF value), and VAT is then often calculated on top of goods value plus duty - so getting the order of operations right matters as much as knowing each individual rate.

Landed Cost vs. Just Checking the Customs Duty Rate

A duty rate by itself answers a narrower question than most people assume. A tariff lookup tells you the percentage a product category carries - useful, but it's one line in the total, not the total itself.

Take a product with a genuinely 0% duty rate - electronics under the WTO's Information Technology Agreement are a real example. The duty line reads "0%," but the landed cost is still meaningfully higher than the sticker price once VAT (commonly 15-27% depending on destination) and any handling fee are added. A 0% duty rate can still mean a 20%+ higher landed cost - the duty rate alone just doesn't tell you that.

CIF vs. FOB: Why the Basis Changes Your Numbers

Two Incoterms show up constantly in landed cost calculations, and mixing them up produces a wrong number even with correct rates. FOB (Free On Board) is the product price before international freight and insurance are added - what a supplier typically quotes. CIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight) is the product price plus freight plus insurance - and it's this CIF figure, not the bare FOB price, that most destinations use as the base for calculating customs duty.

Practically: if a supplier quotes an FOB price, freight and insurance still need to be added before duty is calculated - which is exactly why this calculator asks for shipping and insurance as their own fields rather than assuming they're already baked into the unit cost.

Why Landed Cost Matters for Dropshippers, Wholesalers, and E-Commerce Sellers

For anyone reselling imported goods, landed cost isn't a curiosity - it's the number a selling price has to clear for the business to make money. Pricing off the supplier's unit cost alone, without VAT, duty, and fees folded in, is one of the more common ways a seemingly profitable product turns out to be a loss once the full bill arrives.

It matters just as much for a one-off personal purchase: the same gap between sticker price and landed cost is exactly what shows up as a surprise charge from a courier after a package has already shipped. The calculator above is built to answer both questions with the same numbers - what a shipment actually costs before it ships, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions About Landed Cost

What exactly is included in the landed cost this tool calculates?

The purchase value (unit cost × quantity), freight, cargo insurance, import VAT, customs duty, any regime-specific handling or processing fee, and any brokerage, port handling, or last-mile fees you enter - added up into one total and one per-unit figure.

How is this different from a calculator where I enter my own duty rate and VAT rate?

Most landed cost calculators ask you to already know your duty rate and VAT rate before you can use them. This one computes both from the destination country's actual rules - IOSS thresholds, CUSMA/USMCA tiers, Remessa Conforme discounts, and so on - based on the destination, origin, and product category you select.

Why doesn't this calculator pre-fill brokerage, port handling, or delivery fees?

Because we don't have a verified, sourced figure for what your specific broker or carrier charges - and a made-up default (like a flat "$80 brokerage fee") would be a guess dressed up as data. Leave those fields blank, or enter your own quoted figures if you have them.

Does this work for a single consumer order, or only bulk/wholesale shipments?

Both - quantity defaults to 1, so a single item works exactly like a normal import cost calculation. Add a real quantity and unit cost for a bulk shipment, and the per-unit cost and margin fields become genuinely useful for pricing decisions.

How is landed cost different from just checking the customs duty rate?

The duty rate is one line in a much longer bill. VAT (often 15-27% depending on destination), freight, insurance, handling fees, and brokerage all stack on top - a product with a 0% duty rate can still cost 25% more landed than its sticker price once VAT and fees are added.

Rates and calculation logic reviewed 17 August 2026. See the customs duty hub for the full, sourced rules behind each destination.