Print on Demand Profit Per Shirt (2026)

You sold a shirt for $25 and feel rich until the base cost, the marketplace cut, and the ad click all take their share. So what's actually left per shirt?

The short answer

Where the $25 actually goes

Say it's a standard tee: $9.50 goes to the printer for blank + print, about $1.92 to marketplace fees. You keep $13.57. That's before ads — and here's the thing, ads are the whole game. A $5 customer acquisition cost turns that $13.57 into $8.57 real quick.

Hoodies look better because the dollars are bigger even when the percentage is similar. Fifty hoodie sales beat a hundred tee sales on profit, with half the customer service headaches. Real talk: if you're only selling tees under $22, you're working for the printer.

Run your own numbers

Plug your price and base cost into the Print on Demand Profit Calculator — it shows profit, margin, per-100-sales income, and your break-even price in seconds.

Is POD even worth it?

Depends on your designs and traffic. Read is print on demand worth it before you upload 200 designs nobody searches for.