How much is really left when you sell R$ 100 on Mercado Livre

Selling a R$ 100 product on Mercado Livre, 300 grams, 12% commission category, Classic listing, and green reputation, you keep R$ 26.45 before Ads. The other R$ 73.55 goes to commission (R$ 12.00), shipping cost (R$ 14.95), Simples tax at 6% (R$ 6.00), product cost (R$ 40.00), and packaging (R$ 0.60). That’s a 26.5% margin—and it’s not profit yet.

I put this number right at the start because almost every conversation I have with sellers starts off wrong. People look at their statement, see "R$ 100" in the sales column, subtract the product cost in their head, and think they made R$ 60. Then the month ends and the money isn’t there.

#What Mercado Livre charges you, and in what order

There are two main charges, and they work very differently.

The commission is a percentage of the sale price. In the Classic listing, it’s usually between 10% and 14%, depending on the category. In Premium, which gives buyers interest-free installments, add about 5 percentage points. There’s no single Mercado Livre commission—it depends on your category, so always check yours before doing the math.

The shipping cost is where most people get lost, because it’s not a percentage or a fixed value. It’s a cross table: your package’s weight on one side, the product’s price range on the other. A 300-gram product sold for R$ 100 pays R$ 14.95 shipping. The same 300-gram product sold for R$ 79 pays R$ 12.95. And at R$ 60, it pays R$ 8.15.

Since March 2026, the old fixed fee of just over R$ 6 for products under R$ 79 no longer exists as a single value. Now there’s a per-unit cost that varies by weight. In practice, light and cheap products pay about the same or a bit more than before, and heavy low-value products got a shock.

#Why does a 21% price cut take away 58% of your margin?

Because almost none of your costs follow the price. In that R$ 100 sale, only the commission and tax are percentages, and together they add up to 18%. The cost of the product and shipping add up to R$ 55.55 out of the R$ 73.55 in costs, and they don’t change when you give a discount. In practice, every R$ 1 discount cuts R$ 0.82 from your margin, not the roughly 26 cents that a 26.5% margin suggests. Dropping from R$ 100 to R$ 79 cuts R$ 21 from the price and R$ 15.22 from what’s left. By the rule, it would be R$ 17.22, but in the R$ 79 range, shipping also drops R$ 2, which helps a bit.

See the same product at 300 grams, cost of R$ 40, 12% commission, 6% tax:

Notice what happens at R$ 49. The product is still the same, the cost is still R$ 40, and the sale turns into a R$ 8.57 loss. No amount of volume can fix that. Every unit sold takes money out of your cash flow.

The reverse is also true: raising the price brings back margin faster than it seems, because the R$ 55.55 in costs stay the same while revenue goes up. The only exception is at R$ 79, where the shipping cost changes bracket and jumps. That jump has an article just about it.

In practice. A home goods seller sent me his list: 41 active listings under R$ 60. Matching price, weight, and real cost, 11 were selling at a loss, and two were among the store’s top sellers. He thought those two were his bestsellers. They were the leak.

#What almost everyone forgets to include in the math

Packaging. It may seem silly to add R$ 0.60 per order, but in a thousand orders that’s R$ 600 no one accounted for.

Tax. If you’re on Simples Nacional, the effective rate applies to revenue, not what’s left. Selling cheaper doesn’t shrink the proportional bite.

Paid listing. This is the toughest, because it doesn’t show up on the order statement. The Product Ads expense comes separately, at the end of the period, and gets lost in the total. If you invest 10% of revenue in ads, the 26.5% margin on that R$ 100 product drops to 16.5%. If you invest 15%, it drops to 11.5%.

Returns. The marketplace refunds commission and shipping, but the margin from that sale is gone, and if the reason is assigned to you, you also pay for return shipping. A store with a 4% return rate loses much more than 4% of its profit.

#Why product margin isn’t store profit

Because you kept R$ 26.45 from that sale, but warehouse rent, your helper’s salary, the electricity bill, and your own withdrawal aren’t included.

Margin per order answers a specific question: “does this particular sale pay for itself?” Store profit answers another: “did the whole month pay for itself?” Mixing the two brings surprises both ways, and the shock is usually on the downside.

The sequence I recommend is simple. First, make sure no SKU sells at a loss. Then check which SKUs have high enough margin to handle paid ads. Only then discuss if the store as a whole is making a profit.

#How to do this math without a spreadsheet

You can do it by hand, and it’s worth doing once just to feel the weight of each line. The problem is, it changes every week: the marketplace updates tables, the supplier changes the cost, you run a promotion.

If you want to test a price before changing your listing, the Milewa profit calculator already applies the current commission and shipping tables from Mercado Livre and Shopee, and shows how much is left at each price range.

And if you want to see the math done with your real orders, instead of an example, that’s what Milewa does: it pulls orders from your account, applies actual fees, shipping, tax, and ADS, and shows the margin for each order and each SKU without you typing anything.