Free Discount Calculator for Courses & Digital Products

By Jeff Cobb.  Last Updated on September 9, 2026
Discount Calculator | Learning Revolution
Free Tool — by Jeff Cobb

Discount Calculator

Work out a discounted price and savings instantly. If you sell a course or membership, switch modes to see what that discount actually costs you once fees and refunds are already eating into the sale — a 20% coupon can quietly wipe out half your margin.

The flat processor fee doesn’t shrink with the discount — it’s charged per transaction regardless of price — so it takes a bigger bite out of a discounted sale, percentage-wise, than a full-price one.
Discounted price
$0
You save
$0
Effective discount
0%

How to calculate a discount

Working out a discount is simple arithmetic — the part that trips people up is knowing which direction to divide.

Discounted price = Original price × (1 − Discount %)
Amount saved = Original price − Discounted price

For a flat dollar-off discount, just subtract it directly: Discounted price = Original price − Discount amount. To express any discount as an effective percentage (useful when comparing a “$50 off” deal to a “15% off” deal), divide the amount saved by the original price.

Finding the original price from a sale price (reverse discount)

If you know the sale price and the discount percentage and need to find what it was before the discount, divide instead of multiplying: Original price = Sale price ÷ (1 − Discount %). A $240 sale price at 20% off means the original price was $240 ÷ 0.8 = $300.

What a discount actually costs a course or membership seller

Here’s the part most discount calculators skip entirely: a percentage-off coupon doesn’t just reduce your revenue by that percentage — it reduces your profit by a much larger percentage, because your fixed and percentage-based costs don’t shrink at the same rate the price does.

Example

A $297 course on a 0%-fee platform, through Stripe (2.9% + $0.30), with a 5% refund rate nets about $278 profit per sale — a 93.6% margin. Run a 20% off coupon and the price drops to $237.60. Cost per sale barely changes (the flat $0.30 stays fixed, and refunds/processing scale down only slightly), so profit drops to about $219 — a 21% drop in profit from a 20% discount, which sounds proportional but isn’t quite, and gets worse the deeper the discount goes.

This is why “just run a bigger discount to drive more volume” isn’t automatically a good trade. The digital-seller mode above shows exactly how much extra volume a discount needs to generate before it’s actually a net win over just selling at full price.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate 20% off a price?
Multiply the original price by 0.8 (which is 1 minus 0.20). A $150 item at 20% off is $150 × 0.8 = $120. The amount saved is the original price minus the new price: $30.
How do I find the original price from a discounted price?
Divide the sale price by (1 minus the discount as a decimal). A $76 sale price at 5% off means the original price was $76 ÷ 0.95 = $80. This is a common point of confusion — people often incorrectly multiply instead of divide.
Do payment processing fees apply to the discounted price or the original price?
The discounted price — processors charge based on the actual amount charged to the customer’s card, not your list price. This is exactly why the flat per-transaction fee (like Stripe’s $0.30) takes a bigger percentage bite out of a discounted sale than a full-price one.
What’s a good discount to offer without hurting profit too much?
There’s no universal number — it depends on your margin. A business running a 90%+ gross margin (typical for a course or membership) can absorb a 15-20% discount and stay solidly profitable. A business running a 30% margin has almost no room for a discount that size before profit disappears entirely. Use the digital-seller mode above with your real numbers rather than a rule of thumb.
Does a discount count as a cost or a reduction in revenue?
Accounting-wise, it’s a reduction in revenue (a “contra-revenue” line), not a cost. Practically, for pricing decisions, it’s easiest to think of it simply as a lower sales price — which is exactly how this calculator treats it, running the same fee and margin math you’d apply to any price point.
Know your baseline margin first

The Gross Profit Calculator finds your real margin before fees and refunds — plug that into this tool for a more accurate discount impact.

Find my margin → See all free tools

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Head shot of Learning Revolution Founder Jeff Cobb

Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution

Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.

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