Work out a sale price, the discount amount, or the original price before a markdown. Enter any two of original price, percent off, final price, and how much you save — the calculator fills in the rest. Add an optional sales tax to see the final price at the register.
The percent off calculator is the fastest way to work out how much you will pay after a discount and how much money you keep in your pocket. Enter the original price and the percent off, and it instantly shows the final price and the amount you save. But it does far more than that: because all four quantities are linked by a single relationship, you can enter any two of them and the calculator solves for the other two. That means you can also find the original price from a sale price and its discount, or figure out what percentage discount a deal really represents. There is even an optional sales-tax field so you can see the true amount you will hand over at the register.
Whether you are standing in a store deciding if a "75% off" sticker is as good as it looks, comparing two offers, or checking a receipt, this tool turns messy mental arithmetic into a single tap. It handles clean round numbers and awkward decimals alike, and it works for price increases too — just enter a negative percentage.
A percent off is a discount expressed as a percentage of the original price. When a shop advertises "20% off," it means the price is reduced by 20% of whatever the item originally cost. The word "percent" literally means "per hundred," so 20% is the same as 20 out of every 100 dollars, or the fraction 0.20. A percent-off discount always scales with the price: 20% off a $10 item is $2, while 20% off a $1,000 item is $200. That is why the same headline percentage can feel trivial on a cheap item and enormous on an expensive one.
The bigger the percentage, the more you save and the lower your final price. At 100% off, the item is free; at 50% off, you pay half; at 10% off, you pay 90% of the original. Understanding this simple scaling is the key to spotting a genuinely good deal.
Two short formulas do all the work. If P is the original price and r is the percent off, then the amount you save (S) and the final price (F) are:
savings = original price × (percent off ÷ 100)
final price = original price − savings
You can combine them into a single step — final price = original price × (1 − percent off ÷ 100) — but keeping the savings separate makes it easy to see exactly how much the discount is worth. Rearranging these relationships lets you solve for whichever value you are missing:
This calculator applies whichever version fits the two values you type in, so you never have to remember which formula to use.
Imagine a television with an original price of $5,000 in a sale offering 75% off. The calculation is:
So you would pay $1,250 and save $3,750. That is the default example loaded into the calculator — press Calculate to see it, then change any values to match your own purchase. If you instead knew that the TV was on sale for $1,250 and that this was 75% off, you could type those two numbers and the calculator would tell you the original price was $5,000. Every combination works the same way.
One of the most useful things this calculator does is run the math in reverse. Suppose you see an item marked down from $80 to $60 but the sign does not say what percentage that is. Enter $80 as the original price and $60 as the final price, and the calculator reports a 25% discount and $20 in savings. The underlying arithmetic is percent off = (savings ÷ original price) × 100 = ($20 ÷ $80) × 100 = 25%. This is handy for comparing deals that are advertised in different ways — one store might say "$20 off" while another says "25% off," and on an $80 item those are exactly the same offer.
Sometimes you know the sale price and the discount but want to know the original ("list") price — perhaps to judge how deep the markdown really is, or to check a store's claim. If a jacket costs $60 after a 25% discount, the original price was $60 ÷ (1 − 0.25) = $60 ÷ 0.75 = $80. It is a common mistake to simply add 25% to the sale price (that would give $75, which is wrong), because the 25% was taken off the larger original figure, not the smaller sale figure. The calculator handles this correctly every time, so you never fall into that trap.
The advertised sale price is rarely the amount you actually pay, because sales tax is usually added at the register. The optional sales-tax field lets you see the real total. If your $1,250 television is taxed at 8%, the tax adds $1,250 × 0.08 = $100, for a final total of $1,350. Sales tax is applied to the discounted price, not the original price, so the discount lowers your tax bill as well — another quiet benefit of a good sale. Enter your local rate to see both the tax amount and the grand total.
It is worth clearing up a common source of confusion. "Percent off" describes a proportional reduction in price and always refers back to the original amount. It is different from "percentage points," which describe the arithmetic gap between two percentages. If a savings rate rises from 2% to 3%, that is a one percentage point increase but a 50% relative increase. When shopping, "percent off" always means the proportional discount on the price, which is exactly what this calculator computes.
Stores sometimes offer a discount on top of a discount — say, "20% off, then an extra 20% off at checkout." It is tempting to add those together and assume you are getting 40% off, but that is not how stacked discounts work. Each discount applies to the price left after the previous one. On a $100 item, the first 20% brings it to $80, and the second 20% takes 20% off $80 (which is $16), leaving $64. That is a total discount of 36%, not 40%. To work out a stacked discount with this calculator, run it twice: calculate the first sale price, then enter that as the new original price for the second discount. The gap between the intuitive answer and the real one grows with each extra layer, so it always pays to check.
It helps to build an intuition for how much of the original price survives each discount, so you can judge a deal at a glance before reaching for the calculator. Because the final price is always the original price multiplied by (1 − percent off ÷ 100), each discount corresponds to a simple "fraction you still pay":
So a $200 jacket at 25% off costs $150, and the same jacket at 75% off costs just $50. Once you see the discount as "the fraction you still pay," estimating the final price in your head becomes much easier, and the calculator is there to give you the exact figure — including any awkward cents — whenever you need it.
You do not always have a calculator in hand, so a few tricks help. To take 10% off, just move the decimal point one place to the left ($45 becomes $4.50 off). For 20%, do that and double it. For 5%, take 10% and halve it. To find 15% off, add the 10% and 5% amounts together. And a 50% discount is simply half the price. These shortcuts get you a quick estimate; when the numbers matter — at the register, on a big purchase, or when tax is involved — use this calculator for the precise result. Combining a rough mental estimate with an exact calculation is also a good habit for catching mistakes, whether the error is yours or a mispriced tag.
Multiply the original price by the percentage (as a decimal) to get the savings, then subtract that from the original price. For 75% off $5,000: savings = $5,000 × 0.75 = $3,750, so the final price is $5,000 − $3,750 = $1,250.
Subtract the sale price from the original price to get the savings, divide by the original price, and multiply by 100. From $80 down to $60: ($80 − $60) ÷ $80 × 100 = 25% off.
Divide the final price by (1 − the discount as a decimal). A $60 item at 25% off had an original price of $60 ÷ 0.75 = $80. Do not just add the percentage back to the sale price — that gives the wrong answer.
No. Each discount applies to the reduced price, so two 20% discounts give a total of 36% off, not 40%. Calculate them one at a time.
Only if you want it to. Leave the sales-tax field blank to ignore tax, or enter your local rate to see the tax amount and the final price including tax, calculated on the discounted price.
Yes. Enter a negative percent off — for example, −10 — and the calculator will add 10% to the price, showing the higher amount and the extra cost.
This Percent Off Calculator is provided for general informational and educational purposes. Results are rounded for display. Always confirm final prices, discounts, and tax at the point of sale, as store policies and local tax rates vary.