Contractor Dealer-Fee Cost Calculator
A dealer fee is charged on revenue, but it comes out of profit. Enter your real numbers and see what a financing program's fee actually costs your business.
Dealer fee per project: —
Gross profit per project (before fee): —
Gross profit per project (after fee): —
Share of gross profit consumed by the fee: —
Monthly dealer-fee cost: —
Annual dealer-fee cost: —
Revenue needed to recover the annual cost: —
Or, in jobs: —
Education only. Actual fees, margins, and program terms vary by provider, plan, and applicant. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere — the math runs in your browser.
How to read these numbers
The line that surprises most contractors is share of gross profit consumed. A 6% fee on a $20,000 job is $1,200 — which sounds survivable against $20,000 of revenue. But at a 15% margin, that job only carries $3,000 of gross profit, so the fee just took 40% of it. The same fee percentage lands completely differently at a 45% service margin, which is one reason emergency-service companies tolerate dealer fees that would wreck a large-project contractor.
That's the tradeoff the fee buys: same-day approvals, value-heavy promotional programs, and the lender paying you directly. On the right jobs, that's worth real money. On the wrong jobs, it's pure margin leak. If your answer is "some jobs yes, some jobs no" — that's exactly what the hybrid financing stack result exists for.
What to do with your number
Take your annual dealer-fee cost into the 60-second Fit Check — it weighs fee sensitivity against your job timing, deposits, and funding-flow needs and tells you which model fits. Or read the full margin math in Dealer Fees vs. No Dealer Fees.