Commission calculator

The commission and the part of it you keep

Most commission calculators stop at the first multiplication: a sale, a rate, a figure. On a great many real arrangements that figure is not what anybody is paid. The commission is earned on the sale and then divided, with a brokerage, an agency or a house taking a share of it before the rest reaches the person who made the sale.

This page does both steps and labels them separately. The commission on the sale is one number, your share of that commission is another, and what the house keeps is the third. The two halves of the split always add up to the whole commission, because the page works out one of them and subtracts, rather than rounding both and hoping.

Underneath sits the figure worth comparing offers on: what reaches you as a percentage of the value of the thing sold. A generous headline rate with a poor split can pay less than a modest rate you keep all of, and that single percentage is the only fair way to line the two up.

A run of sales, not just one

The question behind most commission arithmetic is annual rather than per deal. The page takes a count of similar sales and multiplies through to the total.

It multiplies the rounded per-sale figures rather than applying the rate to the combined value. The second way is not the same arithmetic: a commission rounded once and then multiplied is not always a commission worked out on the total, and the gap grows with the number of deals. Multiplying what each deal actually paid is the closer description of what happens when deals settle one at a time.

What this does not model

Sliding scales are the big absence. Plenty of real schemes pay one rate up to a threshold and a better one above it, or lift the whole rate retroactively once a target is met. That needs a table of tiers rather than a single rate, and inventing one would mean inventing somebody's contract.

Also absent: draws against future commission, clawbacks when a sale unwinds, caps, accelerators, team overrides, and the difference between a commission earned and a commission paid, which can be a quarter apart. And tax. Commission is almost always income, taxed as income, and often withheld at an unfamiliar rate; the paycheck calculator is where that question belongs.

Common questions

What should I put in the split field?

The share you keep, not the share the brokerage takes. A seventy-thirty split in your favour is seventy. If nothing is shared, leave it at a hundred and the whole commission comes to you.

Is the commission worked out on the sale price or on something else?

On whatever you type into the sale field. For property that is usually the agreed sale price; for other trades it can be the net invoice, the gross including tax, or the profit. Contracts differ on this more than on the rate itself, and it is worth reading yours before trusting any calculator, including this one.

Why is my share of the sale value lower than the commission rate?

Because the split has already come out of it. A two and a half per cent commission with seventy per cent kept is one and three quarters per cent of the sale reaching you. That is the number to quote when comparing two arrangements.

Does a higher rate always pay better?

No, and this is why the page prints the effective figure. Three per cent on a fifty-fifty split pays less than two per cent kept whole. The headline rate is the part that gets advertised and the split is the part that decides.

Is anything I type stored?

No. The calculation happens on the server as part of rendering the page, nothing is written down, and the access log for this site drops the query string precisely so that the numbers you enter are never recorded.