Discount Calculator
Sale price after discounts
This free Discount Calculator tells you what you will actually pay at the till, step by step. Enter the original price and the discount percentage and it shows the reduced price and exactly how much you saved. It also handles the two wrinkles that catch shoppers out: stacked discounts, where a further percentage comes off the already-reduced price during extra-off sales events, and sales tax added after the discount, which is how most shops and online checkouts apply it. Each stage is shown separately, so you can follow the price down and check a receipt line by line.
Stacked discounts deserve special care because they never simply add up. Twenty percent off followed by another ten percent off is not thirty percent off: the second discount applies to the reduced price, giving twenty eight percent off in total. Shops advertise stacked offers precisely because they sound bigger than they are, and this calculator keeps the arithmetic honest. One more real-world note: the discount is normally taken before tax, so tax is charged on the discounted price, which slightly increases your saving compared with taxing the full amount. Everything is calculated locally in your browser, and no figures are uploaded or kept.
How to use
- Enter the item's original price before any discount.
- Type the main discount percentage from the sale tag.
- Add a second discount percentage if the offer stacks.
- Add your sales tax rate if you want the final till price.
- Click Calculate final price and check each step of the result.
Frequently asked questions
Why is 20% plus 10% off not 30% off?
Because the second percentage is taken from the reduced price, not the original. One hundred reduced by twenty percent is eighty; ten percent of eighty is eight, leaving seventy two — a total saving of twenty eight percent. Percentages in sequence multiply; they do not add.
Is tax charged before or after a discount?
In most places, after. Sales tax is generally calculated on the amount you actually pay for the item, so a store discount reduces the taxable amount too. Manufacturer coupons can be treated differently in some regions, but ordinary sale pricing follows the discounted price.
How do I work out the discount percentage from two prices?
Subtract the sale price from the original, divide by the original, and multiply by one hundred. A drop from eighty to sixty is twenty divided by eighty, which is twenty five percent. The Percentage Calculator on this site has a dedicated section for exactly that question.
What does a 100 percent discount do?
It reduces the price to zero before tax, as expected. The calculator accepts anything from zero to one hundred percent and refuses larger values, since a discount above the full price would imply the shop paying you, which sale tags never quite mean.