Steam Break-Even Calculator
Enter your budget and price. See what you keep per copy, the copies needed to break even, and the wishlists you'd need to do it in launch week.
Break-even revenue: $50K after Valve's 30% cut, VAT, refunds and discounts. Most games sell the bulk of their lifetime copies after week one, in sales and bundles.
What goes into break-even
The calculator takes your price through the same waterfall as our fee calculator: average lifetime discount, regional pricing, VAT, refunds and Valve's tiered share. What's left per copy divides your budget.
The review estimate uses the median of about 35 sales per Steam review. The wishlist number is what it would take to break even in launch week alone; most games reach break-even over months of sales instead.
Questions
▸How many copies does an indie game need to break even?
Divide your total budget by what you keep per copy. At $14.99 with typical discounts, VAT, refunds and Valve's 30%, an indie keeps about $7–8 per copy, so a $50,000 game needs roughly 6,500–7,000 copies.
▸How much of the price does a developer keep on Steam?
After VAT, refunds, regional pricing, discounts and Valve's 30% cut, usually 45–55% of the US list price.
▸How many wishlists do I need?
A typical launch sells 0.10–0.15 times its wishlists in the first week. Divide the copies you need by that rate.
Sources: Valve revenue share tiers · Wishlist conversion (GameDiscoverCo)
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