KDP's Own Royalty Calculator vs Book Math Tools: What Each Covers
KDP's Printing Cost & Royalty Calculator and its Cover Calculator are the authority on your book's numbers. The calculators here cover the planning questions those two don't, with the working shown. Use both, in that order.
Published October 17, 2026. Figures are calculated from KDP's published rates when the page is built.
KDP publishes two calculators of its own: a Printing Cost & Royalty Calculator and a cover calculator with a template generator, which its paperback cover help page points to. This site is a set of free calculators for the same kind of sums. They overlap, they differ in scope, and for the final word on any figure KDP's own tools win. What follows is where each one stops, so you know which to open for which question.
What KDP's calculators say about themselves
The help page for the royalty calculator describes it in one sentence: it shows "estimated printing costs and royalties for paperback and hardcover books." It then adds two limits:
Reminder: This calculator is intended for paperback and hardcover books only.
Note: This calculator doesn't include Expanded Distribution estimates. If your book is eligible and enrolled in Expanded Distribution, the minimum list price will be different.
The calculator page itself says printing cost depends on the Amazon marketplace the book was ordered from, the page count, the ink type and the trim size, that "Bleed settings and cover finish don't affect printing cost", and that you can use it "to determine your paperback and hardcover printing cost, minimum list price, and royalties." It closes with:
Figures generated by this tool are for estimation purposes only.
The cover calculator asks for binding type (paperback or hardcover), cover type for hardcovers (hardcover or dust jacket), interior type (black & white, premium color, standard color), paper (white, cream or groundwood), reading direction (left to right or right to left), measurement units (inches or millimetres), trim size and page count. It then calculates the dimensions and lets you download a template as a PDF and PNG "to be used as a guide layer in your image editing software."
KDP also shows your estimated paperback royalty during title setup, in the Royalty & Pricing section of the Paperback Rights & Pricing tab, according to its paperback royalty page. Of everything mentioned here, only that figure is tied to your actual book setup.
Side by side
A ✓ or ✗ in the KDP column is based only on what KDP's calculator pages and help pages state. Where they don't describe a feature either way, the cell says so instead of guessing. The column for this site is based on the calculators as they are today.
| Feature | KDP's calculators | Book Math Tools | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paperback printing cost | ✓ | ✓ | Ours: Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .ie, .com.be only. |
| Paperback royalty and minimum list price | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Hardcover printing cost and royalty | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Expanded Distribution royalty | ✗ | ✓ | KDP: "doesn't include Expanded Distribution estimates". |
| List price needed for a target royalty | Not described | ✓ | |
| Kindle ebook royalty (35% and 70%) | ✗ | ✓ | KDP's calculator is for paperback and hardcover only. |
| Ebook prices and royalty in all 9 Kindle currencies | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Delivery cost and the file size where 35% beats 70% | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Kindle Unlimited (KENP) earnings | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Break-even copies, ACoS and price-change tests | Not described | ✓ | |
| Formula and worked examples shown with the result | Not described | ✓ | |
| Paperback cover dimensions | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Cover dimensions in millimetres | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Cover canvas in pixels at 300 DPI | Not described | ✓ | |
| Hardcover and dust jacket cover dimensions | ✓ | ✗ | |
| Groundwood paper in the cover calculator | ✓ | ✗ | |
| Right-to-left reading direction | ✓ | ✗ | |
| Downloadable cover template (PDF and PNG) | ✓ | ✗ | |
| Uses KDP's current live figures | ✓ | ✗ | Ours: rates read from KDP help pages, last checked October 16, 2026. |
The ebook rows are marked ✗ for KDP only in the sense that its calculator states it is for print books. KDP's help pages do explain ebook royalties in detail, and the guide to the 70% royalty band draws on them.
Where KDP's tools are the better choice
Use KDP's calculators for anything that will be printed or charged. Specifically:
- The final cover file. The template marks the safe areas, the spine and the barcode margin for your exact book, and it covers hardcovers, dust jackets and groundwood paper, which our cover calculator doesn't.
- Marketplaces we don't cover. Our print calculators handle Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .ie, .com.be. KDP's calculator works from whichever marketplace the book is ordered from.
- After a rate change. KDP's tools use its current figures. Ours are read from KDP's help pages and were last checked on October 16, 2026. If KDP changes a rate between our checks, its calculator will be right first.
Where these calculators add something
KDP's calculators answer "what will this book cost and earn?" for print. Planning a book raises other questions, and that is what the calculators here are for:
- Ebooks. The Kindle ebook royalty calculator compares 35% and 70% with the delivery cost and VAT taken off. The price checker covers all 9 Kindle currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, INR, JPY, BRL, MXN), including the four stores where 70% needs KDP Select. The delivery cost calculator finds the file size above which 35% pays more.
- Expanded Distribution. The paperback royalty calculator shows the 40% Expanded Distribution royalty next to the Amazon royalty, and the list price needed for a target royalty.
- Kindle Unlimited. Pages read become money in the KENP calculator, which also shows how far a borrower has to read to match a sale.
- Business questions. How many copies to earn back production costs (break-even), the highest ad bid that still pays (break-even ACoS), and how many sales a price cut needs (price change).
- The working. The calculator pages show their formulas and worked examples, so you can see why a number is what it is, and the printing cost calculator lays out the cost tables for each ink and trim class.
- Pixels. Design apps ask for a canvas in pixels, so the cover size calculator gives it at 300 DPI alongside inches and millimetres.
Checking one against the other
Here is a book to try in both. A 300-page, 6" x 9" paperback, black ink on white paper, at $14.99 on Amazon.com. Our calculators give:
- Printing cost $4.60, royalty $4.39 at 60%, minimum list price $9.20.
- Expanded Distribution royalty $1.40, a figure KDP's calculator leaves out.
- Full cover 12.926" x 9.25", a 3,878 x 2,775 pixel canvas.
The same author's $4.99 ebook with a 2 MB file would earn $3.28 at 70% on Amazon.com, a figure outside the scope of KDP's print calculator. If the print figures ever disagree with KDP's calculator for the same inputs, KDP's figure is the one you will be paid on. Please tell us so we can correct ours.
A sensible way to use both
- While planning, use the calculators here to compare formats, trims and prices, estimate page count from word count, and test whether ads or a price change can pay off. They are quick to run many times and show the arithmetic.
- Before ordering the cover, run your final page count through KDP's cover calculator and give your designer its template.
- Before publishing, confirm printing cost, minimum price and royalty in KDP's calculator and in the pricing section of title setup.
The confirming step takes a few minutes and catches the two mistakes that cost the most: a cover built for the wrong page count, and a price that sits on the wrong side of a royalty threshold. The second is easy to underestimate; on Amazon.com a paperback at $9.98 is paid at 50% and one at $9.99 at 60%, as the $9.99 paperback price guide works through. A one-cent typo in title setup can cost you ten percentage points on every copy.