·3 min read·Guides
What Is a Good ROAS? Benchmarks for Meta, Google, Amazon and Etsy
A good ROAS is any ROAS above your break-even ROAS. How to work yours out from your margin, plus published median ROAS for Google, Meta and Amazon ads and what Etsy sellers need to clear fees.
A good ROAS is one above your break-even ROAS, which is 1 divided by your gross margin: 2x at a 50% margin, 3.33x at 30%, 5x at 20%. Below it, every sale from ads loses money however high the number looks. For context, published medians are about 3.3x for Google Ads and 2.2x for Meta ads (Varos, 2025) and about 3.1x for Amazon ads (Triple Whale, 2025 to 2026), but a median says nothing about whether your own margin makes that profitable.
Do it now, free and without uploading anything: ROAS Calculator, Break-Even ROAS Calculator, Profit Margin Calculator, CPC Calculator.
Every ad platform shows ROAS, and every ad platform makes it look good. Whether 3x is good or terrible depends almost entirely on one number the platform does not know: your margin.
Good means above break-even
ROAS is revenue from ads divided by what you spent on them. A 3x ROAS means every $1 of ads brought in $3 of sales. But sales are not profit: you still pay for the product, shipping and fees. The ROAS at which the ad spend exactly eats your gross profit is the break-even ROAS:
| Gross margin | Break-even ROAS | So a "good" ROAS is |
|---|---|---|
| 70% | 1.43x | above 1.43x |
| 50% | 2x | above 2x |
| 40% | 2.5x | above 2.5x |
| 30% | 3.33x | above 3.33x |
| 20% | 5x | above 5x |
Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ gross margin. A clothing brand with a 60% margin can grow profitably at 2x; a reseller with a 20% margin loses money at 4x.
Work out your own in the break-even ROAS calculator, then check each campaign in the ROAS calculator, which shows the profit after ads when you add your margin.
Published benchmarks, and how to read them
These are medians across many advertisers. Half of accounts do better, half worse, and none of them have your margins.
| Platform | Median ROAS | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | about 3.3x | Varos data (2025), summarised by Superscale |
| Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) | about 2.2x | Varos data (2025), summarised by Superscale |
| Amazon ads | about 3.1x (ACoS about 31 to 34%) | Triple Whale, Aug 2025 to Jul 2026 |
| Etsy ads | No independent benchmark published | Use your break-even ROAS after fees |
Two things move ROAS more than the platform does:
- Campaign type. Search and shopping campaigns reach people already looking to buy and report higher ROAS than display or video. Retargeting reports higher ROAS than prospecting because it reaches people who already visited.
- Industry. The same dataset shows some industries above 4x on Meta and others below 1.5x.
Platform by platform
Meta ads. Meta counts a sale if it happens within 7 days of a click or 1 day of a view by default, so it often reports more sales than your store sees. A prospecting campaign near your break-even ROAS can still be worth it if those customers buy again; a retargeting campaign far above it may be taking credit for sales that would have happened anyway.
Google Ads. Branded search usually shows the best ROAS because people searching your name were already coming. Judge growth on non-brand search and Shopping.
Amazon ads. Amazon reports ACoS, which is the inverse: ACoS = 1 ÷ ROAS. Your break-even ACoS is your margin before ad costs, after Amazon's referral and fulfilment fees.
Etsy ads. Etsy charges a transaction fee and a payment-processing fee on every sale, so your margin after fees is lower than your product margin. Calculate break-even ROAS from the margin after fees. Etsy's offsite ads also take a fee from sales they bring in.
A worked example
You sell a $40 product. It costs $14 to make and ship, and fees take $3, so your gross profit is $23 and your margin is 57.5%.
- Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ 0.575 = 1.74x
- At a 2.5x ROAS, $100 of ads brings $250 of sales, which carries $143.75 of gross profit, so $43.75 profit after the ads.
- At a 1.5x ROAS, the same $100 brings $150 of sales and $86.25 of gross profit: a $13.75 loss.
What to do with your number
- Work out your break-even ROAS from your real margin, including fees and shipping.
- Compare each campaign against it, not against the platform median.
- Check ROAS in your store or analytics as well as in the ad platform, because each counts sales differently.
- Prefer profit to ROAS when deciding where to spend more. A campaign at 2.5x with high volume can earn more profit than one at 6x that cannot spend more.