How to Price Essential Oils: Rebottled, With a Calculator

To price a 15 ml bottle of lavender oil you add up its full cost first: the bulk oil and bottles by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the label and box, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bottle costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 15 ml bottle of lavender oil that costs $2.44 to make, a 70% margin after 3% fees means $9.02, rounded up to $10.00. The oil is most of the cost, and it varies widely by oil: a kilo of rose costs a hundred times a kilo of orange. Shops pay about half of retail, so the retail price has to leave room for it. In the example below, a Pennsylvania apothecary prices rebottled lavender oil for its shop and others.

The short version

• Full cost = oil and bottles a bottle + your time + label and box + overhead.
• Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
• Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
• Price each oil from its own bulk price: they differ a hundredfold.
• A kilo fills about 74 bottles of 15 ml.
• Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
• TaroStack keeps bulk oils and bottles counted and costs every batch. More below.

What goes into a bottle's cost

How long the oils keep is in essential oils shelf life, and the apothecary's lip balm margins in lip balm profit margin.

An example: a 15 ml bottle

Elder & Oak Apothecary, the made-up apothecary in Pennsylvania I use in these examples, rebottles a kilo of lavender oil into 74 bottles of 15 ml:

At a 70% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $2.44 ÷ 0.27 = $9.02, so $10.00. At $10.00 a bottle, each leaves $7.26. It sells in its own shop at $12.00, which leaves $9.20. Other shops pay $6.00, which leaves $3.38 a bottle. What goes on an oil's label is in cosmetic labeling requirements.

Get the calculator

Download the essential oil price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's supplies, amounts and costs, the bottles it makes, the hands-on minutes, the label and box and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

The calculator prices one oil on paper. Twenty oils with bulk prices from $25 to $3,000 a kilo, a harvest that doubles lavender's price, and bottles that went up a nickel change what each bottle really cost.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps bulk oils and bottles counted, and costs every batch.

Supplies in their units. Bulk oil bought by the kilo is used by the milliliter, and bottles by the each.

Designs as recipes. Each oil is a recipe of its supplies, so a batch takes them off stock and is costed from what they cost, and good and rejected pieces are recorded.

Reordering. Supplies come up on a reorder list in days of cover, worked out from how fast they're used.

Recipes, units, costing and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for essential oils?

Work out the full cost, bulk oil, the bottle, bottling time, the label and overhead, then divide by 1 minus your margin and fee rate; the example's $2.44 bottle prices at $10.00 for a 70% margin.

How do you calculate the cost of essential oils?

Add the batch's supplies and divide by the bottles it makes, then add your time, the label and box and a share of overhead.

What is a good profit margin on bottles?

Set your own target after fees; the example uses 70%, because shops pay half of retail.

What is the wholesale price for essential oils?

Most often about half of retail; in the example, $6.00 against $12.00, which leaves $3.38 a bottle.