Business startup cost calculator: what it takes to get going and stay going
By Admin Team
Written and maintained by the MaleBay editorial team. Every offer listed is independently reviewed before it appears, and pages are revised as products and terms change.
Published August 17, 2026
Most businesses do not fail because setup cost too much. They fail because nobody budgeted for the months between launching and earning. The number that matters is not what it costs to start — it is what it costs to survive until revenue arrives.
Business startup cost calculator: what it takes to get going and stay going
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
Total needed before revenue
$3,300
- One-off costs
- $1,500
- Running costs (6 months)
- $1,800
- Runway on available funds
- 12 months
- Surplus
- $1,700
Funds cover the plan at these assumptions.
A planning estimate. Most first budgets miss categories rather than misjudge amounts.
Runway is the real answer
Runway is how many months the money lasts once setup is paid for. If it is shorter than your honest estimate of time-to-revenue, the plan needs changing before it starts, not after.
Costs first budgets usually miss
- Payment processing fees, which are a percentage of every sale
- Tax set aside from the first pound of revenue, not the last
- Software subscriptions that individually look trivial and collectively do not
- Your own time, which is free to the budget and expensive to you
- The second and third month of marketing, before anything is working
Common questions
- How long should I assume before revenue?
- Longer than feels right. Most people underestimate it substantially. If you have no evidence, doubling your instinct is a more useful planning assumption than trusting it.
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