Clearance Percentage Calculator
The phrase clearance percentage means two different things depending on who is asking. A shopper holding a price tag wants to know how deep the discount really is: what percentage came off, how many dollars that saves, and what share of the original price is still being paid. A retailer holding a stock report wants the opposite view: what share of the goods that came in has cleared, and how much is still sitting there. This calculator does both jobs in two tabs, because answering only one of them is how most tools on this keyword fail somebody.
Cleared includes units sold, returned to vendors, discarded, or otherwise removed. Use figures from the same timeframe.
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Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Two questions share one name. The Discount tab divides a price cut by the original price; the Inventory tab divides cleared units by received units. Pick the tab that matches the paper in your hand.
- The shopper result always shows three numbers together: discount percent, dollars saved, and the share of the original price you still pay. The pay share is the fastest sanity check on a banner claim.
- Inventory verdict bands in this tool: under 50% is slow, 50% to under 80% is healthy, and 80% or more means the stock is nearly gone. Timing decides whether any of those is actually good news.
- If a clearance price is higher than the original, the tool says so plainly instead of printing a negative discount and moving on.
Which tab do you need?
If you are holding a price tag, you need the Discount tab. It verifies the percentage a store advertises and converts it into the two figures that matter at the till: dollars saved and the share of the original price still being paid. This is the check that catches the quiet mismatches, a 50% off banner over a tag that is really 44% off, or a was price that was never the selling price for long.
If you are holding a stock report, you need the Inventory tab. It measures how much of what came in has cleared during an event or a season, and how many units are left. Retail planners usually call this the sell-through rate, and it drives the next decision: hold the price, deepen the markdown, promote harder, or stop worrying because the stock is nearly gone. If you track that figure week by week rather than at a single point, the average weekly sell through calculator smooths the same idea across a season. Shoppers checking one specific advertised percentage against a known tag can also cross-check with the 15 discount calculator style tools for fixed percentages, but for an arbitrary before and after price, the Discount tab here is the direct route.
The two formulas, stated plainly
Both formulas divide by the starting amount, which is the part people most often get wrong by hand. A discount is measured against the original price, not against the sale price: $30 off a $120 item is 25%, not the 33% you would get by dividing by the $90 you pay. The inventory formula follows the same logic used across retail references for sell-through, as set out in guides such as Toolio's sell-through rate guide: units sold or cleared over units received, over a defined window. The window matters as much as the division. A 75% rate in the final week of a season and a 75% rate in the first week describe completely different stock positions.
Worked example for shoppers: $89.99 down to $44.99
The Discount tab is pre-filled with this tag, and every figure below is what it returns.
| Figure | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Discount percentage | (89.99 - 44.99) / 89.99 x 100 | 50.01% |
| Amount saved | 89.99 - 44.99 | $45.00 |
| Share you pay | 44.99 / 89.99 x 100 | 49.99% of original |
The near miss is instructive. A genuine half price tag on $89.99 would read $45.00, and this tag at $44.99 is actually a hair better than half price, which is why the discount prints as 50.01% rather than a tidy 50%. Stores price to the cent below round numbers on purpose, and this calculator reports the honest figure instead of rounding your saving away. For a rounder check, $120 down to $30 is exactly 75.00% off with $90.00 saved, the kind of tag where the banner and the math agree. If the offer is a fixed percentage rather than a tagged price, the 20 discount calculator covers that fixed rate case directly.
Worked example for retailers: 500 units in, 375 cleared
The Inventory tab is pre-filled with this event, and every figure below is what it returns.
| Figure | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Clearance percentage | 375 / 500 x 100 | 75.00% |
| Remaining stock | 500 - 375 | 125 units |
| Verdict | 50% to under 80% band | Healthy clearance: on track Healthy |
How to act on the bands depends on the calendar, a point retail coverage of sell-through makes repeatedly, including the Institute for Supply Management's monthly metric on sell-through rate. Fashion buyers interviewed there describe roughly 60 to 70 percent sell-through before the sale period as the working target, which sits inside this tool's healthy band. At 75% with time still to run, the usual move is to hold the markdown and let the remaining 125 units sell at the current depth. At 75% on the final weekend, the same number argues for one deeper cut, because leftover seasonal stock costs storage and ties up cash. At over 80% very early, ask the opposite question: whether the discount was deeper than it needed to be, a margin question rather than a clearance one.
The stacked discount trap
Clearance events love a second percentage: an extra 20% off already reduced prices. The percentages do not add, because the second one applies to the already reduced price. Take $100 cut by 50% to $50, then take the extra 20% off $50 and the final price is $40. The combined discount is 60%, not 70%. The same stacking logic, worked through in the reference table of the Calculator Park discount calculator guide, shows 30% followed by a further 40% landing at 58% off in total. To verify a stacked offer with this tool, enter the true original price and the final price you will actually pay in the Discount tab. One pass with the real endpoints always beats adding the advertised percentages.
What competing calculators miss
This keyword is split down the middle, and most tools serve only one half of it. The best known inventory side rival computes a clearance or sell-through percentage and nothing else, so a shopper verifying a tag gets no help at all. Generic percent off tools run the other way: they take a percentage as an input and compute a sale price, which assumes you already believe the store's number instead of letting you check it from the two prices on the tag.
Miss 1: one meaning only. This page serves both readings of the term, with the tab labels saying plainly which audience each is for.
Miss 2: no pay share for shoppers. Discount percent alone hides the complement. Showing that you pay 49.99% of the original next to the 50.01% discount makes banner claims checkable at a glance.
Miss 3: no verdict or remainder for retailers. A bare percentage leaves the two operational numbers uncomputed: units remaining, and whether the rate is slow, healthy, or nearly done. Both are in the result here.
One honest limit: the inventory mode counts units, not value. Clearing 75% of units by selling the cheap sizes first is a different business result from clearing 75% of the stock's value, and this tool does not weight by price.
Frequently Asked Questions
Subtract the clearance price from the original price, divide by the original price, and multiply by 100. An item marked down from $89.99 to $44.99 gives (89.99 - 44.99) / 89.99 x 100 = 50.01% off, a saving of $45.00, and you pay 49.99% of the original price.
It is the share of received stock that has cleared during a period: units cleared divided by units received, times 100. Clearing 375 of 500 units is a 75.00% clearance rate with 125 units remaining. In retail planning the same figure is usually called the sell-through rate.
Enter the original price and the actual price at the till in the Discount tab. If a store advertises 50% off $89.99, the clearance price should be about $45.00. If the tag says $44.99, the true discount is 50.01%, and if it says $49.99, the true discount is only about 44.45% whatever the banner claims.
It depends on timing. During an event, 50% to just under 80% reads as healthy progress in this calculator, 80% and above means the stock is nearly gone, and under 50% late in an event signals pricing or promotion that is not moving the goods. Early in a long season, a lower figure can be perfectly normal, which is why the same percentage means different things in week one and week six.
In the Inventory tab, yes, as the tool defines it: cleared means units sold, returned to vendors, discarded, or otherwise removed from saleable stock. That is broader than a pure sell-through count of units sold, so be consistent. Pick one definition for a whole event or your percentages will not be comparable week to week.
Yes, and the calculator flags it rather than hiding it. If the clearance price is higher than the original price you entered, the result reports how far above the original the price sits, which usually means a mistyped original price, a tag from a different item, or a so called sale that is not one.
They multiply, they do not add. An extra 20% off a price already cut by 50% takes 20% off the reduced price: $100 becomes $50, then $40, a combined discount of 60%, not 70%. To check a stacked offer with this calculator, run it in two passes: first the original and first sale price, then use that sale price as the original against the final price, or compute the final price and run it against the true original in one pass.
No. Clearance percentage measures a reduction from the original selling price, or the share of stock cleared. Margin measures profit as a share of the selling price, and markup measures profit as a share of cost. A 50% clearance discount on an item with a healthy original margin can still leave a small profit, which is exactly why retailers track both numbers separately.
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References
- Toolio, "Sell-Through Rate: Formula, Benchmarks and Strategies to Improve It." The retail planning reference for the units cleared over units received formula used in the Inventory tab. Toolio: Sell-through rate formula and benchmarks. Accessed October 2026.
- Institute for Supply Management, "The Monthly Metric: Sell-Through Rate," Inside Supply Management Magazine (2024). Source for the roughly 60 to 70 percent pre-sale sell-through target quoted from fashion retail practice. ISM: The monthly metric, sell-through rate. Accessed October 2026.
- Competera, "Sell-through rate: what it is, how to calculate it, and what it tells retailers." Covers the received inventory denominator, replenishment handling, and low rate causes. Competera: Sell-through rate explained. Accessed October 2026.
- Calculator Park, "Discount Calculator: Sale Price, Percent Off and Original Price." Worked treatment of stacked discounts multiplying rather than adding, including the clearance markdown examples. Calculator Park: Discount calculator guide. Accessed October 2026.
- Vendee Pro, "What is Sell-Through Rate? Retail Sell-Through Explained." Covers weekly versus to-date sell-through and why healthy rates depend on category, season, and time on the floor. Vendee Pro: What is sell-through rate. Accessed October 2026.