How much should I charge for a cake?

1. Know what the cake actually costs you

You can't price a cake until you know what it costs to make. In Bakeboost, that starts with your recipes.

• Add your ingredients with what you pay for them, then build your recipes from those ingredients. Bakeboost works out the cost per serving (or per gram, or per piece) automatically.
• Don't forget your packaging and supplies — boxes, boards, ribbon, dowels. They add up, and they're part of the cost.

See Recipes, ingredients and supplies for the full walkthrough.

2. Add your time — it's not free

The mistake almost every new baker makes is pricing only the ingredients. A cake that costs £8 in ingredients but takes you four hours to decorate is not an £8 cake.

• Decide on an hourly rate for your labour and be honest about how long a cake really takes — baking, decorating, and the cleanup.
• Add a share of your overheads — electricity, rent, insurance, the tools that wear out. These are real costs even when they don't show up in a recipe.

3. Work out how many it serves

For tiered and larger cakes, price is often driven by how many people it feeds. Use the built-in Cake Servings guide to get an accurate serving count for any size, shape and portion style — then you can think in terms of a price per serving, which is how most custom-cake pricing works.

4. Set your price with a markup

Once Bakeboost knows a product's cost, you add a markup to reach your selling price — a fixed amount or a percentage on top of cost. A common starting point for baked goods is a food-cost of around 25–35% (i.e. selling at roughly 3–4× your ingredient cost), but your right number depends on your market and how much hand-work goes in.

Set the markup on the product form; Bakeboost fills in the retail price. See Products and your catalogue.

5. Let the AI Pricing Advisor sanity-check it

If you're not sure, the AI Pricing Advisor (a Pro feature) suggests a price range worked out from that product's real cost, your labour, and what you've actually charged before — with a plain-English reason.

You can also click ✨ AI suggest a price right on the product form and apply the suggestion in one tap.

See AI Pricing Advisor for how it works.

A worked example

A single-tier 8″ celebration cake:

• Ingredients + box/board: £9
• Your time: 2.5 hours at £15/hour = £37.50
• Overheads share: £3.50
• Total cost: £50
• Add a margin so you're actually making money → price around £85–£95

Notice how the ingredients were the smallest part. That's normal for custom cakes — you are selling skill and time, not flour.

Good to know

• Cover cost, time and overheads — then add profit. A price that only covers ingredients is a loss.
• Charge for your hours. Decorating time is the biggest hidden cost.
• Think per serving for big cakes. The servings guide turns size into a number you can price against.
• Let the AI Advisor check you. It grounds a suggestion in your real cost and history.
• Review your prices as costs rise. Re-cost your recipes when ingredient prices change.

Last updated August 4, 2026