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Calculates

Discount Calculator

Calculate sale prices, savings and the original price before discount.

Calculated & verified for mathematical accuracy·Reviewed by the Calculates Editorial Team
What do you need to find?

Take a discount off a price

The ticket price before anything is taken off.

0 – 100

The percentage taken off the ticket price.

Sale price

₹1,800

You save ₹600 on an original price of ₹2,400.

Original price
₹2,400
Sale price
₹1,800
You save
₹600
Discount
25%

Working

2400 − (25% × 2400) = 2400 − 600 = 1800
You pay this share of the original
75%
Saving measured against what you paid
33.33%

The second figure is always the larger of the two because it divides the same saving by the smaller sale price. It answers how much more the item would have cost you without the discount.

About this calculator

Work out what you will actually pay in a sale, how much you are really saving, and whether an advertised "was" price stands up. The three modes solve the same relationship for whichever piece you are missing: the sale price, the original price behind a discounted one, or the percentage that was taken off between two prices you already know.

How to use this calculator

  1. Pick what you are missing

    Choose the mode that matches the unknown. Applying a discount, reversing one to find the pre-sale price, and deducing the rate from two prices are three separate calculations, not one with different labels.

  2. Enter the two figures you do have

    The fields relabel themselves for each mode so there is no ambiguity about which price goes where. Enter prices before any sales tax if you want the saving on the ticket price alone.

  3. Read the working

    Each answer shows its substituted arithmetic, which matters most in reverse mode where the correct operation is a division that is easy to get wrong in your head.

  4. Check what you saved against what you paid

    The panel gives the saving as a share of the original price and as a share of the sale price. The second number is always the larger and is the one that tells you how much extra the item would have cost you.

Formula

1. Sale price = Original × (1 − Discount / 100) Amount saved = Original − Sale price 2. Original price = Sale price ÷ (1 − Discount / 100) 3. Discount % = ((Original − Sale price) ÷ Original) × 100
  • Original price is the ticket price before anything is taken off; sale price is what actually leaves your wallet.
  • Mode 2 divides, and that is the whole point of it. Taking the same percentage off the discounted price gives a smaller, wrong answer because the discount was calculated against the larger original.
  • A 100% discount makes the item free, which is why mode 2 cannot run at that rate: every possible original price produces a sale price of zero, so the original is unrecoverable.
  • Mode 3 needs an original price above zero, since the result is expressed as a share of it.
  • A negative result in mode 3 means the second price is higher than the first, so what you have found is a price rise rather than a discount.
  • The saving as a share of the sale price uses the sale price as the denominator and will always exceed the discount percentage — half off is a 50% discount but a 100% saving on what you paid.

Worked example

Inputs

  • Original price: ₹2,400
  • Discount: 25%

Calculation

Amount saved = 2400 × 25 / 100 = 600 Sale price = 2400 − 600 = 1,800 You pay 75% of the original price. Reversing it (mode 2): Original = 1800 ÷ (1 − 25/100) = 1800 ÷ 0.75 = 2,400 ✓ The wrong way round: 1800 − 25% = 1350, which is not 2400. Saving measured against what you paid: 600 ÷ 1800 × 100 = 33.33%

A 25% discount on ₹2,400 saves ₹600 and leaves ₹1,800 to pay. Note that the ₹600 saved is 25% of the original but 33.33% of the price you actually paid — the item would have cost you a third more without the sale.

What the result means

  • The sale price is what you hand over at the till before any sales tax. Where GST is charged on the discounted value, apply the tax to this figure rather than to the ticket price.
  • The amount saved is only a genuine saving if you were going to buy the item anyway. Spending ₹1,800 to save ₹600 still leaves you ₹1,800 poorer than not buying.
  • The percentage you pay is the quickest sanity check on a claim. If the sticker says 60% off, you should be paying 40% of the original, and anything else means the "was" price is not what it appears.
  • The saving measured against the sale price answers a different question: how much more the item would have cost you. It is always the bigger of the two figures, which is why advertising tends to prefer it.

Related calculations

  • Apply two discounts one after the other to confirm they do not add: 20% then 10% leaves you paying 72% of the original, an effective 28% off rather than 30%.
  • Use reverse mode on an advertised "was" price to check whether the original was ever real, then compare against what the item sells for elsewhere.
  • Work out the sale price first, then run it through the GST calculator to get the final amount including tax on the discounted value.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find the original price from a discounted one?

Divide the price you paid by one minus the discount as a decimal. An item bought for ₹1,800 after 25% off was originally ₹1,800 ÷ 0.75 = ₹2,400. The instinct to add 25% back is wrong and gives ₹2,250, because that 25% would be calculated on the smaller discounted figure rather than on the original the shop actually discounted from.

Do two discounts add together?

No, and assuming they do consistently overstates the saving. A 20% discount followed by an extra 10% off at the till leaves you paying 0.8 × 0.9 = 0.72 of the original, which is 28% off rather than 30%. The second reduction applies only to what remains after the first. The gap widens with larger discounts: 50% then 50% is 75% off, not 100%.

Why is my saving a bigger percentage of the sale price than the discount?

Because the two percentages use different denominators. A 50% discount on ₹1,000 saves ₹500 against an original of ₹1,000, but that same ₹500 measured against the ₹500 you actually paid is 100%. Both statements are true and describe the same transaction. Retail advertising favours the larger framing, so check which base a claimed saving is using.

Is GST charged before or after the discount?

After, provided the discount appears on the invoice at the time of sale. Tax is levied on the transaction value, so a ₹2,400 item at 25% off is taxed on ₹1,800. Discounts handed out later only reduce the taxable value if they were agreed in advance and can be tied to specific invoices, which is why post-sale cashback usually does not change the GST already charged.

What discount does "buy one get one free" actually represent?

Exactly 50%, because you are paying for two units and receiving them for the price of one. "Buy two get one free" is a shallower 33.33%, since three units cost you what two would have. Converting these offers into a straight percentage is the only way to compare them against a conventional sale, and the answer is frequently less generous than the phrasing suggests.

How do I check whether an advertised "was" price is genuine?

Take the current price and the claimed discount, run them through the reverse mode, and see whether the original it produces matches the advertised "was" figure. If a shop claims 70% off at ₹450, the original must have been ₹1,500 — and if the item has never sold anywhere near that, the reference price is inflated. Comparing against listings on other sites is the practical follow-up.

Can a discount be more than 100%?

Not meaningfully, which is why this calculator caps it. At exactly 100% the item is free, and anything beyond that would require the shop to pay you for taking it. What does exist is cashback exceeding the purchase price on promotional offers, but that is a separate payment rather than a discount on the item, and the price itself still bottoms out at zero.

Should I compare discounts by percentage or by the money saved?

By the money, when you are deciding what to buy. A 40% discount on a ₹500 accessory saves ₹200, while 10% off a ₹20,000 appliance saves ₹2,000, yet the smaller percentage is worth ten times more in your pocket. Percentages are the right tool for judging whether a particular price is good relative to its usual level, and absolute amounts are the right tool for allocating a fixed budget.

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