The factory sends a quote you like. The unit price is right, the samples looked good, and then you get to the line that says MOQ 1,000 per color. You sell maybe 500 a month across two colors, so the math in your head says it's fine, until you add the deposit, the freight, the duty, and the four months that stock will sit before the last unit ships. That's the moment an MOQ calculator earns its keep, because what you really need to know is how much the minimum costs you over a year and how much cash it locks up.

I ran into that on almost every reorder while we were building a $3M ARR Amazon FBA and Shopify brand. Most of the time I answered it with a rough spreadsheet and a gut feeling. This roundup covers the tools I'd actually use now, starting with the free SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator, then other free EOQ calculators, a spreadsheet template, and the inventory planning apps that handle supplier minimums inside their purchase orders.

A quick product note before the list, so nothing below reads as a promise. SupplyAutomate does not connect to Shopify, Amazon, or WooCommerce, and it does not pull your sales or inventory to size orders for you. The MOQ calculator is a free page where you type in your own numbers, and the SupplyAutomate app calculates landed cost from the supplier invoices, packing lists, freight bills, and customs entries you upload, so the unit cost you feed into the calculator is the one you actually paid.

TL;DR

Start with the free SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator to get your EOQ, compare it to the factory MOQ, and see the annual cost of ordering the minimum.
Use WareStat when you want MOQ, case pack, and price break math in one free calculator, or Omni Calculator for a quick EOQ with no extras.
A Google Sheets or Excel template works fine for a handful of SKUs if you keep the unit cost honest.
Inventory Planner, Prediko, and Cin7 Core store supplier MOQs and check purchase order quantities against them, which helps once you're reordering a full catalog.
Whatever tool you pick, put landed cost per unit into the unit cost field. The factory price alone understates what the minimum ties up.

What An MOQ Calculator Should Tell You

An MOQ on its own is just a number the factory gives you. To judge it, you compare it with your economic order quantity (EOQ), which is the order size that balances the cost of placing orders against the cost of holding stock. The formula is the square root of (2 × annual demand × cost per order ÷ holding cost per unit per year), and holding cost per unit is usually your unit cost times an annual holding percentage that covers storage, insurance, capital, and the risk the stock goes stale.

Here's a made-up example so the numbers have something to stand on. Say a SKU sells 6,000 units a year, each order costs you $150 in freight coordination, inspection, and admin, the landed unit cost is $16, and you use a 25% holding rate, which gives $4 per unit per year. The EOQ comes out to about 671 units, and ordering at that size costs roughly $2,683 a year in ordering plus holding cost. If the factory minimum is 1,000 units, you place six orders a year instead of nine, and the same two costs add up to $2,900, so the MOQ premium is about $217 a year.

In this example the premium is smaller than you might expect, because ordering less often claws some of the cost back. The bigger hit for a small brand is cash. At 1,000 units your average inventory is worth about $8,000 in this example, compared with about $5,368 at the EOQ, and that difference is money you can't spend on the next PO or on ads. A good MOQ calculator shows you both numbers so you can decide whether the price break on the bigger order is worth it, and so you walk into the supplier conversation with an actual figure.

What To Look For In An MOQ Calculator

Most calculators do the EOQ math correctly, since the formula is old and simple. The differences are in what else they show you and how much of your own data you have to type in. These are the things I'd check:

EOQ and MOQ side by side: the calculator should take the supplier minimum as an input and tell you whether your EOQ clears it.
The cost of the minimum: a dollar figure for what ordering at the MOQ costs per year compared with ordering at the EOQ.
Cash in stock: average inventory value at the order size you choose, since that's what hits your bank balance.
Case packs and price breaks: carton multiples and tiered pricing change the real answer once you leave the textbook model.
Honest unit cost: a place to enter landed cost per unit, with freight and duty included.
Scale: whether it handles one SKU at a time or a whole catalog with supplier MOQs saved on each product.

MOQ Calculator Tools At A Glance

Tool	Type	What it does with MOQ	Good fit
SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator	Free web calculator	Compares EOQ to the supplier MOQ and prices the annual premium	A quick check on one SKU before a PO
WareStat EOQ calculator	Free web calculator	Applies MOQ, case pack, and max order limits, plus a price break mode and batch SKUs	Price break and carton math
Omni Calculator EOQ	Free web calculator	Returns the EOQ only, so you compare it to the MOQ yourself	A fast EOQ number
Google Sheets or Excel template	DIY spreadsheet	Whatever you build into it	A few SKUs with stable costs
Inventory Planner	Forecasting and replenishment software	Stores vendor MOQs and rounds purchase order quantities up to them	Larger catalogs that need forecasts
Prediko	Shopify inventory planning app	Flags lines where the MOQ isn't met and scales the PO to it	Shopify brands buying from several suppliers
Cin7 Core	Inventory management software	Stores a minimum to order per supplier, with MOQ-aware reorder suggestions in an add-on	Multi-channel inventory teams

1. SupplyAutomate MOQ Calculator

The SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator is the free tool we built for exactly the factory quote moment above. You enter unit cost, annual demand, cost per order, an annual holding cost percentage, and the supplier MOQ if you have one, and it returns the EOQ, the recommended order quantity, orders per year, the order cycle in days, cash in stock, and annual ordering and holding cost. When the MOQ is higher than the EOQ, it shows the MOQ premium, which is the full annual cost gap between ordering at the minimum and ordering at the EOQ.

The page also prints the formulas it uses, so you can check the math, and it warns you when something looks off. If the supplier minimum is bigger than a full year of demand, or the order cycle stretches past six months, it tells you to look at shelf life, cash flow, and obsolescence before you commit. It's a single SKU calculator, it doesn't read your sales history, and it leaves volume discounts and freight breakpoints outside the model, so pair it with the lead time calculator and the landed cost calculator when those matter.

Where the SupplyAutomate app comes in is the unit cost field. If you upload the supplier invoice, freight bill, and customs entry for your last shipment, the app works out landed cost per unit from factory price, freight, duty, and samples, and you can export it to CSV or Excel. That's the number to type into the calculator, and it's explained in more detail in landed cost per unit and what is landed cost.

2. WareStat EOQ Calculator

The WareStat EOQ calculator is the most complete free option I found for the messy parts of supplier terms. Its page describes three modes: EOQ with constraints, a quantity discount optimizer, and a batch mode for multiple SKUs. In the constraints mode you can add a minimum order quantity, a case pack or order multiple, a maximum order quantity, and optional lead time and safety stock, and it shows the theoretical EOQ next to a practical quantity after the constraints are applied.

The quantity discount mode is the one I'd use when a factory offers tiered pricing. You enter each price break as a minimum quantity and unit price, and it checks the total annual cost at each tier, which is a good way to see whether the cheaper unit price on a bigger order really pays for the extra stock. The batch mode takes rows pasted from a spreadsheet with SKU, demand, order cost, unit cost, holding rate, MOQ, and lot multiple, and lets you download the results as CSV. The page says it needs no sign-up and runs locally.

3. Omni Calculator EOQ Calculator

Omni Calculator's EOQ calculator is the plain version. It asks for yearly demand, order cost, and yearly holding cost per unit, and it gives you the EOQ along with a written explanation of the formula and a worked example. If you already know your holding cost per unit and just want the number, it's quick.

It doesn't ask for a supplier minimum, so the MOQ comparison is up to you. Once you have the EOQ, compare it with the factory MOQ yourself, and if the minimum is higher, run both quantities through the total cost formula to see the gap. That extra step is the reason I'd usually start with a calculator that prices the premium for you.

4. A Google Sheets Or Excel MOQ Template

A spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Excel is still how a lot of sellers do this, and for a few SKUs it works well. Put annual demand, cost per order, landed unit cost, holding rate, and MOQ in columns, then add a holding cost per unit column (unit cost × holding rate) and an EOQ column with something like =SQRT(2*B2*C2/F2). Total annual cost at any order quantity Q is (demand/Q)*order cost + (Q/2)*holding cost per unit, so you can calculate it at the EOQ and at the MOQ and subtract.

The weak spot is the unit cost column. Freight and duty change from shipment to shipment, and a template that still has last spring's rate in it will understate what the stock costs to carry. If you go this route, update the landed cost after every shipment, using a method like the one in allocate freight cost across multiple SKUs, and keep a column for the date the cost was last checked. SupplyAutomate also has a free landed cost spreadsheet template you can use to keep that number current.

5. Inventory Planner

Inventory Planner is forecasting and replenishment software. Its homepage pitches it as a way to know how much inventory you need and when, based on a forecast of what you'll sell. MOQ handling lives in the vendor settings, where the help center says you can set minimums per variant, per product, or for the whole purchase order.

The way it treats MOQ is worth understanding before you rely on it. According to its help docs, the replenishment recommendation itself ignores the MOQ, and when you add a variant to a purchase order below its minimum, Inventory Planner rounds the quantity up. There's a "To order" column that shows the adjusted quantity after vendor rules, an "Above MOQ" filter, and for a PO-level minimum, a warning with a "Scale to Quantity" option. It's useful once you're managing a large catalog, though it's answering "how much do I need" from a forecast, so the cost of the minimum is still something you check separately.

6. Prediko

Prediko is a Shopify app for inventory planning, demand forecasting, and purchase orders. Its help article on MOQ setup describes setting a minimum on each supplier as either a quantity or an order value, with product-level overrides in the Buy Table.

When you build a PO, Prediko shows an "MOQ Met" column for each line, and a bulk "Scale to MOQ" action raises the order to the minimum, spreading units across SKUs in proportion to what you were already ordering. That's handy when a factory sets a minimum across a whole product or order, and you need to decide which colors or sizes absorb the extra units. Like the other planning apps, it enforces the minimum, so you'd still use a calculator to decide whether the minimum is worth accepting. If you're comparing Shopify planning apps more broadly, the Stocky alternatives and Cogsy alternatives guides cover the wider field.

7. Cin7 Core

Cin7 describes itself as inventory management software that connects sales channels, suppliers, and warehouses. In Cin7 Core, each product's Suppliers tab has a Minimum to order field alongside lead time, safety days, and reorder quantity, and the help docs say it prevents you from ordering less than that quantity from the supplier.

For reorder suggestions that build the minimum in, Cin7 points to its ForesightAI add-on. The ForesightAI MOQ article says it raises the suggested quantity to meet the MOQ and then rounds up to the supplier's packing quantity, and Cin7's Smart reorder docs note the add-on needs at least six months of sales history in Cin7 Core. It makes the most sense if you already need a full inventory system across channels and warehouses. For a single yes or no on a factory minimum, it's a lot of setup.

How To Run An MOQ Check Before The Next PO

This is the routine I'd follow on any reorder where the minimum feels heavy. It takes a few minutes per SKU once you have the inputs, and the inputs are the part worth getting right.

Pull your annual demand from your own sales reports, and adjust it for seasonality or a launch you know is coming.
Calculate landed cost per unit from the last shipment's invoice, freight bill, and customs entry. The import duty from China guide covers the duty piece.
Estimate your cost per order (freight coordination, inspection, customs filing, and your own time) and pick a holding rate you can defend.
Run the numbers through the MOQ calculator and note the EOQ, the MOQ premium, and the cash in stock at the minimum.
Check the timing against your reorder point and safety stock, then take the premium into the supplier conversation if you want to negotiate.

Payment terms change the cash side of this too. A 30/70 deposit means you fund part of a big MOQ months before the goods arrive, and your Incoterm decides which freight costs land in your unit cost. If you want help with the purchase order itself, creating a purchase order walks through the fields factories expect.

Which MOQ Calculator Should You Use?

If you're looking at one factory quote and want to know what the minimum costs you, start with the SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator or WareStat. Both are free and take the supplier minimum as an input, and WareStat adds price breaks and case packs if your factory quotes in tiers or cartons. Omni is fine for a quick EOQ when you'll do the comparison yourself.

If you have a small catalog and like seeing every formula, a spreadsheet is a reasonable home, as long as the landed cost column gets updated after each shipment. Once you're reordering dozens of SKUs from several suppliers, Inventory Planner, Prediko, or Cin7 Core can store each supplier's minimum and adjust PO quantities for you, and you can keep using a calculator for the bigger decisions. For the cost side across your catalog, SupplyAutomate's Shopify ERP and Amazon FBA ERP pages explain how the document upload and landed cost workflow fits alongside the tools you already sell through.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is An MOQ Calculator?

An MOQ calculator compares a supplier's minimum order quantity with your economic order quantity and shows what ordering at the minimum costs you. The better ones put a dollar figure on the annual premium and on the cash tied up in stock. The SupplyAutomate MOQ calculator is free and shows both.

What Is The Difference Between MOQ And EOQ?

MOQ is the smallest order a supplier will accept. EOQ is the order size that keeps your combined ordering and holding cost lowest, based on your demand and costs. When the MOQ is above the EOQ, you either accept the extra cost, negotiate the minimum down, or look for a supplier with terms that fit your volume.

How Do I Calculate The Cost Of A Supplier MOQ?

Work out total annual cost at the MOQ and at the EOQ using (demand ÷ order quantity × cost per order) + (order quantity ÷ 2 × holding cost per unit), then subtract. That difference is the MOQ premium. Also compare average inventory value at both sizes, since the cash difference is often the bigger concern for a small brand.

Should I Use Landed Cost Or Factory Price As The Unit Cost?

Use landed cost per unit, meaning factory price plus freight, duty, and samples allocated to each unit. Holding cost is a percentage of unit cost, so leaving out freight and duty understates what the stock costs to carry. See how to calculate Amazon FBA landed cost or landed cost for Shopify for the channel-specific version.

Can SupplyAutomate Pull My Sales Data To Size Orders?

No. SupplyAutomate does not connect to Shopify, Amazon, or WooCommerce and does not sync sales, orders, or inventory. You enter annual demand yourself in the free calculator, and the app calculates landed cost from the documents you upload, with CSV or Excel export.

Do Inventory Planning Apps Calculate MOQ Automatically?

Apps like Inventory Planner, Prediko, and Cin7 Core store supplier minimums and, according to their help docs, flag, block, or round up purchase order quantities that fall below them. That keeps the PO within the supplier's terms. Deciding whether a minimum is worth accepting is still a cost question, which is where a calculator helps.

Where I Would Start

If I were looking at a factory quote today, I'd open the MOQ calculator, type in last shipment's landed cost and a realistic year of demand, and see what the minimum really costs before replying to the supplier. Most of the time the answer is a manageable number, and sometimes it's a clear sign to negotiate or split the order across fewer colors. Either way it's a better conversation than guessing.

If the hard part for you is keeping landed cost current across shipments, that's the job the SupplyAutomate app does from your uploaded documents, and you can see the plans on pricing. If you'd rather hand off supplier follow-ups, freight, and paperwork entirely, the Outsourced Supply Chain Manager option covers that.