Free VAT Calculator That Knows Your Product's Rate
Our free VAT calculator adds or removes VAT at the right rate for what you sell, from e-books to children's clothes, in the UK and across Europe.
Most VAT calculators ask for one thing: the rate. Type 20%, get an answer. That’s fine until you sell a book to a customer in France, a children’s coat to a family in Ireland, or a SaaS subscription to a company in Germany. Then the rate is the hard part, and it’s the one thing those calculators leave to you.
So we built a free VAT calculator that works the rate out for you.
TL;DR
- It picks the rate. Choose your customer’s country and what you sell, and the calculator applies that country’s rate for that product.
- Add or remove VAT. Start from a price before VAT, or back the VAT out of a price that already includes it.
- Business customers too. Add a VAT number and it’s checked with VIES (EU) or for format (UK). If the reverse charge applies, you see it.
- Free, no signup. Sensible defaults mean you can get an answer by typing a price.
| You sell | To a consumer in | VAT rate |
|---|---|---|
| A printed book | United Kingdom | 0% |
| A printed book | France | 5.5% |
| An e-book | Germany | 7% |
| Children’s clothing | Ireland | 0% |
| Children’s clothing | Germany | 19% |
| SaaS | Denmark | 25% |
Try it
The calculator below is set to an e-book sold from the UK to France. Change any field:
VAT · France · E-books
£5.50VAT to add to the price
5.5% VAT
- Price excluding VAT£100.00
- France VAT5.5%£5.50≈ €6.59 to file, at the ECB rate 1 EUR = 0.8346 GBP
- Total including VAT£105.50
Selling to customers in France? Get VAT right on every order.
GoodVat charges the right rate for each product and country at checkout, registers you where you need to be and files the returns.
A real person replies within one business day · or send us a message
Rates and rules from GoodVat’s tax engine, kept current as they change. A calculation tool, not tax advice. Open the full VAT calculator.
Simple by default
Open the VAT calculator and it already has an answer for you. It guesses where you’re based from your location, starts with a customer in your own country (or the UK), prices in your currency, and assumes standard-rated goods. Change the price and you have a result.
Everything else is optional, and it’s only there when you need it.
The rate depends on what you sell
Every country has a standard rate and a set of reduced rates, and they don’t line up. Books are zero-rated in the UK, 5.5% in France and 25% in Denmark. Children’s clothing is zero-rated in the UK and Ireland and fully taxed almost everywhere else. Groceries, medicines, magazines, event tickets and passenger transport all have their own rules.
That’s why the calculator asks what you’re selling and doesn’t make you look up a rate. Search by the words you’d use, like “ebook”, “kids clothes” or “online course”, and it finds the category, even with a typo. The categories are granular. Printed books, e-books and audiobooks are three different things, because the UK zero-rates the first two and charges 20% on the third. The list is long, and it keeps growing as we add the categories sellers ask us about.
Pick a category and the result tells you what it covers and how it’s usually taxed, so you know why you got the rate you got.
Adding and removing VAT
Most people searching for a VAT calculator want one of two things:
- Add VAT. You know your price before tax and want the price to charge. £100 at 20% is £120.
- Remove VAT. You have a price that includes VAT and want to know what’s in it. Divide by 1 plus the rate: £120 ÷ 1.2 = £100, so the VAT is £20. Taking 20% off £120 gives £96, which is wrong.
You don’t pick an operation. You just say whether your price already includes VAT, and the result reads as a sum either way: price, plus or minus VAT, equals the answer.
For the sales that aren’t simple
The calculator handles the cases that trip up sellers:
- Business customers. Sell to a VAT-registered business in another EU country and the reverse charge usually applies: no VAT on your invoice. Add the customer’s VAT number and the calculator checks it live with VIES, or checks the format of a UK number. An invalid number means VAT is charged, and the calculator says so.
- Other currencies. Price in dollars and sell to France, and the VAT is still due in euros. The result shows the amount to file at the official ECB or HMRC exchange rate.
- Zero VAT, explained. When no VAT is due, the calculator tells you why: reverse charge, zero-rated, exempt, or import VAT the customer pays at the border.
Where this comes from
The calculator runs on the same tax engine as GoodVat’s tax calculation API. That engine works out VAT, GST and sales tax at checkout for businesses selling across borders. The rates and rules are kept current as countries change them. For a quick comparison, the calculator page has a table of VAT rates by country for the categories that most often catch sellers out.
The country guides go deeper on each market, like selling to France, selling to Germany and UK VAT for online sellers. If you sell to consumers in several EU countries, read about the One-Stop Shop, which lets you report all of that VAT in one return.
FAQ
Is the GoodVat VAT calculator free?
Yes. It’s free, with no signup and no limit on calculations. It’s a calculation tool, not tax advice.
Which countries does the VAT calculator cover?
The UK and most of Europe, including the EU countries where online sellers make most of their cross-border sales. The customer’s country list in the calculator always shows what’s covered today, and we add countries as their data is ready.
How does the calculator know the rate for my product?
You pick a product category, like printed books, e-books, children’s clothing, groceries or SaaS. Each category carries every country’s rate for it, so the calculator applies the rate for that product in your customer’s country instead of assuming the standard rate.
Can it remove VAT from a price?
Yes. Choose Price includes VAT and enter the price. The calculator divides it by 1 plus the rate and shows the price before VAT and the VAT inside it.
Does it handle business customers and the reverse charge?
Yes. Mark the customer as a business and add their VAT number. EU numbers are checked live with VIES and UK numbers are checked for format, and when the reverse charge applies the calculator shows zero VAT and tells you what to put on the invoice.