Breakeven ROAS with COD and RTO: judge ads on real profit
Breakeven ROAS is the return on ad spend you need just to not lose money once GST, cash-on-delivery fees, returned orders (RTO), shipping and gateway fees are counted. HookVerdict's free calculator works it out from your own numbers, and inside the app every ad is judged against that bar, not against platform ROAS.
Last updated 1 November 2026 · by Venu Gopal Reddy Muvva, founder
Why this is hard
Ads Manager counts an order when the customer checks out. It doesn't know that a share of cash-on-delivery orders will be refused at the door and shipped back. For brands with a lot of COD orders, a reported 3× ROAS can be a loss.
GST makes it worse: the order value Meta reports usually includes GST that you pass on to the government, and ad invoices carry GST too, which only some businesses can claim back.
How to do it in HookVerdict
01Use the free calculator
Open the breakeven ROAS calculator. Enter your average order value, product cost, shipping, the share of COD orders and how many come back. It runs in your browser, so nothing is sent to us.
02Put your margins in the workspace
In Guardrails, set the same unit economics for your workspace. Connect Shopify and Shiprocket if you want order value, COD share and RTO suggested from your own data.
03Bring in results
Import your ad results under Tests. Each verdict compares an ad's results with your real breakeven, so an ad with high platform ROAS can still be marked a loser.
The Tests section with a verdict for each ad (app preview, sample data). 04Scale only real winners
Budget increases are capped at limits you set (20% a day by default) and always wait for a person to approve them.
Tips
- Recheck your RTO rate every month; it changes with seasons and pin codes.
- If you are GST-registered and claim input credit on ad invoices, tick that option; otherwise ads cost you 18% more.
- Encouraging prepaid orders lowers RTO, which lowers your breakeven ROAS.
When HookVerdict is not the right tool
HookVerdict doesn't do full accounting or per-pin-code RTO analysis yet. The Shopify and Shiprocket connections are built but haven't been tried on live stores, so treat their suggestions as estimates and check them.
What it costs
Free for your first 3 months, with everything unlocked and no limit. After that you pay only for what you use, at what it costs us, with no markup, plus GST. A live generation costs about ₹1.20 per variant (est.). See pricing for every rate.
Questions
- Is the calculator really free?
- Yes, with no sign-up. It runs in your browser.
- Does HookVerdict read my Shopify orders?
- It can read orders (read-only) to suggest your average order value and COD share. Your customers' names, addresses and phone numbers are not stored.
- What is RTO?
- Return to origin: a parcel that comes back undelivered, usually a refused cash-on-delivery order.
Start free
Free for your first 3 months. Then pay only for what you use, at our cost.