Your numbers, and they stay yours. Every figure here is one you type, nothing is pre-filled, and no tax is computed. What you enter in the tool is not sent anywhere and is not saved. General information, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
1. The production
Closings, the average price, and the commission rate paid to your side of the deal — not the total both sides share.
A whole number. Count a deal where you represented both sides once, and enter the combined rate below.
In dollars, for example 415000.
As a percent of the sale price, as your agreements say. Nothing is pre-filled and no rate is suggested. For a flat-fee or referral deal, enter the rate that produces the same dollars at this average price.
Optional, for the year. Anything that reaches you without going through the split — coaching, a rental or property-management fee, consulting. Leave it empty if there is none. If a referral does run through your brokerage, it belongs in the rate above instead.
2. The commission plan, or two of them
Fill Plan A to see one year. Fill Plan B's split as well to see both at once — the plan you are on against the one you are weighing up, at the same production. Name no brokerage; these are the terms in front of you.
3. What the year costs you
The costs you carry yourself, as a total for the year. These are the same under either plan, so they are entered once. Nothing is pre-filled and no amount is suggested; every line is empty until you fill it, and a line left empty does not appear on the sheet at all.
Only the part you pay. If your brokerage bills it, it belongs in that plan's fees instead, so it is not counted twice.
Assistant or coordinator pay, coaching, photography you absorb, closing gifts, continuing education, anything else.
What you hold back
Optional, and it is your figure — this page computes no tax, looks up no rate, applies no bracket and takes no view on what, if anything, you owe. If your commissions arrive with nothing withheld, the percentage you reserve is a question for your accountant; enter whatever figure the two of you settle on. Leave it empty to stop the sheet at pre-tax business income.
4. A take-home goal
Optional. Fill it and the sheet adds a row with the first number of closings that reaches it, under each plan, at the average price and rate above.
5. The year
Enter the closings, the average price and the rate to your side.
A year, worked through, with the numbers on the page
The figures in this section are invented to show the arithmetic. They are not typical, not recommended and not pre-filled anywhere in the fields above — they are just numbers that make the shape visible. Twelve closings, an average price of $350,000, and 2.5% of it paid to your side: that is $8,750 of gross commission a closing and $105,000 of GCI for the year. Here are two invented plans at that identical production.
| Line | 70/30 with an $18,000 cap | 100% split, fees instead |
|---|---|---|
| Gross commission income | $105,000 | $105,000 |
| Paid to the brokerage out of commissions | −$18,000 | −$0 |
| Fee per closing | — | −$4,740 (12 × $395) |
| Fixed fees for the year | — | −$9,000 |
| Income from your brokerage | $87,000 | $91,260 |
The 70/30 column reaches its cap on closing seven: the brokerage has taken $2,625 from each of the first six, which is $15,750, so on the seventh it takes the $2,250 still owed to the cap and the rest of that closing stays with the agent. Every closing after it is whole. The 100% column never splits anything, and pays $13,740 in fees instead. At twelve closings the second plan is $4,260 better.
Now run the same two plans at four closings, and the answer flips. $35,000 of GCI; the 70/30 plan never gets near its cap, so the agent keeps $24,500. The 100% plan still owes its $9,000 of fixed fees whatever happens, so it leaves $24,420 — $80 worse. One more closing and it is $2,150 better. The crossover sits between the fourth and the fifth closing of the year.
Which is why this page asks how many closings rather than assuming, and why a split compared on its own tells you almost nothing: a fixed fee is a fraction of a strong year and the whole argument in a slow one. Put your own two plans in the fields above and the sheet will find your crossover — enter a take-home goal and it reports the closing count each plan needs to reach it.
Where these numbers go, and what this page does not do
Nowhere, for the figures in the tool: what you enter there is not sent anywhere and is not saved. The page reports an anonymous count that the tool was used, and nothing you entered goes with it. The optional email form further down is separate: the address you give it is stored and used to send the toolkit and occasional updates, as the consent box there says.
- It suggests no commission rate and no split. Commission is negotiable and a commission plan is a contract between an agent and their broker. No field arrives pre-filled, and no figure on this page is offered as typical, average or expected. Two kinds of number do appear and neither is a recommendation: the worked-example section carries invented figures, labelled as such, and one hint shows a sale price purely as a format example.
- It computes no tax. The set-aside is a percentage you choose, applied to pre-tax business income. This page looks up no rate, applies no bracket, and knows nothing about your filing status, deductions, entity or state. It is not tax advice.
- It is not an earnings claim. The output is arithmetic on the numbers you typed. It says nothing about what agents earn, what you will earn, or what any brokerage pays.
-
It models one split, not a stack of them, and it will not
guess at the rest. There is no field for a team split, a
mentor or mentee split on early transactions, a tiered rate that moves
with volume, a referral fee off the top, or a franchise fee set as a
percent of commission.
Do not fold a team or mentor split into the commission rate to get around that. A team split comes off your side after the brokerage split, while the cap is measured against the whole commission — so reducing the rate shrinks the figure the cap is counted against, and the sheet comes out low by the team's share of the cap. On the invented plan above, a 25% team split folded into the rate reports $60,750 where the right answer is $65,250: it is $4,500 light, which is 25% of the $18,000 cap exactly. The error grows with the cap, and nothing on this page can detect it.
For a referral fee or a franchise percentage on a single closing, the commission split calculator has a field for each and takes them in the order they actually fall. For a team or mentor split there is no workaround here, and that page says the same of itself. - It does not compare brokerages. It compares the two sets of terms you type, and nothing else. A plan is more than its arithmetic — what comes with the desk, who covers a dispute, who answers the phone on a Sunday — and none of that is a number this page could hold.
- It does not work out what one closing pays. That is a different question, and the per-closing page below answers it properly.
Read next
- Commission split calculator : one closing instead of a year, and deeper on the closing itself — a referral fee off the gross, then a franchise or royalty percentage, then the split against what is left of the cap, with a setting for whether that fee uses up cap room.
- When a federal rule treats a real estate agent as a statutory nonemployee : 26 U.S.C. §3508, quoted in full — a predicate and three conditions, one of which is a written contract. It is the background to the set-aside field, and whether it reaches a given agent turns on their own arrangement.
- Transaction software cost calculator : for the software line in box 3. Add up what the stack actually costs before you decide what to enter — ours is priced on that page alongside everyone else's, and for plenty of agents a spreadsheet and a shared drive is the honest answer.
- Commission invoice generator : for billing a commission once a closing is done.
- Seller net sheet calculator : the other side of the same closing — what the seller nets, in any state.
- All rules explained for agents : the rest of the library.