Estimate how much any Steam game has earned.
Plug in a game's review count and price, and the calculator returns an estimated gross revenue plus a breakdown of what the developer likely took home after Steam's cut, VAT, refunds, regional pricing, and sale discounts.
Who it's for
- Indie developers sizing up similar titles before committing to a pitch, a price point, or a platform.
- Publishers and analysts looking for a quick ballpark on a game or genre.
- Press and curious players who want to know what a game actually made — not just how many copies it "sold".
How it works
The calculator uses the Boxleiter method — a well-known rule of thumb in game dev circles that estimates total sales from the number of reviews a game has on Steam. Different review tiers use different multipliers, because tiny games, mid-sized hits, and blockbusters all have very different review-to-sales ratios.
Gross revenue comes from that estimate times the price. From there the breakdown subtracts the things that actually eat into a developer's take:
- Regional pricing adjustments
- Sale and launch discounts
- Refunds
- Steam's 30% revenue share
- VAT
What's left is the net revenue — what actually reaches the developer's account.
These are estimates, not audits
A few things the method can't see:
- Free-to-play games — the model doesn't apply.
- Giveaways, bundles, and off-platform Steam key sales skew the numbers low.
- A handful of outsized hits break the review curve.
- Steam's cut drops to 25% above $10M and 20% above $50M; the calculator doesn't model those tier breaks yet.
Treat the output as an order-of-magnitude guide.
Browse games
The full ranked list sorts thousands of Steam titles by estimated revenue. Click any game for its full breakdown.
Read more
For a deeper look at what Steam's cut really costs and why "gross revenue" isn't what hits the developer's bank account, see The Real Talk on Steam's Cut.
Local development
Requires Node 22+, pnpm and Docker.
docker compose up -d mongo
cp .env.template .env.local # local values only; never point this at production
pnpm install
DB_URL=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/ DB_DATABASE=src-parity pnpm seed:local
DB_URL=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/ DB_DATABASE=src-parity pnpm dev
pnpm dev loads .env and then .env.local. A .env that points at production is loaded too, so always set DB_URL and DB_DATABASE inline as shown above.
pnpm test runs unit tests, integration tests against an in-memory MongoDB, and the workflow integration tests.
The scrapeGames workflow refreshes the Steam catalog daily; see CONTRIBUTING.md.
pnpm parity:capture <url> <name> and pnpm parity:compare <a> <b> compare two builds route by route.
pnpm workflow:web opens the local workflow run inspector.
Contributing
Running the project locally, the tech stack, and the data pipeline are documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.
