Plan a profitable microgreen harvest before sowing trays
Microgreen production can appear simple: seed a tray, provide light, harvest soon after, and sell a colorful crop. A viable crop plan needs more detail. A full, attractive tray may still produce a weak margin when seeding is excessive, harvested weight falls short, or lighting expense is overlooked. This microgreen planner converts a proposed crop run into estimates you can review before buying seed: expected harvested weight, sales revenue, seed cost, lighting cost, and the amount left after those two direct costs.
This calculator covers one microgreen harvest cycle. It estimates total seed cost, total electricity cost, harvested weight, revenue, and profit per cycle from the per-tray assumptions you enter. That makes it useful for a small indoor rack, a market-garden sowing batch, a restaurant order, a classroom setup, or a home grower comparing crops. It is not a complete farm budget; it is a transparent first look at the margin generated by a particular tray plan.
For a microgreen batch, enter the number of trays, grams of seed used in each tray, seed price per gram, expected saleable yield per tray, and sale price per gram. Then provide the lighting watts assigned to each tray, daily light hours, electricity price per kilowatt-hour, and days to harvest. Changing one growing assumption at a time lets you compare crop plans instead of treating the output as a single fixed prediction.
Microgreen tray inputs and the growing decisions behind them
Number of Trays sets the size of the microgreen batch. Enter the trays in the crop run you are evaluating, whether that is one shelf, one rack, or a recurring sowing. Tray count scales seed use, lighting use, and harvested weight in this model.
Seed Cost per Gram is the purchase price of your microgreen seed expressed in dollars per gram. Seed is commonly bought by the ounce, pound, or kilogram, so convert the purchase cost before using this field. A per-gram cost matches the seeding-rate input and prevents a unit mismatch from overstating or understating the seed bill.
Seeds per Tray is the seeding rate, in grams, for one microgreen tray. Heavier sowing increases seed expense immediately, while its effect on saleable harvest weight depends on the crop and your growing conditions. Dense stands can also affect airflow, disease pressure, and canopy quality. The planner does not predict those biological effects, but it does make the batch-wide cost of a higher seeding rate visible.
Yield per Tray is the harvested, saleable microgreen weight in grams from a single tray. This assumption drives the revenue estimate. Use averages from your own harvest records whenever possible, including the cultivar, harvest stage, grade, and growing system that match the planned run. An optimistic yield entry raises both estimated revenue and estimated profit.
Sale Price per Gram turns harvested microgreen weight into projected revenue. If customers buy clamshells, ounces, or bulk bags, convert the actual realized price to dollars per gram first. The same tray can have very different economics in a wholesale account and a premium direct-sale channel, even with identical yield.
Lighting Power per Tray, Light Hours per Day, Electricity Cost per kWh, and Days to Harvest describe the electrical part of the microgreen crop cycle. The calculator treats the listed watts as power assigned to each tray and assumes that power runs for the entered number of hours every day until harvest. When one fixture serves several trays, divide fixture wattage among the trays it serves before entering a per-tray value.
Keep each microgreen entry in the unit printed on the form and tied to one tray and one harvest cycle. A price per ounce entered where dollars per gram are required, or whole-rack watts entered as per-tray watts, can make a tidy-looking result materially misleading after it is multiplied across the batch.
How the microgreen planner calculates harvest revenue and partial profit
The microgreen calculator uses direct per-tray production arithmetic. It multiplies tray count by seed grams and seed cost to find seed expense. It converts tray-level lighting watts into kilowatt-hours over the stated daily schedule and crop duration. It also multiplies trays by yield per tray and sale price per gram to estimate revenue, then subtracts only seed and electricity from that revenue.
For this microgreen planner, cycle profit is represented by the formula below. Here, T is tray count, Y is yield per tray in grams, P is sale price per gram, G is seed grams per tray, Cs is seed cost per gram, W is lighting power per tray in watts, H is light hours per day, D is days to harvest, and Ce is electricity cost per kilowatt-hour.
In the microgreen profit calculation, trays times yield times selling price produce revenue. Trays times seed grams times seed price produce seed cost. Lighting watts are multiplied by daily hours, tray count, and days, then divided by 1,000 to convert watt-hours to kilowatt-hours before the electricity rate is applied. The displayed profit is revenue less those two modeled costs, with no hidden adjustment for other operating expenses.
Worked microgreen tray example using indoor growing assumptions
Suppose you are planning 20 microgreen trays. Each tray uses 28 grams of seed costing $0.03 per gram, produces 220 grams of saleable greens, and sells for $0.06 per gram. Lighting is assigned at 20 watts per tray for 14 hours per day; electricity costs $0.15 per kWh; and harvest is after 10 days.
Using the planner's microgreen crop-cycle calculations:
Seed cost = 20 trays × 28 g per tray × $0.03 per g = $16.80.
Electricity use = 20 W × 14 h × 20 trays × 10 days = 56,000 Wh = 56 kWh.
Electricity cost = 56 kWh × $0.15 = $8.40.
Total yield = 20 trays × 220 g per tray = 4,400 g.
Revenue = 4,400 g × $0.06 per g = $264.00.
Profit per cycle = $264.00 − $16.80 − $8.40 = $238.80.
For this microgreen batch, the seed figure is cash committed before the crop emerges, while the electricity figure reflects the chosen lighting schedule. The final amount is useful for comparing growing plans, but it is not complete business profit unless you also subtract labor, substrate, packaging, crop loss, sanitation supplies, delivery, and overhead.
Reading a microgreen cycle estimate with appropriate caution
After you press Plan, the microgreen result panel summarizes the batch. Check the final profit first: a positive number means projected revenue exceeds modeled seed and lighting electricity costs, while a negative number means those two costs alone exceed projected revenue. A small positive result can still become negative after the unmodeled costs of producing and selling the crop are included.
Then review the individual microgreen components. An unexpectedly large seed cost calls for a check of the seeding rate and seed-price conversion. An implausibly low or high electricity cost may mean that fixture watts were entered instead of per-tray watts, or that daily light hours were confused with hours for the entire crop. If revenue is surprising, confirm that the sale price reflects the market channel you can actually serve.
Use the microgreen planner for scenarios rather than certainty. A cautious scenario can use a lower saleable yield or a higher electricity rate. A stronger scenario should only use a higher price when that market is established. Comparing those cases helps show whether a crop plan remains worthwhile when normal production variability affects yield, price, or energy expense.
Tray count scales each modeled microgreen amount linearly when every per-tray assumption remains the same. In real operations, however, scaling a run can introduce limits in sowing labor, airflow, harvesting, washing, packing, refrigeration, and delivery. Treat a larger-tray estimate as a production baseline, not a guarantee that every cost and yield will scale perfectly.
Microgreen profit assumptions, omitted costs, and better planning records
This microgreen planner intentionally models seed and lighting electricity because both are direct costs that can be entered consistently per tray. It does not automatically include labor, growing media, trays, nutrient solution, water, packaging, labels, transportation, spoilage, or product that fails to meet saleable quality. For business decisions, use the displayed profit as a partial operating margin and deduct remaining costs separately.
The microgreen estimate also assumes that the crop will meet the quality needed to earn the price entered. The calculator cannot determine whether crowding, poor airflow, uneven lighting, or harvest timing will reduce quality. If a longer crop cycle changes weight, shelf life, or market acceptance, represent those effects in the yield and price assumptions rather than expecting the model to infer them.
For more dependable microgreen plans, weigh several actual harvests, record seed grams used, and measure or allocate lighting power for the rack. Those production notes replace generic assumptions with numbers from your cultivar and system. Once you have reliable per-tray records, the calculator can quickly compare crop types, sales channels, electricity rates, and proposed sowing volumes.
The practical microgreen decision rule is simple: add seed or lighting only when the resulting saleable harvest is worth more than the added expense. This calculator expresses that relationship in dollars, while the optional mini-game below presents the same seed-density and light-schedule tradeoff visually.