Excel formula: Get percentage discount

Generic formula

= 1-(discount_price/original_price)

Explanation

If you have a discounted price and an original price, and you want to know the discount as a percentage, you can calculate the percentage discount using a formula that divides the discounted price by the original price and then subtracts the result from one.

How the formula works

In the example, the active cell contains this formula:

=1-(D5/C5)

In this case, Excel first divides the discounted price in D5 (59.5) by the original price in C5 (70) to get 0.85, which is then subtracted from 1:

=1-(59.5/70)
=1-0.85
=0.15

Note: the result is a decimal value, and must be formatted using the Percentage number format in Excel to display as a percentage.

Author

Dave Bruns

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