Price Elasticity of Supply Calculator

Enter price and quantity supplied, before and after, to calculate price elasticity of supply.

How to Use the Price Elasticity of Supply Calculator

Enter price before and after, along with quantity supplied before and after — PES and an elastic/inelastic/unit-elastic classification come out below.

% Change in Quantity Supplied = (Q₂ − Q₁) ÷ ((Q₂ + Q₁) ÷ 2) × 100
% Change in Price = (P₂ − P₁) ÷ ((P₂ + P₁) ÷ 2) × 100
PES = % Change in Quantity Supplied ÷ % Change in Price

Where demand elasticity is almost always negative, supply elasticity normally comes out positive: producers respond to a higher price by supplying more, not less, so price and quantity move the same direction. A value above 1 is elastic supply — producers can ramp output up fast, common where spare capacity or inventory exists. Below 1 is inelastic — output is slow or costly to adjust, the situation for goods with long production cycles, fixed factories, or scarce raw inputs. Right at 1 (within roughly 0.05) is unit elastic.

Agricultural goods tend to sit on the inelastic end in the short run — a farmer can't grow more wheat mid-season no matter how much the price jumps — while something manufactured from readily available components can scale up production quickly and post a far more elastic number.

The midpoint method is used for both percentage changes, the same approach as the demand-side version of this calculation, so the result doesn't depend on which direction the price happened to move.