Important: Please read our disclaimer and instructions before using the calculator.
Soap Recipe Name
1) Will this be a Solid or Liquid soap recipe?
2) Select your Preferred Unit Of Measure
3) Add Your Ingredients
You may add up to 10 fats and oils, begin by selecting the first below. Then add the weight or percentage as a number, your preferred unit of measure is Grams/Ounces/Percentage
Select the first ingredient
Add Weight
Total Weight
Soap Recipe Results
This can be instantly adjusted by changing your preferred superfatting level or water/lye ratio.
The defaults are recommended for beginners (see how-to guides below).
Your Superfatting Level
Recommended 5%
Your Water/Lye Ratio
Recommended: Solid Soap 2/1 - Liquid Soap 3/1
Total Lye Required
Total Water Required
Send This Recipe to Email
Calculator Instructions
Disclaimer
By using the information provided by the Savvy Homemade Soap Calculator you accept and agree to the terms set out below. If you do not agree to these terms of use, please do not use any information provided by the lye calculator.
Please read our full website terms of use, our disclaimer, and privacy policy before using this information.
This lye calculator is not designed for use by soap-making beginners. If you’re a complete beginner or you haven’t made soaps before, I strongly recommend you take my Natural Soap Making Course, or follow a soapmaking tutorial/pre-formulated recipe before formulating your own soap recipe using this lye calculator.
The information obtained by using the Savvy Homemade lye calculator does not constitute legal or other professional advice on any subject matter. It has been designed for educational & entertainment purposes only and is not intended for commercial use.
Savvy Homemade does not accept any responsibility for any loss that may arise from reliance on information obtained by using the lye calculator.
Do not rely solely on the output of the lye calculator to create your soap. Take all necessary precautions when working with Lye and always test your soap with a PH strip before use. Learn how to make cold process soap here, and how to make liquid soap here.
Important Notes
The lye calculator assumes a 97% purity for NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide) and a 90% purity for KOH (Potassium Hydroxide), these are most commonly sold by most suppliers.
The sap values you see in the calculator, are taken as an average of saponification values provided by Certified Lye and many other trusted sources. But please remember that depending on a variety of factors, saponification values of oils can change.
Instructions
1. Start by naming your soap recipe, then follow the steps.
2. Choose either Solid or Liquid Soap (see how-to guides below).
3. Choose your Preferred Units Of Measure, Grams, or Ounces (I highly recommend Grams for more accuracy). There is a third option which is to select your oils as a percentage of 100. If you do select the Percentage option, you must input your Total Ingredients Weight in the field that opens up to the right
4. Select each of your ingredients along with their individual weight. OR, if you chose to use percentage in the previous step, you input a percentage for each ingredient, making sure the total ingredients add up to 100%. The Total Ingredients Weight is calculated and shown below.
5. Once you have entered all of of your ingredients (along with their weights or %), move on to view the recipe results and superfat and water/lye ratio options. I always recommend to superfat at 5% as standard, so the default is set to 5%. However, you can increase this up to 10% or decrease it to 0% (see guides below). I usually recommend selecting a Water Ratio of 2/1, that’s a pretty good standard for any hard soap. For liquid soap, you would want 3/1 (see how-to guides below).
6. Double-check that all of your ingredients, weights, and recipe options have been set correctly before using the Total Lye Required and Total Water Required values.
7. Use the Send To Email button to get the recipe sent to you by email (no spam privacy policy).
Soap Making Guides
If you’re a complete beginner or you haven’t made soaps before, I strongly recommend you take my Natural Soap Making Course, or follow a tutorial/pre-formulated recipe before formulating your own soap recipe using this lye calculator.
Most Popular Cold Process Soap Recipes
Your Help
Please send me any feedback you have for the calculator, including any bugs or errors, using the comments below or the contact form here. Going forward this will help me improve and perfect the app for everyone. I’m open to developing it further if people can see possible additions or improvements.
Thanks, Angela
Dear Angela, Good Evening, I am trying to do solid soap for washing, I used animal fat(cow) only, the result is poor foam hard ugly soap. The question if I take 75% beanut oil with 25% animal fat will solve problem?
It might do. In general lard soaps are usually quite soft, but often the lard we’ll use in the west is pork fat, which is unsuitable for certain people (Kosher and Halal). Chicken fat makes a very soft soap that creates a wonderful lather. However, you could also experiment with vegetable shortening too.
You could also experiment with superfatting your soaps, with excess liquid or solid oils. Shea butter is always a beautiful addition to a soap recipe and will help lend some conditioning and skin softening benefit. This will make a more luxurious bar, but will of course increase your costs. So if your budget can handle it I would absolutely recommend using some.
Be sure to run these through the soap calculator to make sure you’reusing the right ratio of water to lye for your intended ingredients.
Dear Angela, thank you for valuable information, I am preparing to use the calculator soon,
That’s great! Let me know if you have any problems using it 😀
Hi Angela, am also a new baby in soap making enjoying your teaching and information.
Few weeks ago i tried your soap calculator its easy to use than other soap calculators which i have come across.
I would like to learn more about soap making, Body lotions etc. I cant wait to try your lotion calculator also.
Wonderful news! And it’s interesting that we also have some new courses coming soon which go into these subjects in great detail 😉
Hi Angela!
I was wondering, at what percentage rate do I superfat my liquid soap? Keep in mind I will be adding goats milk to the finished product so I’m not concerned about clarity, but am concerned about separation. I’m a little experienced with liquid soap making; however the book I learned from wants me to do an increase of lye then neutralize it afterwards. I make and sell my products and am striving to improve my liquid line. I would like to just make it and not worry about neutralizing it. Do I superfat at the normal 5% like I would for bar soap or leave it at 0%?
Thank you so much in advance!
Good morning. I appreciate your thorough yet simple explanation of soap making. One question though, not too sure if I missed it in my reading, how much fragrance/essential oil is recommended per lb of soap likewise additives. I wish to make an aloe soap bar, how much of that would I need to include in the mixture.
Hi Jan, I would go for around 33% of your batch size for the essential oils. As for the aloe, you can substitute all or some of the water for aloe gel/water.
Thank you Angela, you are a very inspiring person. I love soap making and I benefited a lot from your lessons. Thank you so much for having someone like you
HI Angela!
First of all thank u so much for this wonderful information!
I´ve been making solid soaps for a while and now I would like to try Liquid. I don´t understand how to calculate how much water I need to dilute the paste. I understand that using the calculator is telling me how much water I need at the first step to dilute the potassium, but what about the dilution of the soap paste? I saw you say to put a ratio of 1:2 based on the weight of the product…so… If I make a simple recipe as:
400gr sunflower seed oil
72.68 gr potassium
218.07 gr water TOTAL: 690.75gr ——-→ 1:2 → 690.75 x 2=1381.5gr of water to dilute???
(based on this soapcalculator and choosing the option of 3/1 lye water ratio)
Can I do it like this?
Thank u so much!!
Hi Ale,
You need to weigh whatever amount of paste you wish to use and add double the amount of water to it. It’s basically a ratio of 1:2. See our page on how to make liquid castile soap for more information. https://www.savvyhomemade.com/natural-liquid-soap-making/
Hi Angela,
For a rookie trying to have some good time, while in retirement and try something new, my question is what will be the basic list of ingredients to make soap, lotions, and so on, without going broke and not having a clear idea of how to choose the right ingredients.Will you kindly enlight me, with your expertise.
Thanks
Rommel
Ho Rommel,
I’m so happy to hear you’ve decided to pick up soapmaking. This is exactly what I did when I retired, and I haven’t regretted it since! I would suggest starting with my basic soap recipe. It’s made using lard (although you can use any type of shortening), and so keeps the cost quite low and allows you to make lots of mistakes without breaking the bank.
I hope this helps! Happy soaping!
I love this so much Angela!! All of the percentages, different ingredients and what they do or don’t do and how they can affect your finished soap product…can get very OVERWHELMING!! This helps so much. I appreciate you breaking each section down and your advice for everything and even what you’ve done and tried. This makes it so much more comforting and understandable now!! You’re amazing! Thank you!
Hi Tracy,
I’m so glad you found this guide useful! I find so many soap calculators assume people are already very knowledgeable about using them. But I think back to the time when I first started formulating my own soaps and wasn’t always sure what would and wouldn’t work well. I’m so bappy I’ve been able to make this process a little simpler for you. Happy soaping!
I am new and I am looking for some information about soapmaking and I find this calculate I am so glad thanks
That’s great, thanks for letting me know 😉
how wonderful and beautiful you are 💕👍
Thanks 😉
Angela, it’s magnificent! Thank you for sharing this work that will help us a lot.
Thanks Carmen, thats great!
Thanks Angela! I am a newby, and this great information that I will use it.
Hi Rose,
Thanks for your kind words! I’m so glad that you find the calculator and formulation guide useful. Let me know how you get on making your soaps!