What is the difference between revenue and net income?

Revenue is total sales before any expenses. Net income is what remains after every expense — cost of sales, operating costs, interest and taxes. Net income is always lower than revenue for a normal company, and the ratio between them is the net profit margin.

Is operating income the same as profit?

Operating income is profit from the core business before interest and tax. It is a kind of profit, but not the final one. Net income is the company's total profit after interest and tax, which is the figure used for earnings per share.

Which number should I look at?

It depends on the question. Revenue shows scale and growth; operating income shows how profitable the core business is; net income shows the final profit available to shareholders. Looking at all three, and their margins, gives the fullest picture.

Revenue vs operating income vs net income: what's the difference?

Open any income statement and you’ll see profit reported at several levels. The three that matter most are revenue, operating income and net income. They are not alternatives — they are the same money measured at three points on the way down the statement.

The answer first

Think of the income statement as a waterfall:

Revenue (the “top line”) — everything the company sold.
Subtract the cost of goods/services and operating expenses (R&D, marketing, admin) to get operating income.
Subtract interest and taxes to get net income (the “bottom line”).

For a typical profitable company, revenue > operating income > net income.

A worked example

Here is Apple’s fiscal 2025, taken from its 10-K (see the full Apple company page):

Line	Amount (FY2025)	As % of revenue
Revenue	$416.2B	100%
Operating income	$133.1B	32.0% (operating margin)
Net income	$112.0B	26.9% (net margin)

Revenue is the biggest number, operating income is what’s left after running the business, and net income is the final profit after interest and tax. Divide each profit line by revenue and you get the margins — the profit-margin calculator does exactly this.

Why the gaps differ between companies

The distance between these lines reflects a company’s cost structure:

Company (latest FY)	Operating margin	Net margin
NVIDIA (NVDA)	60.4%	55.6%
Microsoft (MSFT)	45.6%	36.1%
Coca-Cola (KO)	28.7%	27.3%
Walmart (WMT)	4.2%	3.1%

A software or chip company keeps most of each revenue dollar; a retailer like Walmart operates on thin margins and makes its money on enormous volume. Neither is “better” — they are different business models.

A note on edge cases

Some companies don’t cleanly report an “operating income” line (many banks and insurers, for instance), and a company can have a positive operating income but a net loss if interest and tax wipe out the profit. Where a filing doesn’t tag a concept, our pages leave it blank rather than guess.

Keep reading

To see how these lines roll up into margins, read gross vs operating vs net margin. To find them in a filing, see how to read a 10-K.

Figures here are factual data compiled from SEC filings — not investment advice; figures may contain errors or lag the original filing; verify on SEC EDGAR before relying on them.