How to Price 3D Prints: The Real Cost and a Calculator

To price a 3D print, add up the filament it uses, the printer's time, an allowance for prints that fail, your hands-on time, any design time and the packaging, then set a price that leaves your margin after selling fees. The filament is usually the smallest part, which is why the common rule of thumb, filament cost times five, prices most prints at a loss once your time is counted. In the example below, a planter uses $2.40 of filament and six hours of printer time, costs $10.54 in full, and sells for $22.50, a 45% margin after fees; at filament times five it would sell for $12 and leave 50 cents. Below is what goes into the cost, three examples, why design time changes everything for custom work, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Filament: grams used, supports included, times the price per gram. PLA at $20 a kilo is 2 cents a gram.
• Machine time: the printer's wear, maintenance and power, about 32 cents an hour in the example.
• Failed prints: add a share, 10% in the example, of the filament and machine time.
• Your time: setup, removal, support cleanup, sanding and packing, at your hourly rate.
• Design time, for custom work, is usually the biggest cost of all.
• Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − selling fees).
• TaroStack keeps filament by the gram and costs every print run from what it used. More below.

What goes into the cost

Snake River Print Lab, a made-up 3D print shop in Boise, Idaho, I use in these examples, sells its own designs online and at markets, and takes custom work.

The printer's hour. A $600 printer that lasts about 3,000 hours wears out at 20 cents an hour. Nozzles, belts and build plates, about $100 a year over 1,000 printing hours, add 10 cents. A printer drawing 120 watts on power at 15 cents a kilowatt hour adds about 2 cents. That's about 32 cents an hour, small per print but real over a six-hour job.

Failed prints. Spaghetti, warping and layer shifts happen. Count how many of your last 50 prints failed and add that share to the filament and machine time; the example uses 10%. How a failure rate turns into cost is in scrap rate formula.

Your hands-on time. Slicing, starting the job, removing the print, cleaning off supports, light sanding and packing. It's rarely less than a few minutes, and it's the line that's easiest to leave out.

The hands-on time is almost half the cost; the filament under a quarter. How to put your own time into a price for any handmade product is in how to price handmade items.

The price

With selling fees of 8% and a 45% margin wanted after them, price = $10.54 ÷ (1 − 0.45 − 0.08) = $22.42, rounded up to $22.50.

The keychain shows why small items printed by the plate work: 20 share one setup, so each carries two minutes of hands-on time. The custom bracket shows why "it's only 45 grams of plastic" isn't a price: the hour and a half of measuring and modelling is 85% of the cost. Charge design time separately and say so in the quote, so the customer sees what they're paying for. How cost-plus pricing works, with examples, is in cost plus pricing example.

Get the calculator

Download the 3D print pricing calculator. Type your print into the shaded cells: filament price and grams, print hours, what your printer cost and its life, maintenance, hours printed a year, power, failure rate, hands-on minutes, design hours, packaging, selling fees and the margin you want. It works out the printer's cost an hour, the full cost of the print, the price for your margin after fees, and what filament times five would leave you. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

A shop with a catalog of 40 designs, a dozen filament colors, three printers and orders from a website and a market table can't keep a calculator per design. Spools run out mid-print, a color sells out because nobody saw it running low, and the failed prints that eat a quarter of one design's filament never get counted.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the filament counted and every print run costed.

Filament by the gram. Each spool color is an item, and units convert: filament bought by the kilo spool, used by the gram. Each design is a recipe of its filament and packaging, with a scrap % for the prints that fail.

Print runs at what they used. Recording a print run takes the filament off stock at what you paid, and divides by the pieces that came out good, so a design that fails often shows it in its cost. Margins are reported by product and by customer.

And the colors before they run out. The reorder list works in days of cover at the rate each color really moves, against each supplier's lead time, so the popular colors are on the shelf before the weekend market.

Recipes, batches, counting and margins by product and customer are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How do you calculate the cost of a 3D print?

Add filament (grams × price per gram), printer time (hours × wear, maintenance and power an hour), a failed-print allowance, your hands-on time, design time if any, and packaging. In the example, a planter costs $10.54.

How much should I charge for 3D printing?

Divide the full cost by one minus your margin and your selling fees. In the example, a planter costing $10.54, with 8% fees and a 45% margin, sells for $22.50.

Is filament cost times five a good way to price 3D prints?

Not for most prints. It ignores your time, which is often the biggest cost: in the example it prices a planter at $12, leaving 50 cents, and a custom part at $4.50, far below its $61.71 cost.

How much does it cost to run a 3D printer per hour?

In the example, about 32 cents: 20 cents of wear on a $600 printer over 3,000 hours, 10 cents of maintenance and about 2 cents of power.