3D Print Pricing Calculator
Filament is a fifth of what a print costs and labour is two thirds — so both weight pricing and hourly pricing get it wrong.
The same job at other lengths
Filament is a fifth of the cost. Almost everyone prices on it.
A typical 10-hour, 100 g job on a $400 printer comes to about $12.80 before failures: $2.50 of filament, $1.83 of machine time and wear, $0.15 of electricity, and $8.33 of labour at 25 minutes of setup and cleanup. Material is 20% of the bill and labour is 65%. A weight-based markup therefore has to be a large multiple of the filament price, and any given multiple is only correct at one job size.
A flat hourly rate is worse, because the labour is fixed per job rather than per hour. Slicing, plate prep, removal and cleanup cost the same whether the print took thirty minutes or two days. So the cost per print-hour runs from $19.02 on a half-hour job down to $0.73 on a forty-hour one — a spread of 26 to one. No single hourly figure is right at both ends, which is why hourly quotes lose money on small jobs and lose customers on large ones. Set the labour rate to zero here and the spread collapses to nothing, which is the proof that the fixed term is causing all of it.
Labour is the largest line item on any job under about 19 hours. Everything that scales — filament, machine wear, power — runs roughly $0.45 an hour at a typical print density, against $8.33 of fixed handling. Most jobs are shorter than the crossover, which is the real reason small print jobs are unprofitable at nearly any per-gram price.
And electricity is a rounding error, which is worth saying because it's the cost people ask about most. Ten hours at an averaged 100 W and $0.15/kWh is fifteen cents, 1.2% of the job. Printing an entire kilogram spool — about a hundred hours of machine time — costs around $1.50 of power. A printer is a far smaller load than the heater in the same room.
- Failures multiply, they don't add. Recovering a 30% failure rate takes a 42.9% increase on every quote, not 30% — the factor is 1/(1−f), because surviving jobs carry the dead ones. At 50% the price doubles.
- Quote a two-part tariff. A fixed fee per job plus a variable rate isn't a pricing philosophy, it's just the shape of the cost. It makes a small job viable and a large one competitive at the same time.
- A second printer is rarely the constraint. Machine depreciation is about 13 cents an hour; fixed handling time per job is the bottleneck, and another machine does nothing about that.
- Price on your own numbers. The largest term is your labour rate times your handling time. Anyone quoting a universal dollars-per-gram figure is assuming both, and they're almost certainly not yours.
How to use
- Take the print time and filament weight straight from your slicer.
- Include your own setup and cleanup time — it is the largest line item.
- Add the failure uplift as a multiplier, not as an addition.
- Quote a fixed fee per job plus a variable rate, not a flat hourly figure.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a 3D print actually cost to make?
A typical ten-hour, hundred-gram job comes to about 12.80 dollars before failures on a 400 dollar printer: 2.50 of filament, 1.83 of machine time and wear, 15 cents of electricity, and 8.33 of labour at 25 minutes of setup and cleanup. Add a ten per cent failure rate and it is 14.24. The proportions matter more than the total, because they are what most pricing gets wrong.
What percentage of the cost is filament?
About a fifth, on a typical job — and it is the thing almost everyone prices on. Labour is roughly two thirds, machine time about fourteen per cent, and electricity around one. That means a weight-based markup has to be a large multiple of the filament price simply to break even, and any given multiple is only correct at one job size.
Should I charge by the hour for 3D printing?
Not with a flat rate, because the handling time is fixed per job rather than per hour. Slicing, plate prep, removal and cleanup cost the same whether the print took thirty minutes or two days, so the true cost per print-hour runs from about 19 dollars on a half-hour job down to 73 cents on a forty-hour one. That is a spread of 26 to one, and no single hourly figure is right at both ends.
What is the right way to price a 3D print?
A two-part tariff: a fixed fee per job plus a variable rate per hour and per kilogram. That is not a pricing philosophy, it is just the shape of the cost — one large fixed term for handling and several small variable ones. It reproduces the true cost at any job size, which neither a per-gram nor a per-hour figure manages, and it makes small jobs viable and large ones competitive at the same time.
Why are small print jobs never worth it?
Because labour is the largest line item on any job under roughly nineteen hours. Everything that scales — filament, machine wear, power — runs about 45 cents an hour at a typical print density, against 8.33 dollars of fixed handling. A half-hour job is 97 per cent handling cost. No per-gram price makes that work, which is why print services almost always have a minimum order.
How much electricity does a 3D printer use?
Far less than people expect, and it is the cost asked about most. Ten hours at an averaged 100 watts and 15 cents a kilowatt-hour is fifteen cents — a bit over one per cent of the job. Printing an entire kilogram spool, roughly a hundred hours of machine time, comes to about a dollar fifty of power. A printer is a much smaller load than a kettle or the heater in the same room.
How do I account for failed prints in my pricing?
As a multiplier of one over one minus the failure rate, not as an addition. Recovering a thirty per cent failure rate takes a 42.9 per cent increase on every quote rather than thirty, because the jobs that survive have to carry the ones that did not. At a fifty per cent failure rate the price doubles. Adding the rate instead of dividing by its complement always under-recovers.
How much should I budget for printer wear and maintenance?
Depreciation is easy — a 400 dollar printer over 3,000 print-hours is about 13 cents an hour. Maintenance is nozzles, belts, build surfaces and the occasional hotend, and a few cents an hour covers it for most machines. Together they are around fourteen per cent of a typical job, which is more than electricity and much less than your time.
Does a faster printer make my printing more profitable?
Less than you would hope, because print time is not the dominant cost on most jobs. Halving a ten-hour print saves about a dollar of machine time and power while leaving the 8.33 of handling untouched. Faster machines are genuinely valuable for throughput and turnaround, but the arithmetic says the constraint on a small operation is handling time rather than machine speed.
Is a second printer worth buying?
Rarely, if the goal is cost. Machine depreciation is around thirteen cents an hour, so the machine is not what is expensive — the fixed handling time per job is, and a second printer does nothing about that. A second printer helps when you are genuinely capacity-bound on wall-clock time, or when you want to run two materials without swapping, which are different problems from cost.
What should I charge friends for 3D printing?
Charging material only is the usual approach and it quietly loses money on every job, because material is about a fifth of the cost. Recovering material plus machine time is a fairer floor and still reads as a favour. Whether to bill your own time is a relationship question rather than an arithmetic one, but it is worth knowing that it is the largest number in the calculation.
Why do print service quotes vary so much?
Because the largest term in the cost is a labour rate multiplied by a handling time, and both vary enormously between someone printing at home and a shop with a queue, staff and packaging. Two honest quotes can differ several times over without either being wrong. That is also why a universal dollars-per-gram figure cannot exist — it implicitly assumes someone else labour rate and workflow.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored.