This 3D print pricing calculator works out what one finished print costs you and what you keep after selling fees. You need a few numbers from your slicer and a rough idea of how long you spend on each part by hand. The rest of this page walks through each input and then runs a real example.
How to price 3D prints
Start with material. Put in the grams of filament or resin one item uses, what the spool or bottle cost and how much it holds. Purge, supports and brims are filament you paid for that never ships, so add them as a waste percentage if your slicer weight doesn't already include them. Keep the part weight and the spool size in separate fields: 48 grams used out of a 1,000 gram spool, for example.
Then the printer. Enter print time per item, what the printer cost, how many hours you expect to get out of it, and upkeep per hour for nozzles, belts and build plates. A printer running a customer's job is using up part of its life even while you're doing something else. Your first guess at expected life won't be perfect, so revise it once you have your own records.
Power is small but real. Enter the printer's average draw in watts and your electricity rate per kilowatt-hour. Average draw is lower than the maximum on the label, since the heaters cycle on and off. A plug-in watt meter gives you the real number.
Next is your time: slicing, starting the print, pulling supports, checking the part and packing it. Multiply those minutes by your hourly rate. Add packaging, set a failure allowance for prints you'll have to redo, and pick the sales channel and margin you want. If you charge shipping on Etsy, enter that too, because Etsy takes its fees on shipping as well as on the item.
Worked example
Enter 48 grams of filament or resin used, a $20 spool, a 1,000 gram spool size, and 5% purge and waste. Set print time to 210 minutes, printer price to $449, expected life to 5,000 hours, upkeep to $0.10 per hour, and average power draw to 110 watts. Add 6 minutes of hands-on time, $0.60 for packaging and other costs, a $25 hourly labor rate, $0.18 per kilowatt-hour, and a 5% failure allowance. Select Etsy, a 40% target profit margin, and $0 shipping charged to the buyer.
The material starts at 48 ÷ 1,000 × $20, or $0.96 before the 5% waste allowance. The calculator shows $1.01 for material, $0.66 for machine use, $0.07 for electricity, $2.50 for labor, $0.60 for packaging and $0.24 for failures, for a total cost of $5.08. At a selling price of $10.99, Etsy fees come to $1.49 and profit is $4.41, a 40% margin. Profit per machine-hour is $1.26. Each line is rounded on its own, so adding them by hand can come out a cent different from the total.
Notice that labor is the biggest line here, not filament. That's common for small prints with any finishing work. And this is a price for these exact inputs, not for every 48 gram print. Change the material, the cleanup time or the failure rate and the answer moves.
Things that get left out
Most underpricing comes from a short list of costs:
- Purge, supports, brims and failed first layers, all of which use filament you paid for
- Printer time on long prints, even when your hands-on time is only a few minutes
- Support removal, curing, sanding and quality checks, which are labor
- Remakes, which burn material and machine hours before the order can ship
- Etsy's fees on the shipping you charge
Profit per machine-hour
In the example, $4.41 of profit over 3.5 printer hours is about $1.26 per machine-hour. That number matters because the printer can only run one job at a time. A slow, pricey print can earn less per hour of bed time than a batch of small parts that each take 20 minutes. It's a separate thing from your labor rate, which pays for the minutes you actually work.
FAQ
How much should I charge for a 3D print?
Add up material, machine use, electricity, labor, packaging, failed prints and selling fees, then pick a price that hits your target margin. The example above lands at $10.99 with its inputs. When print time or finishing time changes, the price should too.
How do I calculate filament cost per print?
Divide the grams used by the grams on the spool and multiply by the spool price. Then add an allowance for purge, supports and other waste if the slicer weight doesn't include them. For resin, keep your units consistent, whether that's grams or milliliters.
Should I charge for 3D printer time?
Yes. Each hour of printing uses up part of what you paid for the printer, plus routine parts like nozzles and belts. Track printer time separately from your own hands-on minutes, since one doesn't predict the other.
How do I account for failed 3D prints?
Set a failure allowance based on how often you actually reprint. A simple flat part and a tall multi-part model won't fail at the same rate, so adjust it per product if you can. The allowance should cover the material and machine time a reprint uses.
If you want to price a whole catalog instead of one part at a time, the full Tidy Margin 3D print workbook saves every product and compares them side by side.