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How to Price 3D Prints

By Ardosan LLC, who make the calculator used here. Updated 2026-11-01.

Most people price 3D prints by guessing, or by charging a few cents a gram. Both lose money on the jobs that take long or fail. Here is a way to do it that you can check, step by step. Do the sums by hand once, then let the free cost calculator do them.

1. Count every cost

For one piece, work out each of these:

1. Filament. Grams from your slicer, times the price of the spool divided by its weight. Add a few grams for purge and setup.
2. Machine time. The printer's price divided by the hours it should last, times the hours of the print. Add something for wear parts like nozzles.
3. Electricity. Watts divided by 1000, times hours, times your price per kilowatt-hour.
4. Labor. Minutes you spend slicing, loading, watching, removing supports and packing, times your hourly rate. Count your time even if you do not pay yourself yet.
5. Failed prints. If one print in twenty fails, the other nineteen must cover it. A 5% allowance raises the cost of each good piece by about 5%.
6. Overhead and one-time costs. Rent, software, a purchased model license, design time.

See the rates and overhead help articles for how the calculator takes each one.

2. Add your margin, not just a markup

Pick the share of the price you want as profit. The price is the cost divided by one minus that margin. A markup adds a percentage on top of the cost instead, and the two are not the same:

A 40% markup on the cost is only a 29% margin. Use the same method every time so your numbers can be compared.

3. A worked example

A 50 g print that takes 4 hours on a $600 printer, filament at $20 per kilogram, power at 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, 15 minutes of your time at $20 an hour, a 5% failure allowance and a 40% margin:

It costs $7.00, sells for $11.67 and leaves $4.67. Labor is the largest part. If you had priced it by weight alone, you would have missed most of the cost.

4. Think about quantity

Setup and your handling time are spread over the pieces in a quote. Ten of the same part cost less each than one. You can pass some of that on with quantity breaks: a lower margin from a set quantity up, so a bigger order gets a better price and you still make a profit. See quantity pricing in the help library.

5. Add fees and shipping

If you sell on a marketplace, subtract its fees from what you receive. Check each platform's current fee schedule rather than trusting a number from an old article. Shipping is usually paid by the customer, or added once to a quote and not marked up.

6. Check the market

Cost-based pricing tells you the lowest price that works. It does not tell you what a customer will pay. Look at similar items. If the market pays less than your cost, change something: the design, the print time, the quantity, or what you sell. Do not race to the bottom on price.

7. Put it in a quote

For custom work, give the customer a written quote: what you will print, the quantity, the price each and the total, any shipping, and how long the price is good for. The calculator saves quotes and exports a customer PDF. See the plans.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge for 3D prints?

It depends on your costs and your market, so there is no single number. Work out the cost of one piece (filament, machine time, electricity, labor, failures, overhead), choose a margin, and check the result against similar items.

What is the difference between margin and markup?

Margin is the share of the price that is profit. Markup is the percentage you add to the cost. A 40% markup on a $10 cost gives a $14 price and a 29% margin; a 40% margin gives a $16.67 price.

Should I charge by weight or by time?

Time usually matters more than material for many prints, as the example above shows. Charging only by weight underprices long, light prints. It is safer to price from all the costs and treat weight as just one of them.

Do I include failed prints in my price?

Yes. Failures are a real cost of running a printer. Use an allowance based on your own history and recheck it now and then.

How do I price a bigger order?

Price one piece from all its costs, then lower the margin from a set quantity up if you want to reward larger orders. Keep checking that the profit per hour still makes the job worth doing.