How to price 3D prints: the complete guide

Most people price their first 3D prints the same way: weigh the filament, double it, and hope. It feels fine until you add up a month of sales and wonder where the money went.

The problem is that filament is often the smallest part of what a print really costs. Your printer is wearing out with every hour it runs. Your time setting up, removing, and packing parts is worth something. And every so often a print fails and you pay for it twice.

This guide walks through a simple, complete way to price 3D prints that covers all of it. It's the same method we use in Nozzlet Works, and it works just as well in a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Price per plate, not per part

Start by costing a full build plate, then divide by the number of parts on it.

Printing four parts at once takes more filament than one, but you only set up the printer once, and the machine time is shared. Costing per plate captures that. It also makes it easy to see when filling a plate is worth it.

From your slicer, write down:

• Filament used in grams (for each filament, if you use more than one)
• Build time in hours
• Parts per plate you can sell

Step 2: Add up the direct costs

There are six costs to add for each plate.

1. Filament, with a waste allowance. Work out your cost per gram: spool price ÷ spool weight in grams. A $25 spool of 1,000 g is $0.025 per gram. Then add a waste allowance, typically around 10%, for purge lines, supports, and the bit left on the spool.

2. Electricity. Build time × your printer's average power draw (in kilowatts) × your electricity rate per kWh. A printer averaging 120 watts (0.12 kW) doesn't use much, but it adds up across a month. See How much electricity does a 3D printer use?

3. Printer wear (depreciation). Your printer won't last forever. Spread its cost across its working life: (purchase price − what it'll be worth at the end) ÷ expected service life in hours. A $1,000 printer worth $200 at the end of a 5,000-hour life costs $0.16 for every hour it prints.

4. Maintenance. Nozzles, belts, build plates, and lubricant. Estimate what you spend on upkeep per year and divide by the hours you print, or start with a small figure such as $0.05 per hour and adjust as you learn. See 3D printer maintenance schedule by print hours.

5. Shop overhead. Everything else it takes to run your shop: software, tools, workspace, insurance. Turn it into an amount per print hour.

6. Your hands-on labour. Minutes spent on the plate (slicing, starting the print, removing parts, cleanup, packing) ÷ 60 × your hourly rate. Don't skip this because it's "your own time". If you ever hire help, or want to know whether a product is worth making, this is the number that tells you.

Step 3: Add a failed-print reserve

Prints fail. Spaghetti, warping, a clogged nozzle at 90%. Instead of pretending they don't, add a small reserve on top of your direct costs, typically 5–10%. Now the successful prints pay for the failed ones.

Direct costs + failed-print reserve = your fully loaded cost per plate.

Step 4: Set a price with a target margin

Now decide how much profit you want to keep. The cleanest way is a target gross margin: the share of the selling price that's profit.

Price = fully loaded cost ÷ (1 − target margin)

For a 50% margin: price = cost ÷ 0.5, which is double the cost.

Margin isn't the same as markup. A 50% markup on a $10 cost gives $15, and only a third of that is profit. A 50% margin gives $20, and half of it is profit. Mixing the two up is one of the most common ways makers underprice.

Step 5: Set a minimum charge

Small prints can cost almost nothing in filament, but they still take your time to quote, set up, and pack. A minimum job charge (for example $10) makes sure every order is worth doing. If the calculated price is lower, charge the minimum.

A worked example

These are example numbers only. Use your own.

A plate of 4 small brackets:

• 120 g of PLA from a $25, 1 kg spool, plus 10% waste
• 6 hours of build time on a printer averaging 0.12 kW, at $0.13 per kWh
• Printer: $1,000, worth $200 after 5,000 hours
• Maintenance $0.05 per hour, overhead $0.20 per hour
• 10 minutes of hands-on time at $25 per hour
• 5% failed-print reserve, 50% target margin, $10 minimum charge

That's $2.63 cost and $5.26 price per bracket. A customer ordering a single bracket would pay the $10 minimum charge.

Notice that filament was less than a third of the cost. Price on filament alone, doubled, and you'd have charged $6.60 for the plate, losing money on every sale.

Step 6: Check it against the market

Your cost-based price is your floor, not the final answer. Before you settle on it:

• Look at what others charge for similar items locally and on marketplaces like Etsy. See Selling 3D prints on Etsy.
• Charge more for value. Custom design work, rush jobs, tight tolerances, and finishing are worth more than machine time.
• If the market price is below your cost, don't just match it. Find a cheaper way to make it (fill the plate, faster settings), or stop selling that product.

Step 7: Know which products earn the most

Once you've costed a few products, compare them by gross profit per print hour: (price − cost) ÷ build time. In the example, the plate earns $10.52 profit over 6 hours, or about $1.75 per print hour.

Your printer's hours are limited. A product that earns $4 per print hour is worth printing before one that earns $1, even if the second one sells for more.

Don't forget tax

In Canada, if you're registered for GST/HST (and PST where it applies, such as in BC), tax is collected on top of your price and passed on to the government. It isn't profit. If you set tax-included prices, remove the tax before working out your margin. See Starting a 3D printing business from home in Canada.

Common pricing mistakes

• Pricing on filament alone
• Confusing markup with margin
• Leaving out your own time
• No allowance for failed prints
• No minimum charge for tiny jobs
• Never updating prices when filament or electricity costs change

Do it faster

You can do all of this in a spreadsheet, and many makers start that way. It gets harder once you have several printers, dozens of filaments, and products that also use hardware and packaging.

• Try the free 3D print cost calculator to price a single print in a minute, no sign-up needed.
• Nozzlet Works does it for every product automatically: real costs, suggested prices, profit per print hour, and stock that updates itself.