3D print cost calculator
Pick your printer and material, slide in the two numbers from your slicer — your cost and price update live.
Break-even is $8.69 — anything above that is profit.
This is a planning estimate, not a binding quote. Actual costs vary with slicer settings, printer condition and local prices.
Most cost calculators undercharge you. This one doesn't.
In a six-site benchmark it was the only free calculator with expected-attempts failure math, a full seller model and input validation.
Failure risk, priced like reality
Most calculators add the failure percentage on top of cost, which understates it.
Garbage in, garbage out — not here
Five of the six calculators we tested silently compute on negative or empty inputs. Every field here validates before it counts.
Free where others charge
Batch pricing, the full seller model and multi-material stay free here — competitors lock them behind a subscription.
From cost to Etsy profit
Your cost per item flows straight into the Etsy Fee & Profit Calculator — price the sale end to end.
Slicer numbers in, price out
Enter material and print time
Copy the material grams and print time straight from your slicer preview — they are the two numbers that drive most of the cost.
Tune machine, labor and risk
Adjust printer wear, setup and post-processing minutes, failure rate and fees. Sensible defaults are prefilled so you get a first result immediately.
Read your price and copy the summary
The panel shows cost per unit, break-even and suggested price live. Copy the summary to paste into a message, listing or quote.
Anatomy of an $8.69 print
The default example: 100 g of PLA, four hours on a 120 W printer, 15 minutes of your time. Five cost parts and one price.
To calculate 3D printing cost, add five parts: material, electricity, machine wear, labor and failure risk. Material cost is grams used × spool price ÷ spool weight; electricity is print hours × watts ÷ 1000 × your kWh rate; machine wear is print hours × printer price ÷ lifetime hours. This 3D print cost calculator runs that formula live per job, then derives your break-even and suggested selling price after marketplace fees. It is a manual estimate: pull time and grams from your slicer preview and the result lands close to reality.
Read the full explanation
A 1 kg spool at $20 works out to $0.02 per gram, so a 100 g print carries about $2.00 of filament before waste. Add supports, brims, purge and failed starts as a waste percentage rather than a guess — 5–10% is realistic for most FDM work. Resin follows the same math per bottle: a 1 kg bottle at $30 is $0.03 per gram, and support-heavy resin parts usually justify a higher waste percentage than FDM.
Read the full explanation
At the 2025 U.S. average residential rate of about $0.16 per kWh, a 4-hour print on a 120 W machine costs around $0.08 in electricity. Machine wear is the quieter cost: a $400 printer with 4,000 productive hours embeds $0.10 of depreciation into every print hour before nozzles, belts and build plates. This calculator keeps depreciation and a per-hour maintenance budget as separate inputs so neither hides inside your material margin.
Read the full explanation
If 10% of prints fail, you need on average 1 ÷ (1 − 0.10), or about 1.11 attempts per good part, so the honest surcharge is failure rate ÷ (1 − failure rate) — about 11.1%, not 10%. The gap widens fast: at a 20% failure rate the true surcharge is 25%. This 3D print cost calculator uses the expected-attempts formula so risky prints are priced like the reprints they actually cause.
Pricing: fees come out of the price, so divide instead of adding
Marketplace and payment fees are charged on the selling price, not on your cost. To break even you must divide cost per unit by 1 minus the fee share: at $10 cost and 10% fees, the break-even price is $11.11, not $11.00 — adding fees to cost leaves you short on every sale. The suggested price applies your markup or target margin after the same correction, and setup labor is counted once per job, so batches get cheaper per unit as quantity rises.
break-even = cost per unit ÷ (1 − fees %)suggested price = cost per unit × (1 + markup %) ÷ (1 − fees %)Make the models you sell
Generate custom, print-ready 3D models from an image or a text prompt, then price them here before you list.
Generate from image3D print cost calculator FAQ
Common questions about pricing 3D prints, from filament cost per gram to quoting customers.
How do you calculate the cost of a 3D print?
Add five parts: material (grams × price per gram), electricity (hours × kilowatts × rate), machine wear (hours × printer price ÷ lifetime hours plus maintenance), labor (setup and post-processing at your hourly rate) and failure risk (base cost × failure rate ÷ (1 − failure rate)). If you sell, add packaging and platform fees on top. This 3D print cost calculator runs exactly that formula live as you type, and the How it's calculated panel exposes every line.
How much does filament cost per gram?
Divide the spool price by its net weight. A $20 spool holding 1 kg is $0.02 per gram; a $25 spool is $0.025. Specialty materials like TPU or carbon-filled blends often land between $0.03 and $0.08 per gram. Multiply by your slicer's gram estimate to get the per-print figure before waste.
How much electricity does a 3D printer use?
Typical desktop FDM printers average 50–150 W while printing once the bed is up to temperature. At $0.16 per kWh that is roughly one to two cents per print hour. Enclosed high-temperature machines and large-format printers draw more; a plug-in power meter gives the most accurate number for your exact setup.
How do I account for printer depreciation?
Divide the printer's purchase price by the productive hours you expect from it, then charge that amount per print hour. A $400 printer expected to run 4,000 hours embeds $0.10 per hour. Keep maintenance — nozzles, belts, build surfaces, repairs — as a separate per-hour budget so a wearing machine does not silently eat your margin.
Should I charge for labor and failed prints?
Yes, if you sell. Setup minutes are counted once per job and post-processing minutes per unit, both at your hourly rate. Failed prints are priced with expected-attempts math: at a 10% failure rate every good part effectively costs about 11.1% more, because reprints consume material, time and electricity that the successful part must pay for.
What is the difference between markup and margin?
Markup is profit relative to cost; margin is profit relative to price. A $10 cost sold at $20 is a 100% markup but a 50% margin. This calculator supports both modes and always displays the resulting margin at the suggested price, so you can sanity-check against your marketplace's norms before listing.
Do Bambu Lab, Prusa or Creality printers need different calculators?
No — the math is identical for every FDM printer. Only the inputs change: average power draw (a Bambu Lab X1C averages around 105 W, a Prusa MK4 around 80 W, a Creality Ender 3 around 120 W), purchase price and expected lifetime. Enter your machine's numbers and the same formula applies.
Does this work for resin and multicolor prints?
Yes. For resin, choose the Resin material type, enter bottle price and weight in place of a spool, and raise the waste percentage to cover supports and washing. For multicolor FDM, add purge waste to the waste percentage — multi-material systems can purge tens of grams per color change — and include the extra print time from tool changes.
Why is this estimate different from my slicer or the actual print?
This 3D print cost calculator produces a manual estimate from the numbers you type. Slicers compute time and grams from the actual toolpath, and even slicer values drift a few percent from the physical print. Use your slicer's preview values as inputs to close most of the gap, and treat the output as a planning figure, not an invoice.
How do I turn this into a customer quote?
Copy the summary and paste it into your message or listing — it includes cost per unit, break-even and suggested price. You can also use Copy link to send a live version of this exact setup that opens with every number filled in. Quantity pricing is handled automatically because setup labor is amortized across the batch.
Price it, check it, sell it
STL Repair
Check and fix meshes before printing — fewer failed prints keeps your failure rate and costs down.
Image to STL
Turn a logo or photo into printable relief geometry you can price with this calculator.
Pairs with this toolEtsy Fee & Profit Calculator
Selling on Etsy? See every fee on a sale and the profit you keep — with your production cost imported from here.