How to Price 3D Prints Without Losing Money

7 min read · Updated November 2026

Most people price a 3D print by its filament weight. Charge a dollar or two per ten grams, round up, done. It feels fair, and it's easy to explain to customers.

The problem is that filament is often less than half of what a print really costs you. Electricity, printer wear, your own time, failed prints, packaging and platform fees all come out of the same price. Leave them out and you can stay busy all month while quietly earning very little.

Here's the full formula, followed by a worked example.

The seven costs in every print

1. Material

The easy one. Divide what you paid for the spool by its weight, then multiply by the grams used.

Material = (spool price ÷ 1,000) × grams used

Use the price you actually paid, including shipping, not the list price. Your slicer's gram estimate is close enough for quoting.

2. Electricity

A printer's power draw varies with bed size, temperatures and whether it's enclosed. A plug-in power meter costs very little and gives you a real number. Then:

Electricity = (watts ÷ 1,000) × print hours × your rate per kWh

For a single print this is usually small. It still belongs in the price, because across hundreds of jobs it adds up.

3. Machine wear

Every hour a printer runs uses up part of its life. Spread the purchase price over the number of print hours you expect to get from it:

Wear per hour = printer price ÷ expected lifetime hours

A $600 printer you expect to run for 5,000 hours costs about $0.12 for every hour it prints. That money is what eventually buys its replacement.

4. Maintenance

Nozzles, belts, build plates, PTFE tubes, lubricant. Add up what you spend in a year and divide by the hours you print, or start with a small per-hour estimate and adjust it as you go.

5. Labour

Your time isn't free, even if it feels that way. Count the hands-on minutes: removing the part, cleaning supports, sanding, checking quality, packing. Multiply by an hourly rate you'd be happy to earn.

6. Failed prints

No farm has a 100% success rate. If one print in ten fails, every successful print has to carry a share of the failed one's material and machine time. Add a failure buffer as a percentage of your material and machine costs. Ten percent is a common starting point; your own failure log will tell you the real figure.

7. Packaging and extras

Boxes, bags, labels, inserts, and anything else that goes out with the order.

From cost to price

Add those seven costs together and you have your true cost. Then:

1. Add your markup. This is your profit and your buffer for slow months. Many sellers start somewhere between 40% and 100% and adjust based on what sells.
2. Check what you keep after fees. Marketplaces and payment processors take a percentage of every sale. Work out what's left after they do, and make sure it's still above your cost.

A worked example

Ten small planters in one order. The figures below are examples, not recommendations:

Priced by filament alone, this order might have gone out at $30 or $35, below its true cost. Notice too that a 60% markup became a 29% margin once fees came out. That gap is where most underpricing hides.

Common pricing mistakes

• Pricing by weight only. A tall, light part can tie up a printer for a day while using very little filament.
• Forgetting fees. Work out your price after fees, not before.
• Not counting your time. Support removal and finishing can take longer than the print itself.
• Ignoring failures. If you reprint at your own cost, that cost has to live somewhere in your prices.
• Never revisiting prices. Filament and power prices change. Recheck your numbers every few months.

Quick start

If you only want the basics for a single print, our free calculator works out filament and electricity cost in seconds.