3D print cost calculator
What a print costs you, and what to charge for it. Filament, machine time, your own hours and margin - the same calculation LayerFlow3D runs on a real order. Free, no sign-up, and the link remembers your numbers.
Inside a workspace every one of these comes from your own spools, printers and settings, per order, without anybody moving a slider.
A worked example
The figures the calculator opens on, worked by hand: a 120 g part in filament at $25 / kg with 5% waste, 5h 30m on a machine that costs $0.30 / h, 45 min of your own time at $12 / h, and a margin of ×2.2.
- Material: 0.12 kg × $25 / kg = $3.00, plus 5% waste = $3.15.
- Machine: 5.5 h × $0.30 / h = $1.65.
- Labour: 0.75 h × $12 / h = $9.00.
- It costs you $3.15 + $1.65 + $9.00 = $13.80.
- Charge $13.80 ×2.2 = $30.36, and you keep $16.56.
Here the filament is 23% of what the job costs you and your own time 65%. The filament cost calculator works out what a gram of your spool really costs, and the hourly rate calculator what an hour of your printer does.
What each number means
Filament used
What the slicer says the part weighs, not what the spool loses. Purge towers, brims and the odd failure are the waste allowance below, and pricing them at zero is the most common way a shop prints all month and makes nothing. What each of those grams costs you is what the filament cost calculator works out, from the spool’s price and weight.
Print time
The slicer estimate is close enough. It matters because the machine is earning or idle for exactly that long, and because a twelve-hour print that ties up your only printer has a cost beyond its grams.
Your hands-on time
Levelling, removing supports, sanding, packing. The part of the job that is you rather than the machine, and the part almost every hobbyist-turned-business forgets to charge for.
Machine cost per hour
What an hour of that printer costs you once its purchase price, its expected life and its electricity are spread across the hours it will run. Work it out properly with the hourly rate calculator, or start at a few cents and refine.
Your margin
The multiplier on top of cost. Not profit in the bank: failed prints, reprints and the ones you quote and never make all come out of it.
Guides that use this calculator
Pricing an OrcaSlicer file in LayerFlow3D
Which OrcaSlicer exports LayerFlow3D reads, what it takes from them in the workshop and on a shop page, and how a sliced file becomes a price, with a worked example you can repeat.
Read it →Which software a 3D print shop needs, and in what order
A plain map of 3D print shop software - orders and costing, printer control, failure detection, stock - what each kind is for, one job traced through end to end, and what most shops can skip for a year.
Read it →Selling prints through an Instagram bio link
How to turn a printing account into a shop that takes orders without you, and stop losing half of them in the DMs.
Read it →What to charge for a 3D print
A practical method for pricing a print that covers your filament, your machine and your own time, and still leaves something over.
Read it →Questions people ask
How much should I charge for a 3D print?
Add up what it costs you - filament including waste, the machine for the hours it runs, and your own time - then multiply by a margin that survives failures and reprints. The calculator does the first part; the margin is a business decision, and most shops land between 1.5x and 3x.
Why is my filament cost higher than the spool price suggests?
Because a spool does not all become parts. Purge towers, brims, skirts and failed prints come off the same spool, which is why this calculator adds a waste allowance before pricing the grams.
Should I charge for print time if I am not sitting there?
Yes. The printer is unavailable for other work, it is wearing out, and it is drawing power. That is what machine cost per hour is for, and ignoring it is how a print farm grows without ever becoming profitable.
Why is filament such a small part of the price?
Because a printer is slow and your time is not free. On the figures this calculator opens on, the filament is well under half of what the job costs you: the hours the machine is busy and the time you spend on the part make up the rest, and the margin goes on top of all three. A shop that prices from grams alone gives those away.
Is this calculator free?
Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for. It runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Can I price a whole catalogue rather than one print at a time?
That is what LayerFlow3D itself is for. It uses this same costing on every order, with your own spool prices, your own printers and your own rates instead of the demo figures here.
Can I drop in a slicer file instead of typing the numbers?
Not on this free page: type the weight and the print time your slicer shows. Inside LayerFlow3D the price calculator, the model form and an order for a customer’s model read a sliced .gcode or .gcode.3mf in your browser and fill in the time and the grams of each filament, without uploading it. An STL or an unsliced .3mf has no print time or filament in it yet, so it has to be sliced first. Pricing an OrcaSlicer file shows what is read from each kind of file.
Price your whole catalogue, not one print at a time
LayerFlow3D costs every order with your own spool prices, your own printers and your own rates - and keeps the queue, the stock and the shipping labels beside it.