Print budget / browser calculator
3D printing cost calculator
Price the whole print: filament, power, machine time and the work your hands do.
Example print cost: USD 8.95. Adjust the inputs below.
Cost per successful print
USD 8.95
- Filament
- USD 2.00
- Electricity
- USD 0.18
- Machine wear
- USD 2.50
- Failure allowance
- USD 0.52
- Hands-on labor
- USD 3.75
Price for 30% gross margin
USD 12.79
Before shipping, packaging, sales fees and tax.
Read the bill before you quote
Filament cost is grams divided by spool net weight, multiplied by spool price. Electricity is average watts divided by 1,000, multiplied by hours and your cost per kWh. Machine wear is an hourly allowance you choose, not a measured depreciation value.
This 3D printing cost calculator separates costs that repeat on a failed attempt from labor spent once on a finished part. A 10% failure rate turns 9 of repeatable costs into 10 per successful part. Hands-on work is added afterward. Keep design work and packaging separate when comparing two printer settings.
The material-only estimate can be much smaller than the finished-part cost. In the 100 g, five-hour example, filament costs 2.00. Power costs 0.18, machine wear 2.50, failure allowance 0.52 and labor 3.75, giving 8.95 before fees. Those are calculated scenario inputs, not a measured production job.
Prusa's explanation of print pricingNo slicer weight yet?
Try a closed PLA cube using the same shell and infill logic as Sculptly's export offer. This is not an STL mass analysis: a cube has known volume and surface area. Scaling a mesh changes volume with the cube of scale, and surface area with its square.
PLA density 1.24 g/cm³; shell 1.2 mm; infill 15%. No supports, brim or purge. A lithophane uses solid infill, so use its slicer grams instead.
Three prints, three different cost drivers
Calculated examples by Sculptly. All use a 20-per-kg spool, 120 W, 0.30/kWh, 0.50/hour wear, 15/hour labor and 10% failed attempts. Load a card to change its assumptions.
| Filament only | Finished print | Price at 30% margin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small bracket | USD 0.50 | USD 2.70 | USD 3.86 |
| Photo light panel | USD 1.60 | USD 9.10 | USD 13.00 |
| Large display model | USD 6.00 | USD 23.10 | USD 33.00 |
Before you price the next job
Can I use this as a filament cost calculator?
Yes. Set machine wear, electricity, labor and failure allowance to zero to isolate filament cost. Enter the net mass of your spool rather than the mass including the plastic reel. A 100 g part on a 1,000 g spool costing 20 uses 2 of filament. Use the slicer total, including supports, a brim and any purge tower. The cube estimate on this page is only a geometry-based PLA approximation: it uses a 1.2 mm shell and 15% infill. It cannot predict a particular slicer profile, and it excludes support material.
How does failure rate affect 3D printing cost?
The calculator treats a failed attempt as consuming the same material, electricity and machine time as a completed attempt. It divides those costs by the success rate, then adds labor once per finished part. At 10% failed attempts, divide repeatable cost by 0.90; adding 10% is a different calculation. If most failures happen near the first layer, this full-attempt assumption overestimates the loss. If a failed print also needs substantial cleanup labor, enter that extra average time in hands-on work. Use your own print history rather than treating the default percentage as a measured printer reliability figure.
Is profit margin the same as markup?
No. A markup is a percentage of your cost, while gross margin is a percentage of the selling price. A part costing 10 with a 30% markup sells for 13. To leave a 30% gross margin before fees and tax, the selling price is 10 divided by 0.70, or about 14.29. This calculator uses the second formula. The suggested price is a cost-based planning figure, not a market valuation or a guarantee of profit. Packaging, payment fees, shipping, design time and taxes are outside the breakdown; include them separately before sending a customer quote.
Does the 3D printing cost calculator store my prices?
Calculations run in the browser and require no account. Your numbers stay in the current page state; reloading returns to the default example. Download the CSV if you want a record of the inputs and the calculated breakdown. Normal site analytics record that the calculator was used and that a download button was pressed, but this page does not attach your prices or labor rates to those events. All money fields use the currency label you choose. There is no exchange-rate conversion, so use the same currency for spool price, electricity, machine wear and labor.