3D print cost spreadsheet: formulas for Excel and Google Sheets

A 3D print cost spreadsheet needs a block of 16 settings cells and one row per print with 11 columns, A to K. Built with the defaults below, a 100 g PLA part that prints in 5 hours with 10 minutes of your time costs $6.28 and sells for $8.16 at a 30% markup. Every formula on this page works unchanged in Excel and Google Sheets.

How do you make a 3D print cost spreadsheet?

Put your fixed costs in a settings block, one per cell, then give each print a row: job name, grams and hours from the slicer, hands-on minutes, then formula columns for filament, electricity, machine wear, labor, failure allowance, cost and price. Point every formula at the settings with absolute references, such as $B$2, and fill it down.

Step 1: the settings block (A1:C17)

Type the labels in column A and the values in column B. Rows 16 and 17 are formulas, so the printer’s price and upkeep become a cost per print hour.

Row	Setting (A)	Default (B)	Where the default comes from
2	Spool price	20	Polymaker lists PolyLite PLA 1 kg at $19.99 on its US store
3	Spool grams	1000	Net filament on a 1 kg spool
4	Printer price	800	Placeholder, same as both calculators
5	Resale value	150	Placeholder
6	Service years	3	Placeholder
7	Printing hours per year	2190	25% of the year’s 8,760 hours
8	Average watts	80	Prusa’s measured average for its MK-series printers on PLA
9	Electricity price	0.18	U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) residential average: 18.19¢ per kWh, January to July 2026
10	Maintenance per year	100	Placeholder: nozzles, belts, build sheets
11	Labor rate	20	Placeholder, $ per hour
12	Failure rate	0.05	5% of attempts fail
13	Markup	0.3	30% on cost
14	Marketplace fee	0	Share of the sale price the platform keeps
15	Fixed fee per order	0	Per-order charges in dollars
16	Depreciation per hour	=(B4-B5)/(B6*B7)	$0.099 with the defaults
17	Maintenance per hour	=B10/B7	$0.046 with the defaults

Enter the rates in rows 12 to 14 as decimals, or type 5%. Both programs store 5% as 0.05. Prusa puts its printers’ average maintenance interval at about 800 print hours, so 2,190 hours a year means two or three service rounds. Price row 10 from your own parts receipts.

Named cells are optional. Excel names a cell when you type a name in the Name Box. Google Sheets uses Data > Named ranges. The formulas here use $B$ references instead, so they work the moment you paste them.

Step 2: the job columns (row 18 down)

Row 18 holds the headers. You type columns A to D for each print, and E to K calculate.

Column	Header	What goes in it
A	Job	Name of the print
B	Grams	Filament from the slicer, purge and supports included
C	Hours	Print time in decimal hours (2 h 45 min = 2.75)
D	Hands-on minutes	Slicing, plate removal, support removal, packing
E	Filament $	Formula
F	Electricity $	Formula
G	Machine $	Formula: depreciation plus maintenance
H	Labor $	Formula
I	Failure allowance	Formula
J	Cost	Formula
K	Price	Formula

Step 3: the formulas (row 19)

Paste these into E19 to K19, select the row and the empty rows below, then press Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on a Mac) to fill down.

E19  =B19*$B$2/$B$3
F19  =$B$8/1000*C19*$B$9
G19  =C19*($B$16+$B$17)
H19  =D19/60*$B$11
I19  =(E19+F19+G19)*$B$12/(1-$B$12)
J19  =SUM(E19:I19)
K19  =J19*(1+$B$13)/(1-$B$14)+$B$15

The failure allowance adds f / (1 - f) extra attempts per good part, about 5.3% at a 5% failure rate. Labor stays out of it because you slice and finish a part once, however many attempts the printer takes. The price divides by (1 - fee) because a platform takes its share of the final price, markup included.

The formulas use only arithmetic and SUM, which behave the same in both programs. Format E to K as currency instead of rounding inside the formulas, so the cost total never drifts by a cent. To round the price up to the next cent, wrap K in ROUNDUP(…,2). Excel and Google Sheets both take the number, then the decimal places.

Worked row: checking the sheet against the calculator

Row 19 with the defaults returns a $6.28 cost and an $8.16 price. Fed the same inputs, the print cost calculator returns both figures to the cent, because it runs the same six lines of math.

Cell	Arithmetic	Result
E19 Filament	100 g × $20 / 1,000 g	$2.00
F19 Electricity	80 W / 1,000 × 5 h × $0.18	$0.07
G19 Machine	5 h × ($650 / 6,570 h + $100 / 2,190 h) = 5 × $0.1446	$0.72
H19 Labor	10 min / 60 × $20	$3.33
I19 Failure	$2.795 × 0.05 / 0.95	$0.15
J19 Cost	sum of E to I	$6.28
K19 Price	$6.275 × 1.3 / (1 - 0) + $0	$8.16

Two ways to confirm it:

• Against the print cost calculator. Open the print cost calculator with this sheet’s machine figures (printer $650 after resale, 6,570 lifetime hours, $0.0457 maintenance per hour). It shows $6.28 and $8.16.
• Against its own default example. Set resale to 0, service years to 1, printing hours to 5000 and maintenance to 250. Rows 16 and 17 become $0.16 and $0.05, the calculator’s defaults, and row 19 returns its $6.62 cost and $8.61 price.

The machine cells also match the printer hourly rate calculator: $0.10 depreciation, $0.05 maintenance and $0.01 electricity per hour. Set its overhead and hands-on time to 0 and it shows the same $0.16 per machine-hour.

3D printing cost spreadsheet template (CSV)

Copy this comma-separated values (CSV) block into a plain-text file, save it as print-costs.csv and open it. The row order matters, because the formulas point at row numbers, so do not add blank lines.

Setting,Value,Unit
Spool price,20,$ per spool
Spool grams,1000,g per spool
Printer price,800,$
Resale value,150,$ at end of service
Service years,3,years
Printing hours per year,2190,h (25% of the year)
Average watts,80,W while printing
Electricity price,0.18,$ per kWh
Maintenance per year,100,$
Labor rate,20,$ per hour
Failure rate,0.05,share of attempts
Markup,0.3,share of cost
Marketplace fee,0,share of sale price
Fixed fee per order,0,$ per order
Depreciation per hour,=(B4-B5)/(B6*B7),$ per print hour
Maintenance per hour,=B10/B7,$ per print hour
Job,Grams,Hours,Hands-on minutes,Filament $,Electricity $,Machine $,Labor $,Failure allowance,Cost,Price
Sample part,100,5,10,=B19*$B$2/$B$3,=$B$8/1000*C19*$B$9,=C19*($B$16+$B$17),=D19/60*$B$11,=(E19+F19+G19)*$B$12/(1-$B$12),=SUM(E19:I19),=J19*(1+$B$13)/(1-$B$14)+$B$15

• Excel. Open the file with File > Open. Excel reads any cell that starts with = as a formula. Then save it as an .xlsx workbook, because a CSV keeps no currency formats.
• Google Sheets. Use File > Import > Upload and leave “Convert text to numbers, dates, and formulas” ticked. It is ticked by default.

None of the formulas contain a comma, so the CSV needs no quoting. If you add a ROUNDUP, wrap that whole field in double quotes.

Where the grams and hours come from

Your slicer reports both numbers after slicing. Copy them into columns B and C.

• Bambu Studio. The preview lists filament length and weight for the model, flushing and the prime tower, and print time by line type. Put the total grams, flushing included, in column B. Flushed plastic still comes off your spool.
• PrusaSlicer. The print time estimate appears in the G-code preview after slicing. Weight in grams appears only once the filament profile has a density; without one you get volume instead.
• OrcaSlicer. The wiki lists total_weight (grams) and print_time among the placeholders allowed in the export filename. A filename format such as {input_filename_base}_{total_weight}g_{print_time}.gcode writes both figures into every file name.

Convert minutes to decimal hours before typing: 1 h 15 min is 1.25 and 6 h 40 min is 6.67.

Turning the cost sheet into a price sheet

Rows 13 to 15 turn the cost into a price. For a US Etsy shop, enter 0.095 as the marketplace fee: Etsy’s 6.5% transaction fee plus 3% payment processing. Enter 0.45 as the fixed fee: the 25-cent processing charge plus the 20-cent listing fee. The worked row then prices at $6.275 × 1.3 / 0.905 + $0.45 = $9.46. Offsite Ads fees are not included.

Two optional columns help when you sell:

L19  Cost per gram       =J19/B19
M19  Profit after fees   =K19*(1-$B$14)-$B$15-J19

With the defaults, L19 is 6.3 cents a gram and M19 is $1.88. For a single job without a spreadsheet, the print cost calculator runs the same math and saves your inputs in its link. The filament cost calculator compares spool prices per kilogram before you fill in row 2.