How much to charge for 3D printed keychains

Charge at least $2.60 for a small PLA keychain on a split ring sold on Etsy, and $2.10 in person. That floor covers 28 cents of materials and 2 minutes of your time at $20 an hour, doubled for profit, plus the fees. At $4, $6 and $8 you keep $3.17, $4.98 and $6.79 after Etsy’s fees.

How much should you charge for 3D printed keychains?

Charge your full cost, times your markup, grossed up for sales fees. A 4 g keychain on a 19-cent split ring, with 2 minutes of handling at $20 an hour and a 100% markup, needs $2.60 on Etsy. Etsy’s fixed 45 cents per sale makes cheap keychains lose the biggest share to fees.

The pricing formula

cost  = filament + electricity + ring + labor
price = (cost x (1 + markup) + fixed fees per sale) / (1 - percentage fees)

For a US Etsy shop the fees are a 20-cent listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing at 3% plus 25 cents. That makes 45 cents fixed and 9.5% of the price. Etsy charges the 20 cents again for each unit sold from a multi-quantity listing, so every keychain sold carries a listing fee.

Worked example, the Cute Bear keychain below on a 3/4-inch split ring:

cost       = $0.08 filament + $0.01 power + $0.19 ring + $0.67 labor = $0.95
x 2        = $1.90  (100% markup)
Etsy price = ($1.90 + $0.45) / (1 - 0.095) = $2.60
check      = $2.60 - $0.45 - 9.5% of $2.60 ($0.25) = $1.90 kept

in person  = ($1.90 + $0.15) / (1 - 0.026) = $2.10 with Square

The markup and the $20 hourly rate are your choices, not market rates. Swap in your own, or run them in the print cost calculator.

What you keep at $4, $6 and $8

Price	Etsy fees	Kept on Etsy	Square fee (in person)	Kept with Square
$4	$0.83 (20.8%)	$3.17	$0.25 (6.4%)	$3.75
$6	$1.02 (17.0%)	$4.98	$0.31 (5.1%)	$5.69
$8	$1.21 (15.1%)	$6.79	$0.36 (4.5%)	$7.64

Square’s Free plan charges 2.6% plus 15 cents to tap, dip or swipe a card, and 3.5% plus 15 cents to key one in. Cash costs nothing to take. Subtract the 28-cent bear-and-ring materials and a $6 Etsy sale leaves $4.70 for your time and profit.

Three more things change the Etsy share:

• Shipping and tax. The transaction fee also applies to the shipping you charge. Payment processing applies to the whole order, tax included.
• Offsite Ads. A sale from an Etsy ad on another site costs a further 15% of the order, or 12% for shops with $10,000 or more in yearly sales.
• Bundles. Three $6 keychains in one order pay $2.56 in fees: $0.60 for listings, $1.71 in percentages and one 25-cent processing charge. That is 14.2% of the order instead of 17.0% for a single keychain.

How much does it cost to 3D print a keychain?

A PLA keychain costs 1 to 15 cents in filament and electricity. Published models weigh 1.5 to 7 g and print in 10 to 58 minutes, so a 4 g keychain uses 8 cents of plastic and 1 cent of power. The ring costs more: 19 cents for a split ring, $2.00 for a lobster clasp.

Cost per keychain from published models

Grams and times are what each designer’s Printables page lists. Filament is priced at 2.0 cents per gram, Polymaker’s $19.99 for a 1 kg spool of PolyLite PLA. Power is Prusa’s measured 80 W average on PLA, at the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) July 2026 residential average of 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

Model	Filament	Print time	Filament cost	Electricity	Total
Keychain name tag, fast-print (Makkuro)	1.5 g	about 10 min	$0.03	$0.002	$0.03
Tiny Hammer, one of a plate of 8 (Maker Space 307)	under 0.63 g	4.4 min	$0.013	$0.001	$0.01
Cute Bear (Eon3D)	4 g	41 min	$0.08	$0.010	$0.09
Keychain Spinner (VC Design)	4 g	29 min	$0.08	$0.007	$0.09
Flexi Rex (sander19)	7 g	58 min	$0.14	$0.014	$0.15

Electricity for the bear: 80 W x 41/60 h = 0.055 kWh, x $0.1831 = 1 cent. The filament cost calculator prices your own spool per gram.

Hardware costs more than the plastic

Hardware	Pack price	Per keychain
Uline 3/4” split ring, bag of 100	$19 ($18 each for 3+ bags)	$0.19
Uline 1” split ring, bag of 100	$22 ($21 each for 3+ bags)	$0.22
Hobby Lobby lobster clasp keychain, pack of 2	$3.99 ($2.39 on sale)	$2.00 ($1.20)

Prices are before shipping and tax. A 4 g bear on a split ring costs $0.28 in materials. On a lobster clasp it costs $2.09, and the $2.60 Etsy price from the formula becomes $6.60.

Batching keychains on one plate

Batching cuts the time per keychain. Maker Space 307 prints its Tiny Hammer as a plate of 8 in about 35 minutes with under 5 g of PLA. That is 4.4 minutes and about 1 cent of material and power per keychain.

A plate also needs one heat-up and one removal, so your handling minutes spread across every piece. That matters because labor is the biggest line in the bear example: at $20 an hour, each minute per keychain adds 33 cents.

Two-color keychains add handling. The name tag’s designer adds a filament change at 2.2 mm for a two-color look, so each plate needs you at the printer mid-print. The electricity cost calculator prices a long plate run if your printer draws more than 80 W.