3D print cost calculator: filament, electricity, wear and labor

The formula

The calculator adds six lines. Each one uses numbers from your slicer, spool label, power bill or printer receipt.

filament      = grams used x spool price / grams on the spool
electricity   = average watts / 1000 x print hours x price per kWh
depreciation  = printer price / expected lifetime hours x print hours
maintenance   = maintenance cost per print hour x print hours
labor         = hands-on minutes / 60 x your hourly rate
failures      = (filament + electricity + depreciation + maintenance) x f / (1 - f)

cost per print = sum of the six lines
cost per gram  = cost per print / grams used
selling price  = cost per print x (1 + markup) / (1 - marketplace fee)

Here f is your failure rate as a fraction. At a 5% failure rate you make 1 / 0.95 = 1.053 attempts per good part, so each good part carries 5.3% extra material and machine time. Labor is left out of the failure line because you slice and finish a part once, however many attempts the printer takes.

The marketplace fee is divided out, not added on. A platform that keeps 10% of the sale price takes 10% of the marked-up price, so the price has to be grossed up for the markup to survive.

How much does it cost to 3D print something?

A 100 g PLA part that prints in 5 hours costs about $6.62 with this page’s defaults: $2.00 of filament, 7 cents of electricity, $1.05 of printer wear and maintenance, $3.33 of labor and 16 cents for failures. Leave your time out and the same part costs about $3.29, or 3.3 cents per gram.

The worked example behind the defaults

Line	Inputs	Cost
Filament	100 g of a $20, 1,000 g spool	$2.00
Electricity	80 W for 5 h = 0.4 kWh at $0.18	$0.07
Depreciation	$800 printer over 5,000 h, for 5 h	$0.80
Maintenance	$0.05 per hour for 5 h	$0.25
Labor	10 minutes at $20 an hour	$3.33
Failure allowance	5% failure rate on $3.12 of material and machine time	$0.16
Cost per print		$6.62
Suggested price	30% markup, no marketplace fee	$8.61

The spool price, printer price, lifetime, labor rate and failure rate are placeholders. Replace them with your own figures. The wattage and the electricity price are sourced below.

Cost per gram

Cost per gram is total cost divided by grams printed. The example comes to 6.6 cents per gram with labor and 3.3 cents without. Filament alone is 2 cents per gram on a $20 spool. So a “per gram” price that only covers filament misses more than a third of the cost before you count a minute of your time.

What goes into the cost of a 3D print?

Six things: filament, electricity, printer depreciation, maintenance, labor and failed attempts. Prusa Research’s costing guide groups them into four: material, manpower, printer operation (depreciation plus electricity) and a margin that absorbs failures. For most desktop prints, filament and labor are the two biggest lines.

Cost	What drives it	Typical share
Filament	Grams used and spool price	Largest line when labor is excluded
Electricity	Watts, hours, tariff	Usually the smallest line
Depreciation	Printer price divided by its working life	Grows with print time
Maintenance	Nozzles, belts, build sheets, servicing	Grows with print time
Labor	Slicing, plate removal, supports, packing	Often the largest line on small parts
Failures	Share of attempts thrown away	Scales everything above except labor

Filament cost vs machine time cost

Filament cost follows the part’s mass. Machine time cost (electricity, depreciation and maintenance) follows the print’s duration. A dense, fast part is mostly filament. A tall, detailed part with fine layers spends hours laying down little plastic, so machine time can catch up with filament. The calculator shows both so you can see which one to cut. If machine time dominates your jobs, price by the hour instead of by the gram. The printer hourly rate calculator works out that rate.

Is 3D printing cheaper than buying the part?

Compare the store price with this page’s cost per print, labor included. For a small bracket or knob, the cost here often comes to a few dollars, which you can set against the shop price plus shipping. The comparison turns against printing when the part needs many hours of your time, several failed attempts, or a strength or finish that a molded part already has.

How do you calculate machine depreciation per print?

Divide the printer’s price by the print hours you expect before replacing it, then multiply by the print’s hours. An $800 printer over 5,000 print hours costs 16 cents per hour, so a 5-hour print carries 80 cents of depreciation. Subtract any resale value from the price first.

1. Take the purchase price, including any upgrades you bought to run it.
2. Subtract what you expect to sell it for at the end, if anything.
3. Pick an expected lifetime in print hours. This is your estimate, not a published figure: think in years of use multiplied by hours printed per year.
4. Divide to get depreciation per print hour.
5. Multiply by the print’s hours.

A shorter lifetime makes each print carry more of the machine. Prusa’s costing guide takes that approach: it recovers the printer’s price over six months of continuous running (4,392 hours) instead of its full working life. Use a short window if you want the printer paid off fast. Use a long one if it is a hobby machine that happens to sell a few prints.

Maintenance per hour

Prusa’s FAQ puts the average maintenance interval of its printers at around 800 print hours, with the nozzle the part most often replaced. Say a service round costs $40 in parts. Spread over 800 hours, that comes to $0.05 per print hour, the calculator’s default.

How do you include electricity in a print’s cost?

Multiply the printer’s average draw in kilowatts by the print hours, then by your price per kWh. At 80 W for 5 hours the printer uses 0.4 kWh. At the U.S. average residential price of about 18 cents per kWh, that print costs 7 cents in electricity.

Both default numbers are sourced:

• 80 W. Prusa measured an average of 80 W on its MK-series printers printing generic PLA at 26 °C room temperature, and 120 W for generic ABS. Your printer’s draw depends on its bed size, bed temperature and enclosure. Treat the power supply rating as a ceiling. The average is far lower because the heaters cycle.
• $0.18 per kWh. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports an average residential price of 18.16 cents per kWh for January through June 2026, and 18.34 cents for June 2026 alone. State prices differ widely, so enter the rate on your own bill.

Electricity is usually the smallest line. It matters more for long prints, heated enclosures and printers with large beds. The electricity cost calculator breaks the draw down by heater and phase.

How much should you charge for a 3D print?

Charge at least the full cost per print, labor and failures included. Add your markup, then gross the result up for any marketplace fee. With the defaults, a $6.62 cost and a 30% markup give $8.61. A 10% marketplace fee lifts that to $9.56.

A pricing formula for sellers

price = cost per print x (1 + markup) / (1 - fee share)

Markup is your decision. It covers your time on listings, messages and returns, plus your profit. The calculator’s 30% is a starting value to adjust, not a market rate.

Pricing prints for Etsy

Etsy charges sellers several fees per sale: a listing fee, a transaction fee on the order total and a payment processing fee. Rates vary by country. Add up the percentage fees from Etsy’s current fee schedule and enter the total as the marketplace fee. Fixed fees, shipping and packaging are not percentages, so add them to the price after the calculation.

For a US shop, Etsy’s fee policy sets the transaction fee at 6.5% and payment processing at 3% plus 25 cents. That makes 9.5% to enter as the marketplace fee. With the defaults, the $8.61 price becomes $9.51. Add the 25-cent processing charge and the 20-cent listing fee on top, for $9.96.

Two more fees can apply:

• Offsite Ads. When a sale comes through an Etsy ad on another site, Etsy charges a further 15% of that order, capped at $100. The rate drops to 12% once a shop has sold $10,000 or more in the past year. A shop in the program can enter 24.5% to cover the worst case.
• Fees on shipping and tax. The transaction fee also applies to what you charge for delivery. The processing fee applies to the whole order, tax and postage included. Price shipping with both fees in mind.

Etsy updates these rates from time to time. Check its fee policy before you set prices for a new listing.

Setting up a print cost spreadsheet

To track every job, give each print one row and these columns: grams, hours, spool price per kg, watts, tariff, depreciation per hour, maintenance per hour, labor minutes, labor rate, failure rate, markup and fee. Put the formulas from the top of this page in the result columns. Or skip the spreadsheet: every value you type here is saved in the page address, so a bookmarked link reopens the calculator with your numbers.

Why is the slicer’s cost estimate lower than the real cost?

A slicer’s cost estimate usually covers filament only: it multiplies the grams in the toolpath by the price per kilogram in your filament profile. Unless your profile also adds a machine-time charge, the estimate leaves out electricity, printer wear, maintenance, labor and failed attempts, which here add up to more than twice the filament.

OrcaSlicer, for example, describes its filament price field as “for statistical purposes only”. Three more gaps widen the difference:

• Purge and waste. The slicer counts what its toolpath extrudes, brims and supports included. Plastic lost to a restarted first layer or a manual purge never reaches that total.
• Spool ends. The last few meters of a spool are often too short for a full print. If you throw them away, your real price per gram is higher than the label’s.
• Failures. A print that fails at 80% burns 80% of the material and the machine time. The slicer prices the successful attempt only. The failed print cost calculator works out what your failure rate adds per good part.

Use the slicer’s grams and hours as the inputs here, and let the calculator add the lines the slicer skips.