Resin print cost calculator: resin, IPA and wear per print

The formula

The calculator adds four lines, plus electricity and extras if you enter them. Each line is a price spread over what it buys.

price per mL  = bottle price / bottle mL                   (bottle sold by volume)
              = bottle price x density / bottle grams      (bottle sold by weight)
resin         = mL used x (1 + extra share) x price per mL
washing       = price of one IPA fill / prints per fill
release film  = film price / film life in layers x layers in the print
LCD screen    = screen price / screen life in hours x print hours
electricity   = watts / 1000 x print hours x price per kWh

cost per print = resin + washing + film + screen + electricity + other

Slicers report resin in milliliters, but Elegoo, Anycubic and Siraya Tech sell it by the kilogram. Density links the two. Siraya Tech’s data sheet gives 1.1 g/mL for its Fast resin, and Anycubic lists 1.05 to 1.25 g/cm³ for Standard Resin V2. At 1.1 g/mL, a 1 kg bottle holds about 909 mL.

How do you calculate the cost of a resin print?

Divide the bottle price by the milliliters it holds, then multiply by the milliliters your slicer reports, supports included. Then add each print’s share of the wash liquid, release film and LCD screen. With this page’s defaults, 50 mL from a $19.99, 1 kg bottle costs $1.10 in resin and $1.43 with film and screen wear, before washing.

Worked example with the defaults

Line	Inputs	Cost
Resin	50 mL at $19.99 x 1.1 / 1,000 g = $0.022 per mL	$1.10
Washing	$35 gallon of IPA over your own prints per fill (blank by default)	$0.00
Release film	$6 sheet over 60,000 layers, for 1,000 layers	$0.10
LCD screen	$114.99 screen over 2,000 hours, for 4 hours	$0.23
Cost per print		$1.43

That is 2.9 cents per milliliter printed, of which resin is 2.2 cents. The print itself (50 mL, 1,000 layers, 4 hours) is an example: use your slicer’s figures. The prices come from:

• Resin: Elegoo’s US store lists Standard Resin V2.0 at $19.99 for 1 kg.
• Film: Elegoo sells five PFA release films for its Saturn printers for $30, so $6 a sheet. It rates them for up to 60,000 releases, one per layer.
• Screen: Elegoo’s US store lists the Saturn 4 and Saturn 4 Ultra LCD screen at $114.99. The maker states a lifespan of up to 2,000 hours.
• IPA (isopropyl alcohol): Uline sells 99% IPA at $140 for a carton of four 1-gallon bottles, $35 a gallon.

The film and screen lives are the makers’ upper figures, so real wear can cost more per print. Screen wear here counts every print hour, which slightly overstates it because the UV light is on only during exposures.

Prints per fill of IPA

No maker publishes how many prints a fill of IPA cleans, so the field starts blank and washing adds nothing until you enter your own count. At $35 a gallon, a fill that cleans 20 prints adds $1.75 to each one, and a fill that cleans 100 adds $0.35. Formlabs says to replace IPA once dissolved resin reaches 10% of it, which its Form Wash hydrometer shows. By that rule, a gallon (3.8 L) holds about 380 mL of dissolved resin before it needs changing. If you wash water-washable resin in tap water, set the fill price to 0.

When the slicer gives grams or the resin comes in liters

Switch “Slicer reports” to grams and the calculator divides by the density: 55 g at 1.1 g/mL is 50 mL. For cartridges sold by volume, such as Formlabs resin, set “Bottle size is in” to milliliters and enter 1000 for a 1 L cartridge.

A Formlabs Form 4 uses a resin tank instead of a loose film. Enter the tank’s $119 store price as the film price and 75,000 as its life in layers. Formlabs states that a Form 4 tank exceeds 75,000 layers, about 190 prints of a 39 mm part at 100 µm layers.

Electricity

Electricity adds at most about 11 cents to a 4-hour print. Elegoo lists the Saturn 4 Ultra’s power requirement as 24 V at 6 A, so it draws no more than 144 W. Four hours at that maximum is 0.58 kWh. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts the July 2026 average residential price at 18.31 cents per kWh. Enter your printer’s average draw to add the line.

How much does 3D printer resin cost?

Standard and ABS-like resin from Elegoo, Anycubic and Siraya Tech cost $16.50 to $27.37 per kilogram on their US stores on October 12, 2026. That is about $18 to $30 per liter at 1.1 g/mL. Formlabs cartridges cost more: Grey Resin V5 is $79 for 1 L, or $65 per liter in the 5 L size.

Resin	Bottle	Store price	Per kg	Per liter
Elegoo ABS-Like Resin V3.0	1 kg	$17.99	$17.99	$19.79
Elegoo Standard Resin V2.0	1 kg	$19.99	$19.99	$21.99
Elegoo Standard Resin V2.0	2 kg	$32.99	$16.50	$18.14
Anycubic Standard Resin V2	1 kg	$23.99	$23.99	$26.39
Siraya Tech Fast ABS-like, grey	1 kg	$27.37	$27.37	$30.11
Siraya Tech Fast ABS-like, grey	2 kg	$53.03	$26.52	$29.17
Formlabs Grey Resin V5	1 L	$79.00		$79.00
Formlabs Grey Resin V5	5 L	$325.00		$65.00

Prices are before shipping and tax. Per-liter figures for bottles sold by weight assume 1.1 g/mL. Anycubic showed its price as marked down from $34.99 and Siraya Tech from $36.99, so check the current price and enter what you pay. Specialty resins cost more: Siraya Tech’s Tenacious 65D flexible resin was $44.20 per kg on the same day.

Is resin printing more expensive than filament?

Per kilogram, not always: Elegoo’s Standard Resin V2.0 and Polymaker’s PolyLite PLA both list at $19.99. Per print, usually yes. Resin adds wash liquid, release film and screen wear, and resin parts print solid. With the defaults, a 50 mL resin print costs $1.43 before washing, while the same volume of solid PLA uses $1.24 of filament.

The PLA figure uses the 1.24 g/cm³ density on Bambu Lab’s PLA Basic data sheet: 50 mL weighs 62 g, which costs $1.24 at $19.99 per kg. Per cubic centimeter, the two materials cost about the same, 2.2 cents for the resin and 2.5 cents for PLA. Resin is less dense, so a kilogram of it fills more volume.

The gap comes from the rest of the bill. In the worked example, film and screen wear add $0.33 to $1.10 of resin, and washing comes on top. A fused deposition modeling (FDM) print of the same shape usually has sparse infill, so it uses less than its solid volume and its filament line would be lower still. Two things narrow the gap:

• Hollowing. Slicers can hollow a resin model and add drain holes, which cuts the milliliters a large solid part uses.
• Full plates. Parts printed together share one wash, so a full build plate of small parts cuts the washing cost per part.

For the full cost of an FDM print, with printer wear, labor and failures, use the print cost calculator. The failed print cost calculator shows what a failure rate adds per good part.