3D Print Job Cost Calculator

Have you ever wanted to figure out how much a print costs? Or how much you should charge someone for a print? It’s actually quite a complex question. To provide some help, we’ve put together this easy-to-use online calculator. It includes the basic factors that are pretty easy to obtain, and gives you a reasonable cost calculation.

Using the calculator is easy: just go through the data boxes below, and fill in the appropriate information. You will get a lot of the information from the slicing software’s report on the print job, but you’ll also have to make a few guesses about the future of your equipment.

Both resin and filament 3D printers will work with this calculator, as long as you’re able to obtain the weight of material used in the job. FFF slicers typically report weight, but sometimes resin slicers report material consumption in ml. A rough approach to convert ml to grams is to consider them equivalent.

IMPORTANT: several fields ask for prices. The currency doesn’t matter, but just be sure to use the same currency in each of these fields.

If you have any suggestions for improving this calculator, please contact us.

3D Print Job Cost Calculator


This is the weight of the print, including support material, as reported by your slicing software

This is the price per kg of material. Note that if you purchased less or more than a kilo, calculate the per kg instead of using your purchase price. For example, the price per kg of a 750g spool would be the price divided by 0.750. Be sure to include the cost of taxes and shipping costs

The estimated duration of the print job as reported by the slicing software. This may differ somewhat from actual print time, but this is a number you can easily recreate as evidence in a potential dispute, and the difference won’t affect the calculation very much

Your cost of electricity being used to run the printer. Use the same monetary units throughout this form, so if your rate is 10 cents per kWh, put in 0.10, not “10”

The acquisition cost of the 3D printer performing this job. Be sure to include the cost of taxes and shipping costs, and use the same monetary unit as above

The watts being consumed by the 3D printer. If you do not have appropriate electrical measuring gear, you can use the machine’s power supply rating. It will be higher than what’s actually consumed, but good enough for this price estimate: the power consumption component is ususally very small. You can usually find this information on a regulatory stamp on the machine or in its documentation

Make a guess as to how many years you expect to keep running this machine before it is retired or permanently breaks down

Make a guess as to how many hours per day on average you will use the machine over its entire lifetime

Make a guess as to how much of the original purchase price you expect to spend on repairs for this 3D printer, as a percent of its original cost. A 100% factor means you expect to spend the same amount repairing the machine as it was to acquire it

What is your hourly chargeout rate? This is to account for your time operating the machine. Enter “0” if you aren’t charging for your time. Use the same monetary units as above

How many minutes will you spend setting up the print job? Consider the time spent to prepare the job in slicing software, but not machine operations, because operations can happen more than once

How many minutes will you spend setting up the print job? Consider not only time for pressing printer buttons, but also the time to job setup in slicing software and dispatch to the machine

How many minutes will you spend cleaning up the completed print? This includes not only removing the print, but cleaning up surfaces, support structures, painting, assembly or any other manual labor done to the freshly printed parts to make them complete

Make a guess as to how many print jobs will fail on average. If one out of ten jobs tends to fail, then use 10 percent

What markup over your costs do you require for this job? Use zero if no profit is required, use 100% if you want the final price to be double your cost to produce the item

How many of these jobs will be run?

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