- Material is usually the smallest cost on a print. Your time and the printer's hours are what you are really selling.
- Failed prints are a real cost. Divide by the share of prints that succeed so every good part carries its share of the failures.
- Charge a setup fee or a minimum so a one-off part pays for the slicing, file fixes and test print it needs.
The 3D print cost formula
A printed part costs you five things. The calculator adds them up, then puts your markup on top.
- Material. Grams ÷ 1,000 × your price per kg. Use the slicer's estimate, which includes supports, brim and purge.
- Machine wear. Printer price ÷ the print hours you expect from it × print hours. This is what pays for the next printer.
- Electricity. Watts ÷ 1,000 × price per kWh × print hours.
- Failed prints. (Material + machine) × failure rate ÷ (1 − failure rate).
- Labor. Hands-on minutes ÷ 60 × your hourly rate: slicing, starting the job, removal, support cleanup, sanding, packing.
Price per part = cost per part × (1 + markup). The order adds the setup fee, raises a small order to your minimum, and adds rush last.
The starting example is a 50 g PLA part that prints in 3 hours on an $800 printer you expect 5,000 print hours from, drawing 150 W, with 15 minutes of hands-on time at $30 an hour, 10% failures and a 50% markup.
| Cost | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Material | 50 ÷ 1,000 × $15.99 | $0.80 |
| Machine wear | $800 ÷ 5,000 × 3 hrs | $0.48 |
| Electricity | 150 ÷ 1,000 × $0.1453 × 3 hrs | $0.07 |
| Failed prints | $1.34 × 10% ÷ 90% | $0.15 |
| Labor | 15 ÷ 60 × $30 | $7.50 |
| Cost per part | $8.99 | |
| Price with 50% markup | $8.99 × 1.5 | $13.49 |
Labor is 83% of the cost here. That is normal for small parts, and it is why a quote built only from grams of plastic comes out far too low.
Material cost per gram
Your price per kg is the spool price ÷ the spool weight. For resin, the bottle price ÷ the bottle weight. Count shipping if you pay it.
Two listed prices as a reference: Bambu Lab lists PLA Basic at $15.99 for a 1 kg roll, and Prusa lists Prusament PLA at $29.99 for a 1 kg spool. That is about 1.6 to 3 cents a gram. Engineering filaments, resins and powders cost more, and specialty filaments like carbon fill or silk can cost much more. The calculator starts at $15.99; change it to what you paid.
Weigh the purge and supports too. On a multi-color print, the purge waste can weigh more than the part. The slicer's total filament figure includes it, so use that number rather than the part's own weight.
Machine time: wear and electricity
Every print hour wears the printer: nozzles, belts, build plates, fans and eventually the whole machine. The calculator spreads the printer's price over the hours you expect it to print. An $800 printer over 5,000 hours is 16 cents an hour. A $4,000 resin or industrial printer over the same hours is 80 cents.
Electricity is usually small. EIA's US average for July 2026 was 14.53 cents a kWh for business customers and 18.31 cents for homes. At 150 W, a 3 hour print uses 0.45 kWh, about 7 cents at the business rate. A heated enclosure or a large bed draws more; a plug-in power meter tells you yours.
If you run a print farm, the wear figure is where the profit hides. More printers running at once means each hour of your labor feeds more machine hours, and the machine rate is what pays them off.
Failed prints and why you divide
Some prints fail: a spaghetti mess, a warped corner, a layer shift at hour six. The plastic and the machine time are gone either way, so the good parts have to pay for them.
The calculator divides by the share that succeeds. With 10% failures, every 10 prints started give 9 good ones, so each good part carries one ninth of a failed print on top of its own cost. That is (material + machine) × 10% ÷ 90%.
| Failure rate | Extra on material and machine |
|---|---|
| 2% | 2.0% |
| 5% | 5.3% |
| 10% | 11.1% |
| 20% | 25% |
Labor is left out of the failure math on purpose. A failed print usually costs you a restart, not the full cleanup and packing time. If your failures cost real rework, raise the hands-on minutes instead.
Markup, setup fees and minimum orders
The markup is what turns a cost into a business. It pays for the hours you spend on quotes that do not close, design help, customer messages and growth. The calculator starts at 50%; set it from what your market pays and what your shop needs.
Markup and margin are not the same. A 50% markup on cost leaves a 33% margin on the price. The markup calculator converts between them.
- Setup fee. File checks, repairing a broken model, orienting and slicing, and a test print. Charge it once per order so a one-off part pays for it and a run of 50 spreads it thin.
- Minimum order. A floor for the whole order. The calculator adds a "Minimum order" line only when the order is under it.
- Rush. A share added when the customer jumps your queue. Applied last.
For quantity runs, batch parts on one plate. One setup and one removal for 12 parts lowers the hands-on minutes per part, and the calculator shows how much the price can drop.
Send the quote
Press Save as an estimate and Koira opens a draft with the parts line in the per part unit, plus your setup fee and minimum. Customers can upload STL, STEP and other files through your quote form, so the file and the price live on the same job. When the parts are printed, Koira texts the customer that they are ready, with a link to pay the invoice.
To see what your time should be worth across the whole shop, run the labor rate calculator once and use that figure as the labor rate here.
Last checked October 10, 2026.
More free tools like this one: Break-even calculator.
Shane Allen writes Koira's guides for trade business owners. How we check our numbers.