Agents HQHow to price 3D prints
A good 3D printing price covers everything the print uses up, then adds profit on top. Pricing by weight alone is the most common mistake: two prints with the same grams can take 2 hours or 12. The calculator above adds six costs together:
- Material: grams used ÷ 1000 × what you paid per kg. Take the grams from your slicer, including supports, brims and purge.
- Machine time: print hours × a machine rate. The rate pays the printer back and covers nozzles, build plates, belts and repairs. A simple way to set it: (printer price + expected repair costs) ÷ the hours you expect it to print in its life. For example, a $600 printer you expect to run 3,000 hours, with $300 of parts along the way, works out to $0.30 an hour.
- Electricity: hours × average watts ÷ 1000 × your price per kWh. It's usually small for PLA but adds up on long prints with a heated enclosure.
- Failure allowance: some prints fail. If one in ten has to be redone, add 10% to the material, machine and electricity cost.
- Labor: the minutes you actually spend: slicing, starting the job, removing supports, sanding, painting and packing, at your hourly rate. Don't count time the printer runs on its own; that's machine time.
- Markup: profit on top of total cost. Custom one-off work usually carries more markup than a product you print in batches.
Worked example
The default numbers above: an 85 g print in $20/kg PLA ($1.70 of material), 5 hours at $0.30 an hour ($1.50), 120 W at $0.16 per kWh (about $0.10 of electricity), a 10% failure allowance ($0.33), and 15 minutes of hands-on time at $20 an hour ($5.00). That's a total cost of $8.63. With a 50% markup, the suggested price is $12.94, or about $4.31 profit per print.
Notice that labor is the biggest line. For small prints, the minutes you spend handling the job often matter more than the filament.
Pricing tips
- Set a minimum order price. Tiny prints still need slicing, a plate change and packing. A minimum covers that.
- Charge for design separately. Modeling a custom part is skilled work. Quote it as its own line, not hidden in the print price.
- Add fees after the price. Marketplace fees, payment processing and shipping come on top of the suggested price above.
- Offer quantity pricing. Batches share setup time, so per-piece labor drops. Re-run the calculator with labor per piece for a batch.
- Check the market. Your cost sets the floor. What similar items sell for tells you how much room there is above it.
Quote faster with the Print Estimator agent
Agents HQ for 3D printing businesses includes a Print Estimator agent. Put your material cost, machine rate and markup in About your business, then send it a slicer summary or screenshot. It builds a clear quote that shows the math, a price range and its assumptions. The Quote Responder replies to custom print requests, the Listing Writer writes product listings, and a 3D Designer builds printable models in the built-in 3D Workshop. Everything runs on your Windows PC for a one-time price of $49.99 (first 50 customers, then $79.99).