3D Printing Cost Calculator
Cost of a print from the slicer’s grams or filament length, spool price, printer power and tariff, depreciation, failures, labour, markup — filament or resin.
Material, electricity, machine, labour and failure allowance per print with each line’s share, the cost and selling price per print and for the quantity — every rate yours.
Example: 85 g of a 22-per-kg spool, 6.5 h at 120 W and 0.18 per kWh, a 400 printer over 5 000 h, 20 min of labour at 30 and a 10 % failure rate: 14.36 per print, 20.10 with 40 % markup.
Every rate is yours;
the arithmetic is here.
How each cost line is built, what the failure allowance means, and why labour usually dominates.
Material and power
Material is the slicer's estimate in grams (or resin in millilitres) as a share of the spool or bottle you paid for; a filament length is converted with π(d/2)² × density, so a 1.75 mm PLA spool at 1.24 g/cm³ gives about 3 g per metre — take the density from the spool's datasheet. Electricity is the printer's average draw over the print time at your tariff; a heated bed makes the average much higher than the idle figure.
Machine, labour and failures
Depreciation spreads the printer price over the hours you expect from it; maintenance spreads a yearly budget for nozzles, belts, FEP film and the like over the hours you print per year. Labour is set-up, support removal and finishing at your rate — on small parts it is often the largest line. A failure rate f means 1/(1 − f) attempts per good part on average, so the allowance is subtotal × (1/(1 − f) − 1).
Pricing
Markup is applied to the full cost per print; quantity multiplies both cost and price without any volume discount. The slicer's weight and time are estimates — weigh a finished part and time the job for the real figures. Nothing leaves the browser; the same four anonymous usage counts as the rest of the site apply.
SOURCES
- Material = grams ÷ spool size × price (or length × π(d/2)² × density); electricity = W × h ÷ 1 000 × tariff; depreciation = printer price ÷ life hours × hours; failures = subtotal × (1/(1 − f) − 1)
Last reviewed 22 September 2026. How results are checked: How we verify.