Cost
How much does 3D printing cost? Three bills, line by line
A 20 g part and a 500 g part look like the same job with a bigger number. The material cost is — the labour is not. Here are three complete cost sheets built from this site's dated dataset: material, electricity, machine hours and the prints that fail.
The three scenarios
All three are PLA on an entry printer (125 W measured draw) at the US average $0.1831/kWh, with 10% failures and a 30% margin. Hours come from the site's volumetric model: 0.2 mm layers, 0.45 mm wide, 60 mm/s, plus 15% overhead.
| Part | Material | Electricity | Machine time | Subtotal | Failures | Cost / price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small part 20 g · a bracket, a phone stand, a replacement knob | $14.99/kg × 20 g $0.30 | 125 W × 1.0 h $0.022 | $0.0384/h × 1.0 h $0.04 | $0.36 | $0.04 at 10% | $0.40 price $0.57 |
| Medium part 100 g · a 150 mm enclosure, a lamp shade, a drone frame | $14.99/kg × 100 g $1.50 | 125 W × 4.8 h $0.109 | $0.0384/h × 4.8 h $0.18 | $1.79 | $0.20 at 10% | $1.99 price $2.84 |
| Large part 500 g · a full helmet shell, a printer part, a cosplay piece | $14.99/kg × 500 g $7.50 | 125 W × 23.9 h $0.546 | $0.0384/h × 23.9 h $0.92 | $8.96 | $1.00 at 10% | $9.95 price $14.22 |
Cost per good unit and the price that keeps a 30% margin. Parameters checked 2026-10-23.
What the three bills actually say
Every line scales with grams and hours, so the ratios are identical at all three sizes: the price is 90% above the filament cost whether the part weighs 20 g or 500 g, and electricity is 6.1% of the subtotal in every row. The difference between a small and a large job does not come from material or electricity at all.
It comes from what is not in the table: your hands. Ten minutes of handling at $20/h is $3.33 — 9.3 times the entire subtotal of the 20 g part, but only 37% of the 500 g one. That single line decides which jobs are worth taking, and it is why the pricing guide spends more words on labour than on filament.
The other difference is time: the 500 g part ties the machine up for 24 hours — a full day of production — for $0.60 of revenue per machine hour. Capacity, not material, is the scarce resource in a one-printer workshop.
Run your own numbers
The table above fixes five inputs. Change any of them here — the calculator is the same engine that produced it, and the failure line stays a visible row rather than a hidden multiplier.
The commercial view
A cost is not a price. On a 100 g part, $1.99 of cost at a 30% margin becomes $2.84; add a 10% marketplace fee and the list price has to be $3.16 to hold that margin. The arithmetic is on how to price 3D prints, with a quote sheet you can download.
Failure rates — what people actually measure and what each point costs — are on failure rates; five countries of real electricity prices are on electricity cost. Labour fields, other currencies and other printer tiers live in the full 3D printing cost calculator.