3D print profit calculator
What it really costs to print, finish and ship one item, and the price you need to make it worth your time. Includes the line most calculators skip: your labour.
How the numbers are calculated
Filament = grams used × (spool price ÷ spool weight). Electricity = watts ÷ 1000 × print hours × price per kWh. Printer wear = printer cost ÷ lifetime print-hours × print hours. These three are per plate and get divided by parts per plate.
Failed prints multiply the production cost by 1 ÷ (1 − failure rate). At 5%, every good print carries about 5% extra. Your time is post-processing minutes at your hourly rate, per unit, and it is not divided by parts per plate.
Fees are the channel's fixed fees plus its percentage fees applied to the item price and any shipping you charge the buyer, which is how Etsy bills them. Margin is profit divided by the sale price. Target prices are solved exactly, including the fees that scale with price.
Questions
- How is the cost of a 3D print calculated?
- Filament is grams used times the price per gram of your spool. Electricity is the printer's average wattage times print hours times your kWh price. Printer wear is the printer's price spread over its expected print-hours. Failed prints spread the cost of failures over the good ones. Then add your post-processing time at your hourly rate, packaging, shipping and marketplace fees.
- What margin should I aim for on 3D printed products?
- Sellers we studied treat 40% as the floor and most run around 60%. Below 40%, one failed batch or a shipping price change wipes out the profit. The calculator shows the sale price you need for both.
- Why does labour matter so much?
- A 10 hour print at 100 W costs about 15 cents of electricity, but five minutes of support removal and packing at €15/h costs €1.25. Your time is usually the largest single line, and most calculators leave it out entirely.
- What are Etsy's fees for a 3D printed item?
- By default the calculator uses a €0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee on the item price plus shipping, and payment processing at 4% + €0.30. All of these are editable, and you can pick Shopify, eBay, craft fair or direct sales instead.
- How does the market check work?
- Pick a category under The sale. The calculator then shows the median and middle-half price range for that category from the 3D Print Index samples: a daily Etsy search sample and the catalogues of tracked Shopify stores. Prices are shown in the currency each source reported and are never converted.
- Is this calculator free?
- Yes. There is no account and nothing is stored. Your inputs live in the page URL, so you can bookmark or send a configuration to someone else.
Fee presets change; check your channel's current rates.