How much should one 3D print actually cost you to make, and what shop price covers fees and a real margin?
You need six numbers from your slicer and your setup: filament cost per gram, grams used, print hours, your electricity and machine wear, prep time, and the fees of the channel you sell on. From those you get total cost, a minimum price and profit per sale.
A concrete example
Take a small two-colour keychain:
- Filament about 0.019 EUR per gram, 9 g used → material about 0.17 EUR
- 0.6 print hours at 150 W and 0.30 EUR/kWh → energy about 0.03 EUR
- Machine wear (printer price divided by lifetime hours, plus spares) → about 0.12 EUR
- 8 % failure buffer on material and energy → about 0.02 EUR
- 6 minutes of prep and packing at 15 EUR/hour → 1.50 EUR
- Packaging 0.40 EUR
Total cost before fees: about 2.23 EUR.
If you want a 35 % margin and your channel takes about 12.9 % plus 0.50 EUR fixed per sale, the minimum shop price that still hits the margin is about 5.25 EUR. Profit on that sale is about 1.84 EUR, or roughly 2.63 EUR per hour of print-plus-labour time.
Those figures are worked examples, not a quote for your shop. Change the blue input cells and the sheet recalculates.
Free sheet
Download the free Excel LITE (no macros; works in Excel, LibreOffice and Google Sheets):
3D Print Pricing Calculator LITE
It prices one print. Fee values in the example are placeholders: enter your platform's current fees.
When you outgrow one product
If you sell more than a handful of SKUs, you also need stock of filaments, an order log, a print queue and a monthly view of revenue and profit. That is the full 3D Print Shop Profit Kit (24 EUR), also available in German, French and Spanish, and in bundles from 29 EUR.
Related reading: True cost of a 3D print and Which 3D print seller kit do you need?.
Created with AI assistance. Planning examples only, not tax, legal or financial advice. Not affiliated with any printer brand or marketplace.