The 3D Printing Cost Formula: Calculate the Cost of Any Print
Your slicer tells you grams and hours, never money. This is the five-line formula that turns them into a real cost, with sourced June 2026 prices and the one thing no other guide publishes: a total.
DavidUpdated Jun 11, 202611 min readPrices verified Jun 11, 2026
Contents
- The 3D printing cost formula
- Material: about 2 cents per gram
- Electricity: 2 to 4 cents per print-hour
- Machine wear: printer price ÷ 5,000 hours
- Labor: the line that decides whether you profit
- The failure buffer: divide, don't hope
- The whole formula on one real print
- From cost to price, briefly
- Six ways the math goes wrong
- Frequently asked questions
A 100 g PLA part that prints in six hours costs $3.08 to make on a $399 printer, or $8.58 once you bill your own time, at June 2026 prices. To calculate the cost of any 3D print: multiply grams by your price per gram, add electricity (watts × hours × rate), machine wear (printer price ÷ 5,000 hours) and labor, then multiply the lot by a failure buffer. That is the whole method. The rest of this page is each line with current, sourced numbers, because a formula is only as good as what you feed it, and most of what the internet feeds it is from 2020.
The 3D printing cost formula
- Material = grams ÷ 1,000 × spool price per kg × 1.10 (the 10% waste rule)
- Electricity = watts ÷ 1,000 × print hours × price per kWh
- Machine wear = print hours × (printer price ÷ 5,000 hours)
- Labor = hands-on minutes ÷ 60 × your hourly rate
- True cost = (line 1 + 2 + 3 + 4) × failure buffer: 1.1 for a tuned machine printing PLA, up to 1.3 for new materials or production quotes
Selling the print? One more line: price = true cost ÷ (1 − margin). We cover margins, VAT and what to charge in how to price 3D prints; this article stays on cost.
Every input below is dated, because this is where most guides quietly fail you. The top-ranking cost article on the internet still quotes 2020 spool prices and 2020 electricity rates. Filament got cheaper since then. Electricity went the other way.
Material: about 2 cents per gram
Take the weight your slicer reports, multiply by your spool price, then add 10% for waste: purge lines, skirts, supports, and the occasional print that needs a second attempt at the brim. Multicolor printing is the exception where 10% is optimistic. An AMS-style purge tower can waste more filament than the model uses, so for multicolor work read the slicer's waste estimate instead of guessing.
What a kilogram actually costs right now, from the manufacturers' own stores:
| Tier | Per kg | Per gram |
|---|---|---|
| Budget PLA (SUNLU, Overture) | $14-15 | 1.4-1.5¢ |
| Mid-range PLA (Polymaker, eSUN, Bambu Lab) | $15-23 | 1.5-2.3¢ |
| Premium PLA (Prusament) | $30 / 30 EUR | 3.0¢ |
| PETG (Overture, eSUN, Polymaker, Bambu Lab) | $15-20 | 1.5-2.0¢ |
Cheapest standard color, 1 kg spools of 1.75 mm, street prices across 7 brands and 12 SKUs. EU shelf prices include 19-23% VAT, US prices exclude sales tax, so transatlantic comparisons flatter the US by about a fifth.
The median across everything we checked is $20/kg, so that is the default this site's calculator uses: 2 cents per gram, 2.2 with waste. Note that PETG now costs the same as PLA or less, which was not true two years ago. One more catch: "list" prices barely exist anymore. eSUN runs a permanent flash sale and SUNLU sells in 6-spool bundles, so price the spool you actually buy, not the one on the label.
Electricity: 2 to 4 cents per print-hour
The formula is watts ÷ 1,000 × hours × your kWh rate, and the trap is the watts. A printer's power supply rating (1,000 W on a Bambu X1C at 220 V) tells you what it could draw with every heater at full tilt, which is like costing your car at its top speed. Use the average draw while printing instead. Manufacturers now publish it:
Bambu Lab power-consumption wiki and Prusa Knowledge Base, June 2026. Higher bed temperatures change this: the A1 doubles its draw printing ABS. One community measurement puts an MK4S with MMU3 at 160 W on PETG.
At the 105 W of a Bambu P1S, one print-hour costs about 2 cents in the US (18.6 ¢/kWh, EIA average for March 2026), 3 euro cents at the EU household average (€0.29/kWh, Eurostat H2 2025), and about 2.6 p in the UK under the April-June 2026 price cap. Inside the EU the spread is wide: the same print costs 43% more in electricity in Germany (€0.39/kWh) than in Poland (€0.27/kWh). I print in Poland and still treat this line as a rounding error for single prints. The full wattage math, including what the heated bed does to it, lives in how much electricity a 3D printer uses.
Machine wear: printer price ÷ 5,000 hours
Here is the line that separates real cost from wishful thinking, and my own numbers were wrong before I ran them. I assumed the machine, like electricity, was noise. It is not: machine wear adds 4 to 10 times more per hour than the electricity everyone searches about.
Your printer is a consumable that takes years instead of hours to use up. No manufacturer publishes an expected lifetime, so we state our assumption openly: 5,000 printing hours, the midpoint of the 3,000 to 10,000 hours that calculator tools commonly assume. Divide the price you paid by 5,000 and you have your machine rate:
| Printer | Price (June 2026) | Per print-hour |
|---|---|---|
| Creality Ender-3 V3 SE | $199 | $0.04 |
| Bambu Lab A1 | $299-399 / 259 EUR | $0.06-0.08 |
| Bambu Lab P1S | $399-699 / 389 EUR | $0.08-0.14 |
| Prusa MK4S (assembled) | $999-1,149 / 1,099 EUR | $0.20-0.23 |
Official store and tracker prices; ranges reflect frequent promos (the P1S has sold at $399 so often the $699 list price is mostly theoretical). EU prices include VAT.
What would change this number: the 5,000 hours. A print farm sweating machines around the clock gets more life per dollar of capital per year and can argue a lower rate; a printer that mostly sits there does not get cheaper, it just depreciates quietly. If you replace nozzles and belts yourself, fold those few dollars in here too; on a modern machine they move the rate by well under a cent.
Labor: the line that decides whether you profit
Slicing, plate prep, removing the print, clipping supports, and the customer email about the color. None of it shows up in the slicer, all of it is real. Count hands-on minutes only (the printer does not need you while it runs) and multiply by an hourly rate you would actually accept. Fifteen minutes at $20/h is $5.00, and on our example print that one line is 58% of the true cost.
The first prints I sold went out at filament times two. One was a bracket with real post-processing on it, and when I finally did this math, my hourly wage on that order came out below what I would have made stacking shelves. If you only print for yourself, set labor to zero with a clear conscience, but then the formula prices your hobby, not a product.
The failure buffer: divide, don't hope
Prints fail. A 2016 Georgia Tech study of a busy open print shop found about a third of all plastic consumed ended up as waste rather than finished parts. A tuned modern machine printing PLA is nowhere near that, but nobody is at zero, and hope is not a line item. The clean way to account for it: divide your cost by one minus your failure rate, or simply multiply by a buffer. We default to 1.1 for a dialed-in machine on familiar material and 1.3 when quoting production work, new materials, or anything with overnight prints you will not be watching.
The whole formula on one real print
One part, every line, summed. The example this site uses everywhere: a 100 g PLA part, six hours on a Bambu P1S bought at $399, US electricity, $20/kg spool.
| Line | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Material: 100 g at $20/kg, incl. 10% waste | $2.20 | 26% |
| Electricity: 105 W × 6 h at $0.186/kWh | $0.12 | 1% |
| Machine: 6 h at $0.08/h ($399 ÷ 5,000 h) | $0.48 | 6% |
| Labor: 15 min prep and post at $20/h | $5.00 | 58% |
| Failure buffer: ×1.1 on all of the above | $0.78 | 9% |
| True cost | $8.58 | 100% |
Inputs verified June 11, 2026 (sources below). Hobby version, labor at zero: $3.08, about 3.1 cents per gram all-in.
Read the shares before you optimize anything. Material, the cost everyone can see, is a quarter of the total. Electricity, the cost everyone googles, is one percent. Labor and the machine, the two costs almost nobody writes down, are two thirds. The same math in the EU lands near €3.90 for the hobby version: filament is dearer with VAT baked in and electricity costs half as much again.
Now run it with your own numbers:
Material + electricity for your print
- Material (incl. 10% waste)
- $2.20
- Electricity
- $0.12
- Cost per print
- $2.32
Add labor, depreciation and margins in the full calculator →
This widget covers the consumables; the full calculator adds machine wear, labor, failure rate and your currency, and uses the same defaults this article just justified.
From cost to price, briefly
Cost answers what the print took from you. Price answers what it is worth, and the bridge is margin: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). Our $8.58 part quotes at $17.16 with a 50% margin, $21.45 at 60%, $28.60 at 70%. Which tier you need, what VAT does to it in the EU, and when to walk away from an order is its own article: how to price 3D prints.
Six ways the math goes wrong
Costing the power supply, not the print. The X1C's 1,000 W rating versus its 105 W average draw is a 10x error you would carry into every quote.
Using a price you don't pay. List prices are theater in 2026; spools sell on permanent sale and printers spend half the year on promo. Cost the spool in your cart.
Copying a depreciation number without its assumptions. Prusa's classic 2020 guide spreads the printer over a 6-month payback, business logic from a print farm. A figure built on someone else's lifetime, uptime and wage tells you their cost, not yours.
Ignoring waste until it's multicolor. 10% covers purge lines and brims. An AMS purge tower can exceed the model's own weight; only your slicer knows.
Confusing markup with margin. 50% markup on $8.58 is $12.87 and leaves a 33% margin. 50% margin is $17.16. Quoting the first while planning on the second is how shops lose money politely.
Letting failures ride. If one print in ten fails, every successful print must carry a tenth of a corpse. Divide by 0.9 and stop absorbing it.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
How much does 3D printing cost per hour?
Between $0.06 and $0.25 per print-hour for machine wear plus electricity on a desktop FDM printer at June 2026 prices, before material and labor. Sources that claim $1-5 per hour are quoting commercial rates with labor and margin built in, which is why answers online disagree by 10x.
How much does 3D printing cost per gram?
About 2 cents per gram in material at June 2026 PLA street prices ($20/kg), 2.2 cents with waste. All-in cost on our worked example is 3.1 cents per gram excluding labor, 8.6 cents including it. Quotes from print services run far higher because they carry labor, margin and overhead.
How long does a 3D printer last for depreciation?
3,000 to 10,000 printing hours is the range calculator tools assume; no manufacturer publishes an official lifetime figure. We use 5,000 hours as the midpoint, which puts a $399 printer at 8 cents per print-hour. State your assumption when you quote, since this number moves the machine line more than any other input.
How do I account for failed prints in the cost?
Divide your per-print cost by one minus your failure rate: at a 10% failure rate, an $8.58 print really costs $9.53. If you don't track your rate yet, a 1.1 buffer fits a tuned machine on PLA and 1.3 fits production quotes or tricky materials.
Is 3D printing cheaper than buying the part?
For one-off replacement parts, usually yes: our example part costs $3.08 in consumables once the printer exists. The honest comparison includes the printer itself though, and at a $399 machine plus your time, printing only beats buying if you print regularly. The formula above gives you the per-part number to compare against the shop price.
Sources & methodology
- PLA and PETG prices: official stores of Prusament, Bambu Lab, Polymaker, eSUN, Overture, SUNLU (7 brands, 12 SKUs) (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- US residential electricity, March 2026: EIA Electric Power Monthly (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- EU household electricity, H2 2025: Eurostat nrg_pc_204 (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- UK price cap, Apr-Jun 2026: Ofgem (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- Printer power draw: Bambu Lab power consumption wiki; Prusa Knowledge Base (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- Printer lifetime range (3,000-10,000 h): PrintPal calculator guidance (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- Waste and failure rates: Song & Telenko, Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium 2016 (checked Jun 11, 2026)
- Cost model and defaults: this site's calculator