3D Print Cost Calculator
Calculate the true cost of any FDM/FFF 3D print — filament, electricity, machine wear and failure-rate cost in one place.
Material settings
Spool price, weight, and how much filament your print actually uses.
Energy settings
Print time, printer power draw, and your electricity rate.
Machine wear
Optional — amortize your printer's purchase cost over its useful lifetime.
Output & overhead
How many copies fit on the plate, and what fraction of your prints fail.
Cost breakdown
- Material61%$1.87
- Electricity4%$0.14
- Machine wear30%$0.91
- Failure markup5%$0.15
Tips for reducing 3D printing costs
Small changes upstream beat tighter pricing downstream.
Optimize infill
Dropping infill from 20% to 10% saves 15–25% filament on many prints with no real strength loss for decorative parts.
Reduce supports
Reorient the model so overhangs face the build plate. Less support material = less waste and less post-processing.
Calibrate to win
A well-tuned printer fails far less often. Cutting your failure rate from 10% to 3% is a real money-maker.
How the math works
Material cost = (filament used + purge waste) / (spool weight in grams) × spool price. So an 85 g print + 30 g purge from a $22 / 1 kg spool costs (115 / 1000) × $22 = $2.53.
Electricity = print time (hours) × printer power (kW) × your kWh rate. Most desktop FDM printers draw 100–150 W; enclosed or heated-chamber printers can pull 200–400 W.
Printers don't last forever — belts wear, nozzles clog, hot ends die. We amortize the printer's purchase price over its expected lifetime in hours, then charge that hourly rate to your print. Typical desktop printers last 3,000–10,000 print hours.
The failure rate adds a proportional markup to your subtotal. A 5% failure rate adds 5% on top of (material + electricity + wear) to account for prints that fail and need to be redone.
It stores your printer, electricity rate, default spool and typical failure rate in your browser (localStorage only — never uploaded). Next time you visit, those defaults are already filled in.
Selling on Etsy? Now check what you actually keep.
Knowing your true cost per print is half the equation — Etsy fees, payment processing, offsite ads and shipping eat 25–35% of revenue before you see a cent. Drop your cost-per-print into the Etsy Profit Calculator to see your real take-home.
Open Etsy Profit Calculator