Why this calculator exists

A lot of 3D printing cost calculators stop at filament and electricity. On a typical job those are the two smallest numbers on the sheet.

The costs that decide whether a print sells at a profit are harder to model: the prints that fail, the cut a marketplace takes before the money reaches you, and the gap between margin and markup, which is where a lot of sellers quietly lose money. This site models those three properly.

What it does

You enter what your slicer already told you, which is grams of filament and print time, plus your spool price, your printer's wattage and your kWh rate. It works out material cost, electricity, machine wear and labor, spreads the cost of failed prints across the jobs that succeed, then solves backward from your target margin and your marketplace fee to a price you can charge.

Then it exports a PDF quote you can send to a customer.

What it does not do

It does not parse G-code, and it does not take a file upload of any kind. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.

It also cannot tell you what your market will pay. It tells you what the job costs you and what a given margin requires. Whether a customer says yes to that number is a different question. For a sense of what Etsy buyers are paying, see what 3D prints sell for, a price table built from 444 listings.

On the numbers

Slicer print times are estimates, and failure rates are guesses until you have records to back them up. If your printer consistently runs longer than the slicer says, use your own average. The calculator is only as good as what you put into it.

Found a cost it does not model, or a number that looks wrong? Tell me about it.