How to Calculate 3D Printing Cost (With Formula)

If you print to sell, not just for yourself, "what does this actually cost" comes up fast. Get it wrong either way — undercharge and work at a loss, or overcharge and lose the order. Let's break the formula down piece by piece — it's the same one used inside the 3D Print Pricing calculator.

What cost is actually made of

The direct cost of one print is the sum of four things:

1. Material — how many grams of filament or milliliters of resin the part used.
2. Electricity — how much power the printer drew during the print.
3. Printer depreciation — wear on the machine per hour of operation.
4. Peripheral depreciation — a filament dryer for FDM, a UV curing station and ultrasonic bath for SLA, if you use them.

On top of direct cost comes markup, taxes and other business overhead (packaging, shipping, post-processing time) — that's a separate conversation. Here we're only covering the direct cost of the print itself.

Material

Simple formula:

Material cost = (price per kg ÷ 1000) × part weight in grams

Resin works the same way, just through milliliters and density (density varies between resins, which is why resins and filaments are separate catalog sections, each with its own density).

Electricity

Electricity cost = printer power (kW) × print time (h) × tariff (currency/kWh)

Example: printer draws 150 W (0.15 kW), print runs 8 hours, tariff $0.12/kWh:

0.15 × 8 × 0.12 = $0.14

If you're on a time-of-use tariff, calculate hours actually printed within each rate window rather than averaging one flat rate — the calculator handles that split automatically.

Printer depreciation

This is the most common beginner mistake — it gets forgotten entirely, and that's a real problem: over a year of printing it can be a meaningful share of total cost.

Depreciation = (printer price ÷ printer lifetime in hours) × print time

Example: printer costs $600, you budget a 4,000-hour lifetime before major repair or replacement, print takes 8 hours:

(600 ÷ 4,000) × 8 = $1.20

That's the "wear" cost of this specific print. If the printer breaks down earlier than expected, the money for a replacement has already been partially set aside in past orders' pricing — not conjured from nowhere.

The same math applies to a filament dryer, UV curing chamber, or ultrasonic bath — device price divided by its lifetime in hours.

Putting the example together

A part weighing 80 g, 8-hour print, filament at $22/kg, the printer from above:

From here you add markup for your business model (the calculator lets you set it via markup percentage, target customer price, or target profit — whichever is easiest for the moment).

Why doing this by hand gets old fast

The formula itself isn't complicated, but when there are five orders queued with different filament, different printers and different print times, holding it all in your head or in a one-off spreadsheet per order gets tedious fast. It's also easy to forget one component (usually depreciation) and quietly slide into a loss at volume.