Resin or filament: what SLA printing really costs compared to FDM

"SLA is more expensive than FDM" is a common line, but few people work out exactly how much and why. Here's the cost broken down item by item, so you can see where resin loses to filament in raw numbers — and where it unexpectedly wins.

Material: price per gram

A kilogram of basic filament (PLA/PETG) costs roughly $8–17, or $0.008–0.017/g. A liter of standard photopolymer resin costs $25–45 and weighs about 1.1–1.2 kg — around $0.02–0.04/g, 2-3x more. Engineering and dental resins cost another 1.5-2x on top of the basic ones.

The step FDM doesn't have

An FDM part is done the moment you pull it off the plate. Between printing and a finished SLA/LCD part there are two mandatory steps, and both cost real money:

• IPA wash — isopropyl alcohol is consumed on every batch, gradually gets contaminated with dissolved resin, and needs replacing. On regular print volume this is a noticeable line item, not a one-off purchase.
• UV curing — the curing station's electricity plus its own depreciation (typically $60–170 per station, with a limited service life).

3D Print Pricing has dedicated warehouse shelves for exactly this — IPA consumption and UV-station runtime are costed the same way as filament and printer time, as their own line items instead of a rough guess.

Printer depreciation

Here the picture flips. Entry-level FDM and entry-level SLA/LCD printers cost about the same (budget resin printers are often even cheaper — $150–250), and the print-zone consumables (FEP film, LCD screen) on a resin printer have a finite, predictable lifespan, which actually makes per-part depreciation easier to calculate.

Time is a cost too

An FDM part can go straight to the customer once it's off the plate (paint jobs aside). A resin part is not physically done right after printing — washing and curing take anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours depending on the resin and batch size. If that time isn't priced in, the real margin on the job ends up lower than planned.

When resin still wins

For small, highly detailed parts — miniatures, jewelry, dental models — FDM simply can't match the quality at any price, and the cost comparison stops being the point if the FDM version doesn't solve the customer's problem at all. In that niche the higher per-gram resin cost is offset by the part weighing a fraction of the equivalent FDM piece, and by far less competition able to hit the same detail level.

Calculate it precisely, not by eye

The 2-3x gap in material price is only part of the equation — printer depreciation, IPA, UV/ultrasonic electricity, and post-processing time are all costed differently for resin than for filament. 3D Print Pricing's calculator prices both technologies with every one of these line items included, so you see what's actually cheaper for a specific model instead of relying on a blanket "SLA costs more" rule.

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