3D Print Cost Calculator: Filament, Electricity, Machine Wear and Labor
By BitsFromBytes Team · Reviewed by Maya Dalton · Last updated October 26, 2026
Quick answer: A 3D print costs the filament it uses (grams × spool price per gram), plus printer watts × hours × your electricity rate, plus machine wear, your hands-on time and an allowance for failed prints. At the U.S. residential average of 18.16 cents per kWh for August 2026 (EIA), an 80 W printer burns about 1.5 cents of electricity per hour.
3D print cost calculator
Filled with an example job: replace every field with the numbers from your slicer and your bills.
Enter your job to see the cost.
Default electricity price: U.S. residential average, 18.16 cents/kWh for August 2026 (EIA Electricity Monthly Update, released Oct 23, 2026). Default power: 80 W, the average Prusa Research measured on an MK-series printer printing PLA. Densities: Prusament PLA 1.24 and PETG 1.27 g/cm³ (Prusa Polymers datasheets). Spool, printer, labor, failure and markup values are an example, not data. A failed print is assumed to use a full print of material, power and machine time. Runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
What does this 3D print cost calculator do?
It turns the two numbers your slicer gives you, filament used and print time, into the full cost of one good print and a price to charge. Enter the filament in grams, or in metres or feet with the material and diameter, then your spool price, printer power, electricity rate, printer price and expected life, the minutes you spend on the job, your failure rate and your markup. The table splits the result into eight columns, each per print, per gram and per print hour, and highlights the item that costs you the most. Nothing leaves your browser.
How is the cost of a 3D print calculated?
Each cost item has its own formula, and the total is their sum. Hours (h) is the print time from the slicer; the failure rate (f) is the share of prints you throw away, in percent.
| Cost item | Formula |
|---|---|
| Material | grams used × spool price ÷ spool net weight (g) |
| Electricity | printer power (W) × h ÷ 1,000 × price per kWh |
| Machine wear | printer price ÷ expected life (h) × h |
| Labor | hands-on minutes ÷ 60 × hourly rate |
| Failure allowance | (material + electricity + machine wear) × f ÷ (100 − f) |
| Price to charge | total cost × (1 + markup ÷ 100) |
Why the failure allowance is f ÷ (100 − f), not f
If 1 print in 20 fails, you run 20 prints to get 19 good ones, so each good print carries 1/19 of a failed one: 5.26 %, not 5 %. The gap widens fast. BitsFromBytes Research computes that a 20 % failure rate adds 25 % to the machine-time cost of each good part (20 ÷ 80), and a 50 % rate doubles it. The calculator assumes a failed print consumes a full print of filament, power and machine time, which overstates prints that fail on the first layer. Your hands-on time is not multiplied, because a failed print rarely repeats the post-processing.
How do you convert filament metres to grams?
Some slicers and printer screens report length instead of weight. The tool converts with grams = π ÷ 4 × diameter (mm)² × length (m) × density (g/cm³), since square millimetres times metres gives cubic centimetres. With the 1.24 g/cm³ Prusa Polymers lists for Prusament PLA, 1.75 mm filament weighs 2.98 g per metre, so a 1 kg spool holds about 335 m. Prusament PETG, listed at 1.27 g/cm³, gives 327.35 m per kilogram, which matches the 327.4 m listed by retailers for a 1 kg spool of Prusament PETG Carbon Fiber. Feet are converted at 0.3048 m, the exact value fixed by NIST.
Where do the default values come from?
| Default | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity price | 0.1816 per kWh (18.16 ¢, U.S. residential, August 2026) | EIA Electricity Monthly Update, released October 23, 2026 |
| Printer power | 80 W (PLA); 120 W for ABS | Prusa Research knowledge base, average measured on an MK-series printer at 26 °C |
| PLA density | 1.24 g/cm³ | Prusament PLA technical datasheet (ISO 1183) |
| PETG density | 1.27 g/cm³ | Prusament PETG technical datasheet (ISO 1183) |
| Foot | 0.3048 m exactly | NIST |
| Spool, printer, labor, failure, markup | example values | none: replace them with yours |
Electricity prices vary widely by state. For August 2026, EIA reported average revenue per kWh across all customer sectors ranging from 8.91 ¢ in North Dakota to 29.02 ¢ in California within the contiguous U.S. Enter the rate on your own bill; outside the U.S., switch the currency and type your local price per kWh.
Worked example: a 45 g PLA part printed in 3 hours
These are the inputs the 3D print cost calculator opens with: 45 g of PLA from a 1,000 g spool bought for $25, a 3-hour print at 80 W and 18.16 ¢/kWh, a $600 printer expected to last 5,000 print hours, 10 minutes of hands-on time at $20 an hour, a 5 % failure rate and a 30 % markup. The spool, printer, labor and markup figures are an illustration, not market data.
| Item | Calculation | Cost | Share of cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material | 45 × 25 ÷ 1,000 | $1.13 | 23 % |
| Electricity | 80 × 3 ÷ 1,000 = 0.24 kWh × 0.1816 | $0.044 | 0.9 % |
| Machine wear | 600 ÷ 5,000 × 3 | $0.36 | 7.3 % |
| Labor | 10 ÷ 60 × 20 | $3.33 | 67 % |
| Failure allowance | (1.125 + 0.044 + 0.36) × 5 ÷ 95 | $0.080 | 1.6 % |
| Cost per good print | sum | $4.94 | 100 % |
| Price to charge | 4.94 × 1.30 | $6.43 | — |
Computed by BitsFromBytes Research with the 3D print cost calculator above.
Ten minutes of your time costs three times the filament. That is the pattern in most single-part jobs: labor decides the price, electricity barely registers, and machine wear only matters on expensive printers run for long hours. Cut the hands-on time to zero and the same part costs $1.61 to make; batch ten parts on one plate and the labor per part falls tenfold.
How much does it cost to run a 3D printer per hour?
For electricity alone, multiply kilowatts by your rate. At 18.16 ¢/kWh, BitsFromBytes Research computes 1.45 ¢ per hour for a printer averaging 80 W on PLA and 2.18 ¢ per hour at the 120 W Prusa measured for ABS. A 24-hour PLA print therefore uses about 35 cents of power. Enclosed printers with heated chambers draw more; a plug-in power meter on your own machine gives the number to enter.
What does this calculator not include?
- Waste that is not a failed print: purge towers, multi-material flush, brims and supports. Use the slicer’s total filament figure, which includes them, rather than the model weight.
- Consumables and spares: nozzles, build plates, belts, glue, resin wash or sanding supplies. Fold them into the printer price if you track them.
- Design time, shipping, packaging, marketplace fees and taxes, which belong in a selling price but vary too much for a default.
- Resin printing: the formulas work if you enter grams of resin and the bottle price per gram, but the default power and densities are for filament printers.
Power draw changes with bed temperature, room temperature and enclosure, so the 80 W default is a starting point measured on one printer family, not a figure for yours.
How fresh is the data?
The default electricity price is EIA’s August 2026 U.S. residential average, retrieved October 26, 2026. EIA publishes the next monthly figure on November 24, 2026; this page is reviewed every quarter, or sooner if the national average moves more than one cent. Densities and the printer power figure are reviewed when Prusa Polymers or Prusa Research update their datasheets.
Related tools and guides
- All Bits From Bytes tools, grouped by topic.
- Voltage drop calculator for the wiring of printer upgrades, LED strips and enclosures.
- Budget 3D printers under $200: the printer price you enter for machine wear.
- Bambu Lab H2D vs X1 Carbon, for when machine wear on a $2,000-class printer starts to count.
- FDM vs SLA vs SLS: how the cost structure changes between printing technologies.
- 3D printer troubleshooting guide, the fastest way to lower your failure rate.
- G-code reference, for reading the filament and time estimates a slicer writes into the file.
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Link to the 3D print cost calculator from your shop, forum or class page with this snippet:
<a href="https://bitsfrombytes.com/3d-print-cost-calculator/">3D Print Cost Calculator by Bits From Bytes</a>FAQ
How much does it cost to 3D print something?
Material plus electricity plus machine wear plus your time. With the example inputs above, a 45 g PLA part printed in 3 hours costs $4.94, of which $3.33 is 10 minutes of labor and $1.13 is filament. Without labor it costs $1.61.
How much electricity does a 3D printer use?
Prusa Research reports an average of 80 W printing generic PLA and 120 W printing generic ABS on its MK-series printers at 26 °C. At 80 W, a 10-hour print uses 0.8 kWh, which costs 14.5 cents at the August 2026 U.S. residential average of 18.16 ¢/kWh.
How much should I charge for a 3D print?
Start from the full cost per good print, including your hands-on time and failures, then add a markup for profit. The calculator applies the markup to the total cost; at 30 %, the example part’s $4.94 cost becomes a $6.43 price. Add shipping, packaging and platform fees separately.
How many metres are on a 1 kg spool of PLA?
About 335 m of 1.75 mm filament at the 1.24 g/cm³ Prusa lists for Prusament PLA. Other brands’ PLA densities differ slightly, so the length changes in proportion; 2.85 mm filament gives about 126 m per kilogram.
Does the failure rate really change the cost?
At low rates, barely: 5 % adds $0.08 to the example part. At 20 % it adds a quarter of the material, power and machine cost to every good part, and at 50 % it doubles them. Reducing failures pays off most on long, heavy prints.
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