Pricing 3D prints is a common sticking point for people who start selling on Etsy, at markets or to friends of friends. The machine does most of the work, so it feels wrong to charge much more than the plastic. But "the machine does the work" is exactly why you must charge for the machine's time — and for yours.
Step 1: know your full cost
Your price floor is the full cost of making the part, not the filament. That means material, electricity, machine wear, a failure buffer and your labor. The cost guide walks through each line; the calculator does it from an STL in seconds.
Labor is where most sellers undercount. Count every minute that is not unattended printing: answering the customer, slicing, preparing the plate, removing and cleaning supports, sanding, photographing, packing and the walk to the post office. Even at a modest $20 per hour, ten minutes adds $3.33 — often more than the plastic.
Step 2: add platform and payment fees
Marketplaces charge a percentage of the selling price, not of your cost, so fees must be grossed up rather than simply added. If fees total 10% of the sale price:
price = (cost × (1 + markup)) ÷ (1 − fee rate)
Fee structures change, so check your platform's current listing, transaction and payment-processing fees before you set prices, and remember shipping materials and the shipping itself if you offer free delivery.
Step 3: choose a markup
Markup pays for everything the cost formula does not: design time, customer service, rent, marketing, the slow weeks and your profit. A rough guide:
| What you sell | Typical markup on cost | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Generic parts anyone could print (brackets, organisers) | 30–75% | Easy to compare; buyers shop on price |
| Licensed or curated designs from other creators | 75–150% | You add selection, finishing and convenience |
| Your own original designs | 150–300% | No direct competitor; you recover design time |
| Personalised items (names, custom fits) | 200%+ or a design fee | Every order needs your time before printing |
| Painted miniatures and display pieces | Hourly rate for painting, plus print cost | Painting dominates the cost |
On low-cost parts, a percentage markup alone produces prices too low to be worth the transaction. Many sellers set a minimum order value (for example $10) or a fixed handling fee per order so that small items still pay for the time spent on them.
The per-gram pricing trap
Charging a flat rate per gram is popular because it is simple. It is also wrong in both directions:
- Light but slow parts — tall thin vases, TPU parts, anything with lots of small details — use little plastic but occupy the printer for hours.
- Heavy but fast parts — chunky blocks with high infill — use lots of plastic quickly and end up overpriced.
Combine a gram rate with an hourly machine rate instead. That is what professional print services do, and it is what the calculator's breakdown shows: material and machine time as separate lines.
Quoting custom jobs
When a customer sends an STL, check it before you quote. Is it watertight? Is it in the right units? Does it fit your build volume, or must it be split? The calculator flags all three. Then:
- Quote from the slicer's print time and weight if possible; use the calculator's estimate for a first answer.
- Add support removal and post-processing time to labor honestly.
- Raise the failure buffer for difficult materials or tall, thin parts.
- State what is included: material, color, layer height, finishing, and how many revisions.
- Copy the quote breakdown so you can explain the price if the customer asks.
Batches and quantity discounts
Quantity discounts are reasonable because labor per part falls: you slice once, start one plate and clean many parts in one session. Material and machine time do not fall on an FDM printer — ten parts take ten times the plastic and roughly ten times the hours. On a resin printer the opposite is true for time: a full plate prints in the same time as a single part, so batching lowers the machine cost per part dramatically.
Sanity-check against the market
Finally, look at what similar items sell for. If your cost-based price is far above the market, look for savings: a faster printer profile, less infill, fewer walls on decorative parts, a cheaper filament for prototypes, or printing several parts per plate. If your price is far below the market, you have room to raise it — buyers often read very low prices as low quality.
Summary
Start from full cost including your time, add fees the right way, choose a markup that matches how unique the product is, and set a minimum order. Use the calculator to build each quote from the actual STL, and revisit your numbers whenever filament prices or your electricity tariff change.