Work out how much a 3D print really costs - filament, electricity, machine wear and a suggested sale price. Free, instant, and nothing to install.
Four honest components decide what a print really costs. The calculator adds them up; here is the maths behind it.
Price per kilogram divided by 1000 gives your cost per gram. Multiply by the grams your slicer reports. A 50 g print at £20/kg is 50 × £0.02 = £1.00 in material - usually the biggest slice.
Printer watts ÷ 1000 × print hours × your price per kWh. A 120 W printer running 4 hours at 28p/kWh uses about 0.48 kWh, roughly 13p. Small, but part of an honest total.
Spread the printer's price over its expected lifetime hours to get a wear cost per hour, then multiply by print time. A £400 printer over 4000 hours adds 10p per hour of printing.
Add a waste percentage for failed prints, then a markup if you are selling. Cost plus markup gives a suggested sale price so you never sell a print at a loss.
Common questions about 3D printing costs, filament pricing and how to price prints to sell.
For a typical desktop FDM print, most of the cost is filament. A 50 g print in PLA at around £20/kg costs roughly £1 in material, plus a few pence of electricity. Larger or longer prints, resin, or accounting for machine wear and failures push the figure higher. Use the calculator above for an exact number.
Divide the price of the spool by its weight in grams. A £20 spool holding 1000 g costs £0.02 per gram. Multiply that by the grams your slicer reports for the print to get the material cost.
Standard PLA and PETG filament usually costs £15-£25 per kilogram, so £0.015-£0.025 per gram. Speciality filaments such as carbon-fibre blends, TPU or engineering resins cost several times more.
A typical desktop printer draws 50-150 watts while printing. At 120 W over a 4-hour print that is about 0.48 kWh, or roughly 13p at a 28p/kWh tariff - small next to the filament, but the calculator includes it for an honest total.
Start from the true cost - filament, electricity and a share of machine wear - then add a markup that covers your time, failures and profit. The calculator's markup field gives you a suggested sale price to work from.
SpoolBoard tracks filament by the gram and records the real cost of every print - material, electricity, machine wear and markup - on one honest ledger. Reserve stock, schedule printers and stay on top of maintenance too.
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