How Much Does a 3D Print Cost? The Real Math
The material in a typical desktop 3D print costs between fifty cents and five dollars. The same print from a service bureau costs fifteen to fifty. Neither number is wrong, and understanding the gap between them is the whole trick to budgeting prints, whether you run the printer or pay someone who does. This guide walks the actual math, from the volume of your STL to a number in dollars, and is honest about which costs the math leaves out.
The Material Math
A print does not use the full volume of the model, because most parts print with sparse infill. What gets deposited is roughly: the walls (surface area times wall thickness) plus the interior scaled by the infill percentage. That material volume converts to grams through the density of the plastic, and to money through the price of the spool.
Worked example: a part with an enclosed volume of 100 cm³ and a surface area of 150 cm², printed in PLA with 1.2 mm walls at 20% infill. Walls: 150 cm² × 0.12 cm = 18 cm³. Interior: (100 − 18) × 0.20 = 16.4 cm³. Total material ≈ 34 cm³, which at PLA’s 1.24 g/cm³ is about 43 g. At $22 per kilogram, that is 94 cents of filament.
| Material | Density (g/cm³) | Typical price/kg | The 43 g example costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| PLA | 1.24 | $22 | $0.94 |
| PETG | 1.27 | $23 | $1.01 |
| ABS | 1.04 | $22 | $0.79 |
| TPU (flexible) | 1.21 | $30 | $1.29 |
| Nylon | 1.14 | $40 | $1.57 |
| Standard resin | 1.10 | $50 | $1.90 |
Skip the arithmetic: upload your STL and get material, grams, dollars, and a time estimate computed from the actual mesh volume, with every assumption shown.
Open the Cost CalculatorWhat the Material Math Leaves Out
| Cost | Typical size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Support material | 10–40% extra on overhanging parts | Printed, then thrown away; orientation reduces it |
| Failed prints | Amortized 10–20% | A 90% success rate means every part quietly costs 11% more |
| Electricity | $0.01–0.10 per hour | Real but small; a 6-hour print costs pennies to tens of cents |
| Machine wear | $0.10–0.50 per hour | Nozzles, belts, build surfaces, and eventually the printer |
| Labour | The big one | Setup, bed prep, removal, support cleanup, post-processing |
This table is why a service bureau quoting $20 for your $1-of-filament part is not gouging you. They are pricing the machine time, the operator, the failure rate, and the business around it. A common shop formula is material times three to ten, plus a per-hour machine rate. When you want to sanity-check a quote, compute the material cost yourself and see what multiple you are being asked to pay; between 3x and 10x is the normal range, and above that you should get a second quote.
How to Make a Print Cheaper
In rough order of impact. Drop the infill: going from 40% to 15% on a chunky part cuts material by a third or more, and most parts never need more than 20%. Reorient the part: support material is pure waste, and a better orientation often eliminates most of it. Scale down if the design allows; cost scales with the cube of size, so a part at 80% costs roughly half. Hollow resin parts instead of printing them solid. And print several parts per plate: setup time amortizes across the batch, which is where service prices per part drop.
One non-obvious point: reducing the triangle count of your STL does not reduce its print cost. Decimation makes the file smaller, not the part. The mesh could be 50 MB or 5 MB and the printer deposits the same plastic.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to run a 3D printer per hour?
Counting electricity and wear, roughly $0.15 to $0.60 per hour for a desktop FDM machine, before material. The number people argue about is depreciation: if you paid $600 for a printer and it lasts 3,000 print hours, that is another $0.20 per hour baked into every part.
Why is my slicer’s estimate different from this calculator?
The slicer computes the real toolpath: exact perimeters, actual support volume, travel moves, your specific layer height. A volume-based estimate cannot see any of that, which is why it is a planning number. Expect the slicer to land within 20 to 30 percent of it for a typical unsupported part, further off for support-heavy ones.
How much does infill actually change the cost?
On a chunky part, a lot: interior volume dominates, so going from 20% to 100% infill can triple the material. On a thin-walled part, very little, because walls dominate and infill has almost no interior to fill. The calculator shows the shell and infill contributions separately so you can see which regime your part is in.
Is resin printing more expensive than FDM?
Per gram, usually two to three times, and resin parts are often printed solid or nearly so. Against that, resin prints fine detail that FDM cannot, so the comparison only matters for parts both processes can make. For miniatures and dental-scale detail, resin is the only game and its cost is what it is.
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