3D printing cost calculator
Filament is the part everyone counts, and it is rarely half the bill. Electricity, the printer wearing out, your own time, packaging and the prints that failed all end up in the price — or they end up in your pocket, negative.
What goes into the price of a print
Seven costs. Miss one and the job only looks profitable.
Filament
Model weight plus purge and the skirt, priced from what the spool actually cost you — not from the shop's price per kilo today.
Electricity
Average draw of the printer multiplied by print time and your tariff. Small per print, visible per month, and it grows with every heated bed you add.
Machine depreciation
The printer has a working life in hours. Every hour of printing spends part of the money it cost, and that is a real expense, not an accounting trick.
Your labour
Slicing, removing supports, sanding, packing. The part of the job nobody counts, and the reason a €5 print can lose money.
Packaging
Box, bag, tape, filler and the label. Cheap per unit, decisive on a run of fifty.
Failure rate
A share of prints will warp, come loose or run out of filament. If nothing in the price covers them, the successful prints pay for them silently.
Marketplace fees
Commission, shipping, card processing and advertising. The customer pays a price; what reaches you is a different number.
Fixed monthly costs
Rent, subscriptions, storage. Spread over the units you print in a month, they turn into a few cents each — and into the difference at the end of the year.
A worked example
One 180 g part, 7 h 20 min on a €450 printer, sold on a marketplace for €19.90.
Filament. 180 g in the part and 12 g of purge is 192 g. The spool cost €22 per kilogram, so the material is €4.22.
Electricity. 120 W average over 7.33 hours is 0.88 kWh. At €0.18 per kWh that is €0.16.
Depreciation. A €450 printer with a 4000-hour working life spends €0.11 an hour, so this job spends €0.82.
Labour. 15 minutes of handling at €12 an hour is €3.00 — usually the second largest line, and the one left out of most spreadsheets.
Packaging. Box, filler and label: €0.60.
Subtotal: €8.80. With a 7 % failure allowance the cost of one delivered part is €9.42.
The sale. At €19.90 the marketplace takes 12 % commission and the card 3 %, together €2.99. What is left is €7.49 — a 37 % margin. Price the same part from filament alone and you would have called €6 a good deal, and lost money on every single one.
Why the spreadsheet drifts
A spreadsheet is right on the day you write it. Then filament goes up, a spool is bought on sale, electricity changes, a second printer arrives with a different power draw, and the formula quietly keeps using last spring's numbers. Nothing warns you: the cells still add up.
SpoolFarm takes the numbers from the same place the work happens. The spool knows what it cost and how much is left, the printer knows how long it ran, the order knows how many units were made. A saved calculation becomes your price list, and when a price changes you change it once.
See the calculator and the rest of the app screen by screen in the product tour.
Questions
How is the cost per gram worked out?
From the spool you actually used: its purchase price divided by its net weight. Two spools of the same material bought at different prices stay different in the app, so a lucky purchase does not silently inflate the margin on everything else.
Does it count purge and waste?
Yes. Purge, prime line and the skirt are entered as a separate weight, because on a multi-colour print they can outweigh the part itself.
Can it price an order of several different models?
Yes. An order with several models is costed as a single job: each model keeps its own weight, print time and preview image, and the fixed parts of the order — packaging, labour, delivery — are counted once, not once per model.
Does the calculator work offline?
Yes. There is no SpoolFarm server and no account: the calculation happens on the phone, and your prices never leave it.
Do I have to pay to use it?
The app installs free from Google Play. Full use is covered by a subscription, or by a one-time lifetime purchase; a free trial is offered to new subscribers who are eligible for it on Google Play. Prices are shown before purchase and differ by country.
Count the whole bill, not just the filament
The calculator is part of SpoolFarm: filament stock, orders, invoices and printer control in one app.