STLPalGuides / Updated October 13, 2026
How much does a 3D print cost?
Printing at home, a small PLA part usually costs somewhere between a few cents and a couple of dollars. Most of that is plastic. The power is often just cents.
Free tool3D print cost calculator →Type in the weight and time from your slicer and get your own number, with a Bambu Lab power preset if you have one.Some real examples
| Plastic | Time | Cost to you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tabletop mini | 3 g PLA | 45 min | about $0.17 |
| Keychain | 8 g PLA | 30 min | about $0.24 |
| Phone stand | 60 g PLA | 3.5 h | about $1.78 |
| Cosplay helmet | 900 g PLA | 40 h | about $25 |
Worked out with the calculator's defaults: $20 for a 1 kg spool, 120 W, $0.17 per kWh, $0.10 an hour for wear, plus 10% for failed prints. Change any of them and the total moves.
Filament: the biggest part
Divide the spool price by 1,000 and you have the cost per gram. A $20 spool of PLA is 2 cents a gram, so a 60 g part is $1.20 of plastic.
Plain PLA and PETG from the big brands usually sit somewhere around $15–30 a kilo. Silk, carbon-fibre-filled, nylon and other specialty filaments cost more.
Use the weight your slicer shows after slicing, not a guess from the model. It includes supports, brims and, on multi-colour printers, the plastic thrown away at every colour change. On a print with lots of colour swaps that waste can weigh more than the part.
Electricity: usually cents
The sum is watts ÷ 1,000 × hours × your price per kWh. A 10-hour print at 105 W uses about 1 kWh. US homes pay roughly 17 cents per kWh on average (EIA figures), so that's about 18 cents. In much of Europe power costs around twice as much.
Printers don't pull their maximum all the time. Bambu Lab measured its own printers on PLA at about 80 W for the A1 mini, 95 W for the A1 and 105 W for the P1S and X1 Carbon. The heated bed takes most of it, so ABS and other hot-bed materials draw more.
Printer wear
Nozzles, build plates, belts and eventually the whole printer wear out. Spread that over the hours you print. For example, a $600 printer you expect to run for 3,000 hours before it needs major parts works out to $0.20 an hour.
This is a guess either way. If you print a lot, a figure between $0.05 and $0.30 an hour is a reasonable place to start.
Failed prints
Some prints come off the bed, tangle or warp, and the plastic and time are gone. Add 5–15% depending on how often that happens to you. New printers, new filaments and very long prints sit at the high end.
Paying a print service instead
- Services charge for the material (by volume or weight), often plus a fee per part, a minimum order and shipping. For small things, the minimum and the shipping can be most of the bill.
- Resin, nylon powder (SLS) and metal prints cost much more than plastic from a home printer, and look and hold up better too.
- Quotes for the same file can differ a lot, so upload your STL to two or three services and compare. Comparison sites like Craftcloud get you several quotes at once. A local makerspace or library is often the cheapest option.
- We don't list prices here, because they change and depend on the service, the material and the size.
Making it cheaper
- Lower the infill. 15% is plenty for most parts that don't take force.
- Cut supports. Turn the part so it needs fewer, or use tree supports.
- Use thicker layers when looks don't matter. 0.28 mm prints a lot faster than 0.12 mm.
- Print several parts on one plate, so you only heat the bed once.
- On a multi-colour printer, fewer colour swaps means less plastic in the bin.