3D Printing Hourly Rate: What Should You Charge?
Somewhere around $1–$10 per hour, depending on your printer class, and it should be a lot higher than what your printer actually costs you to run. Those are two different numbers, and mixing them up is the most common pricing mistake here.
Cost and rate are not the same number
Your printer's true cost per hour, depreciation plus electricity plus a maintenance buffer, is usually small. Machine wear alone typically runs $0.10–$0.40 per hour for a desktop FDM printer, and electricity adds well under a nickel more on most machines. Add it up and a lot of printers cost somewhere around $0.15–$0.50 an hour to actually run.
That's not what you should charge. The rate you charge needs to cover a lot more than the electricity bill and the printer eventually wearing out.
What makers actually charge
Real benchmark ranges, machine time only, separate from your own labor:
- Hobby-grade printers (Ender-class): roughly $1–$2 per hour
- Mid-range printers (Prusa, Bambu Lab): roughly $2–$4 per hour
- Industrial or resin printers: $5–$10+ per hour
A commonly cited simple default, if you don't want to calculate your own number yet, is $3 per print hour for a mid-range machine. It's not precise, but it's a reasonable starting point while you build your own numbers.
Why the rate is so much higher than the cost
A few things the raw depreciation-plus-electricity math doesn't capture:
- Idle time. Even a busy printer isn't running 24/7. A machine that's only printing 30% of the hours it's plugged in still needs to earn back its full cost during the hours it does run.
- Non-billable minutes. Bed leveling, slicing, plate cleanup, and troubleshooting a failed first layer all cost time that doesn't show up in the slicer's print-time estimate.
- Replacement, not just repair. The depreciation math assumes you're saving toward the next printer, not just patching the current one. If you're not actually setting that money aside, the machine costs more than the formula suggests.
- Margin. A rate that exactly matches your cost means you're running the business to break even. That's not a business.
Design time is a separate line item
None of the above covers your own labor, modeling a part, setting up supports, or babysitting a print. That's billed separately at your own hourly rate, commonly $35–$60 per hour for custom design work. See How to Price Custom 3D Printing Commissions for the full breakdown.
Work out your own number
Run your printer's price, expected lifespan, and local electricity rate through the Cost-per-Hour Calculator to get your true machine cost, then decide your markup on top of it. The Electricity Cost Calculator covers the power side alone if that's the piece you're missing.
Running more than one printer? The math changes, idle machines still cost you money even when they're not printing. See Is a 3D Print Farm Actually Profitable? for what changes at scale.
Want your own numbers? Start with the Cost-per-Hour Calculator for your true machine rate, then add design time from How to Price Custom 3D Printing Commissions if you're modeling parts yourself.