How Much Does 3D Printing Cost?
There's no single number, a 3D print's cost depends on filament, electricity, machine wear, failed attempts, and, if you're pricing your time, labor. Here's what each piece actually adds up to.
Filament: usually the smallest real cost
Standard PLA filament typically runs $15–$25 per kilogram, with premium or specialty blends reaching $40/kg and up. PETG generally lands around $18–$28/kg, and ABS around $16–$25/kg. Divide the spool price by its weight in grams to get a cost per gram, then multiply by how much filament your print actually uses (your slicer will tell you this after slicing).
A small 15g keychain in $20/kg PLA costs about 30 cents in material. A larger 250g functional part costs around $5. Filament is rarely the expensive part unless you're printing something large.
Electricity: almost always negligible
Most desktop FDM printers draw somewhere between 50 and 250 watts while actively printing, with the bulk of hobbyist machines sitting in the 80–150W range once the bed and nozzle are up to temperature. The US residential average sits at roughly $0.18 per kWh as of August 2026 and has been climbing, so a 4-hour print on a 120W printer still costs under 10 cents in electricity. Enclosed printers with a heated chamber running ABS or ASA draw more, but even then electricity is rarely the line item that decides whether a print is worth doing.
Machine wear: the cost people forget
Nozzles wear down, belts stretch, bearings age, and the printer itself has a useful lifespan. A common approach is to charge a small hourly rate, often somewhere in the $0.10–$0.40/hour range depending on your printer's price and expected lifespan (see our guide to calculating your own rate), as a rough depreciation and maintenance allowance. It's not exact, but it's a lot more honest than pretending the printer wears out for free.
Failed prints: the buffer most calculators skip
Every printer fails sometimes, a warped corner, a clog, a power blip. When a print fails, the filament and machine time on that attempt are still gone. Spreading that cost across your successful prints (rather than ignoring it) means dividing your subtotal by (1 − failure rate) instead of just adding a flat fee. If you fail roughly 1 in 12 prints, that's an 8% failure rate.
Labor: the one that changes everything
If you're printing for yourself and don't count your own time, labor is zero. If you're selling, it isn't. Design tweaks, bed leveling, support removal, sanding, packaging, all of that is real time. Even at a modest $20/hour, 30 minutes of labor on a small print can dwarf every other cost combined.
Putting it together
| Filament | Electricity | Machine wear | True cost (no labor) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small trinket (15g, 45 min) | $0.30 | $0.02 | $0.08 | $0.42 |
| Medium functional part (80g, 4 hrs) | $1.60 | $0.08 | $0.40 | $2.26 |
| Large print (250g, 14 hrs) | $5.00 | $0.29 | $1.40 | $7.27 |
Example figures only, using a $20/kg spool, 8% failure buffer, and no labor charged. Your actual costs depend on your filament price, printer, and local electricity rate.
Frequently asked questions
Is filament really the smallest cost?
For most hobbyist prints, yes. Once you count electricity, machine wear, and especially labor, filament is usually a small slice of the true cost, though it grows on large, dense prints.
Do printer brand or model change the electricity cost much?
Some. Enclosed printers with an actively heated chamber (common for ABS/ASA) draw meaningfully more power than an open-frame PLA machine. Either way, electricity tends to stay a minor line item compared to labor and, on bigger prints, filament.
Want your own numbers? Run your filament, print time, and labor through the 3D printing price calculator for a true cost and suggested price in seconds.