How to Price 3D Prints for Etsy

Why most Etsy sellers get pricing wrong

The most common approach to pricing 3D prints on Etsy is to look at what everyone else charges and match it. The problem is that those sellers may also be guessing — or they may have different costs to you. Cheaper electricity, bulk filament deals, a printer that has already been paid off. Copying their price does not mean you will make the same profit. You might not make any profit at all.

The only reliable method is cost-based pricing: work out what a print actually costs you, add a profit margin, account for Etsy's fees, and arrive at a final number that you can defend.

Step 1: Calculate your material cost

Weigh the finished print (or check your slicer's estimate) and multiply by your cost per gram. A standard 1 kg spool of PLA costs around £18–25. At £20 per spool, that is £0.02 per gram.

For our example, a dice tower that weighs 180 g (including supports and waste) at £0.02/g costs £3.60 in material.

Do not forget to include the weight of supports, brims, and purge towers. Your slicer shows the total filament used — use that figure, not just the model weight.

Step 2: Add electricity

An Ender 3 draws about 120 W from the wall when printing. A Prusa MK4 is closer to 100 W. Our dice tower takes roughly 8 hours to print.

Electricity is cheap per print, but it adds up across hundreds of prints per month. Ignoring it means giving away a few pounds of profit each week.

Step 3: Account for your time

This is the cost sellers most often skip entirely. You need to account for setup time (loading filament, levelling the bed, slicing), post-processing (removing supports, sanding, painting), and packaging time. Even if it only takes 15 minutes per order, that is real time you are spending.

Set an hourly rate for yourself. If you would not do this work for someone else at that rate, it is too low. At £12/hour and 15 minutes of hands-on time, labour costs £3.00.

Step 4: Include overheads

Your printer will need replacement parts — nozzles, belts, heatbreak, PEI sheets. Budget a small amount per print hour for maintenance. A reasonable estimate is £0.05–0.10/hour, which adds £0.64 to our 8-hour print.

Packaging matters too. A cardboard box, bubble wrap, and tissue paper for a dice tower comes to roughly £1.20. If you include a thank-you card and branded sticker, add that cost as well.

Step 5: Factor in waste

Not every print succeeds. If roughly 1 in 10 prints fails, your failure rate is 10%. That means 10% of your material and electricity is wasted. The simplest way to account for this is to multiply your subtotal by 1.1 (or whatever your failure rate dictates).

Step 6: Add your markup

Your total production cost for the dice tower so far:

Now add your profit. A 50% markup on £9.55 gives a pre-fees price of £14.33.

Be careful with the difference between markup and margin — they produce different numbers. Our markup vs margin guide explains this in detail.

Step 7: Absorb Etsy's fees

If you price at £14.33 and Etsy takes its cut, you will receive less than you planned. You need to absorb the fees into your price so the customer pays them, not you.

Etsy charges a £0.16 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing of roughly 4% + £0.20. On a £14.33 sale, that works out to about £1.87 in total fees. See our full Etsy fees breakdown for the exact maths.

To absorb fees, divide your target price by (1 - total fee rate). With roughly 10.5% in combined fees: £14.33 ÷ 0.895 ≈ £16.01. Round to £15.99 for clean psychological pricing.

The final price

Our dice tower lists at £15.99 on Etsy. After all fees, you keep roughly £14.25, giving you about £4.70 in profit on a £9.55 cost base. That is a genuine 49% markup with every cost accounted for.

If that profit feels too thin, you have two options: reduce costs (cheaper filament, faster print settings, lower failure rate) or increase the markup. But at least you are making that decision with real numbers, not guesses.

Do this faster with 3D PriceTag

This entire process — material, electricity, labour, overheads, waste, markup, fee absorption — is exactly what the 3D PriceTag calculator does automatically. Enter your print details, select Etsy as your platform, choose your markup, and the calculator produces the final price with a full cost breakdown. Every calculation is saved as a PriceTag you can refer back to.

No spreadsheets. No forgetting a cost category. No doing the fee absorption maths in your head.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Pricing by material only. Filament is typically just 25–40% of the true cost. If you only charge for material, you are losing money on every sale.
• Forgetting fees exist. Etsy takes roughly 10–13% of each sale depending on your situation. That is significant on a £15 item.
• Not valuing your time. Setup, slicing, quality checking, packing, and posting are all labour. If you work for free, your “profit” is actually your wage.
• Racing to the bottom. Competing purely on price against sellers who may be undercharging is a losing strategy. Compete on quality, presentation, and customer service instead.
• Ignoring failed prints. A 5–10% failure rate is normal. If you do not factor it in, those failed prints eat directly into your profit.