Browser-only OrcaSlicer cost tool

3D Print Cost Calculator

The slicer already tells you how long a print takes and how much filament it eats. This calculator turns those two numbers into an actual cost: filament priced by your own spool, electricity from the printer's wattage and your tariff, an optional machine-hour rate, and a failure or waste margin. You get material, power and machine time separated, a per-print total, and a per-part price when a plate holds several copies. Every figure is your own input and every calculation runs in this page — nothing is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere.

1 — What the print uses

Take both figures from the slicer's summary after slicing, not from an estimate made before the profile was tuned. They describe one whole print job, which may hold several parts.

hmin

The slicer's own time estimate is usually within a few percent. If the machine is slower than the profile assumes, use the time the printer actually reported for the last comparable job.

The weight in the summary, not the length in millimetres. This is the material the part itself consumes.

Flush and prime-tower volume on a multi-material print is filament you paid for and throw away. Leave it empty for a single-colour print, or type the purge weight the slicer reports.

How many copies sit on the plate in that one job. Set this to 1 when you are pricing a single part, and the per-part figure equals the per-print total.

Used for the batch total only. It multiplies the whole job, not the parts on the plate, so ten runs of a four-part plate are 40 parts.

2 — Your prices and rates

Every field is priced in your own currency. The page never converts or labels it, so keep all four price fields in the same one.

The net filament weight, not the gross weight on the box. A 1 kg spool usually holds 1000 g, but some brands ship 750 g or 900 g, and that changes the real price per kilogram.

A bedslinger with a 60 W hotend and a 200 W bed averages roughly 100–150 W over a print; a large enclosed CoreXY with an active chamber heater can sit far higher. Use a plug-in meter for a real number.

From your own bill, including the per-unit portion of taxes and standing charges if you want the fully loaded figure.

What an hour of machine time costs you beyond filament and power: nozzles, belts, plates, maintenance and the operator's attention. Leave it empty to price the print on consumables alone.

Applied to the whole subtotal so failed prints, test coupons and scrapped spools are paid for by the jobs that succeed. Enter 0 to see the raw cost with no allowance at all.

Enter the print time and filament weight from the slicer summary, then your spool price, the printer's wattage and your electricity price. The estimate appears here as you type, and nothing you enter leaves this page.

How this estimate is built

The calculator follows the same order a shop does when it prices a job bottom-up. Three costs are added, then the failure margin is applied to the sum.

  1. Material. The filament billed to the print — what the part uses plus any prime tower or purge weight — is divided by the net weight of a spool and multiplied by the spool price. Expressed as a formula: material = grams / spool grams x spool price.
  2. Electricity. Watts become kilowatt hours over the print time, then meet your tariff:kWh = watts / 1000 x hours, andenergy = kWh x price per kWh.
  3. Machine time. The print time in hours multiplied by the machine-hour rate you set. Left empty, this line is zero and the estimate prices consumables only.
  4. Failure and waste margin. A percentage of the subtotal, added on top. It is the honest way to pay for the prints that fail, the calibration coupons and the spools that arrive wet.

The per-part price divides one print's total by the number of parts on the plate. That is why the time and filament figures have to describe the whole job: a plate of four brackets costing 5.21 is 1.30 per bracket, while a single bracket costing 5.21 is 5.21.

Worked example

The values the page opens with are a realistic small production job: a 6 h 30 min print using 180 g of filament, a 1 kg spool at 25, a printer drawing 130 W, electricity at 0.28 per kWh, no machine rate, a 10% failure margin and four brackets on the plate.

  • Material: 180 g at 25.00 per kg = 4.50
  • Electricity: 130 W over 6.5 h = 0.845 kWh at 0.28 = 0.24
  • Machine time: 6.5 h at 0 = 0.00
  • Subtotal 4.74, margin 10% = 0.47, total 5.21 per print
  • Four brackets per plate, so 1.30 per part

Add a machine-hour rate of 1.50 and the same job gains 9.75 of machine time before the margin — the filament is rarely the largest line in a production print once wear and operator time are counted.

What the estimate leaves out

  • Shipping, import duty and tax on the spool, unless you folded them into the price you typed.
  • Build-plate wear, nozzles, belts and lubrication, unless they are part of your machine-hour rate.
  • Labour for removing supports, sanding, drilling, assembly or packaging. Add it through the machine-hour rate or price post-processing separately.
  • Failed prints beyond the margin you set. The margin is an average, not a guarantee, and an overnight failure that also wastes machine time costs more than the material alone.
  • Market filament prices. The page uses the numbers you enter and never looks up a vendor, a currency or an exchange rate.

Frequently asked questions

Should I use the slicer's time estimate or the real print time?

Use the real time from the printer's own screen or job history when you have it. The slicer's estimate assumes the profile's accelerations and volumetric limits are accurate; if the machine is slower, or a print was paused, the actual hours are longer and the electricity and machine-time lines move with them.

Does the filament weight include the prime tower and purge?

Not automatically. On a multi-material print the slicer reports the flush and prime-tower volume separately, and that filament is bought, heated and thrown away. Type it into the purge field and it is charged at the same price per gram as the part.

What failure margin is normal?

A well-tuned printer on a familiar material may need only a few percent. A new material, a tall thin part, or a farm running unattended overnight can justify 20% or more. The right test is your own scrap bin: compare the value of filament thrown away over a month against the material you sold.

How do I set a machine-hour rate?

Take what the machine costs you over its life — purchase price minus resale, plus the maintenance and spares you actually buy — and divide it by the hours you expect to run it. If you also want the estimate to carry the operator's attention, add an hourly labour figure to that rate, because the calculator has no separate labour field.

Can I price a part in a different currency?

Yes, as long as every money field uses the same one. The calculator only multiplies and adds, so it does not know or care which currency the numbers are in, and it never fetches an exchange rate.

Is anything I type sent anywhere?

No. The whole calculation is arithmetic that runs in this page. No value is uploaded, written to storage, added to the URL or logged.

Related reading and tools

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