3D print cost and time calculator
Upload an STL or 3MF, pick your printer and settings, and get the real print time, the filament in grams and metres, and what the print costs in filament and electricity. The model is sliced by OrcaSlicer with your printer's own profile, not guessed from its volume.Drop an STL or 3MF here
Up to 50 MB. No account needed.Printer and settings
Your prices
The currency only changes the symbol; nothing is converted. 120 W is an average draw for a desktop FDM printer over a PLA print: a heated bed makes it vary, higher for ABS or a large bed, lower on a small one.How to use the calculator
- 1
Upload the STL or 3MF
Drop a file of up to 50 MB on the page. It opens in 3D in the browser, with its size, and no account is needed. - 2
Pick the printer and settings
Choose your printer among 380+ models, the print profile (layer height), the material, infill, walls, supports and speed. - 3
Enter your prices
Filament price per kg, electricity per kWh and the printer's power (defaults: 20 per kg, 0.15 per kWh, 120 W), plus an hourly rate and markup if you sell prints. - 4
Calculate
OrcaSlicer slices the model with your printer's profile and returns the print time, filament grams and metres, layers and supports; the cost breakdown updates as you change a price.
How the estimate is made
The calculator slices your model. The file goes to SpeakCAD's slicer service, where the unmodified OrcaSlicer 2.4.2 command-line slicer slices it with the printer, process and filament presets OrcaSlicer ships for your printer, and the settings you chose. The print time, the filament length and weight, the layer count and the supports come from that slice: the same numbers a desktop slicer shows before you print. The service sends back those numbers only; the G-code is not kept or returned.
Why volume-based calculators are off
Many print cost calculators take the model's volume, multiply it by the filament's density and call that the weight. A printed part is not solid, so that guess is wrong in both directions:
- Infill. At 15% infill the inside of a part is mostly air. A chunky part weighs far less than its volume suggests, often less than half.
- Walls, top and bottom layers. The outside is solid. A thin part (a bracket, an enclosure wall) is nearly all walls, so it weighs close to its full volume, and the ratio changes from one model to the next.
- Supports and brim. Overhangs need supports, which are extra filament and extra time the model's volume does not contain.
- Time. Print time depends on the length of the moves, the speeds of each line type, accelerations, travel and cooling, not on grams. Two parts of the same weight can take very different times.
Slicing is the only way to get these numbers right, which is why the calculator takes a few seconds instead of answering instantly.
How to read the numbers
- Print time is OrcaSlicer's estimate from the printer profile's speeds and accelerations. Heating the bed and nozzle, bed levelling and a purge line come on top on most printers, usually a few minutes.
- Filament is the length the extruder pushes and its weight at the material's density, supports and brim included. A spool's weight is filament only (1 kg on most spools), so this is what the print takes from it.
- Supports says whether any were printed and how much they weigh. With Auto, the slicer adds them only where an overhang needs them.
- Printed height differs from the model's when auto-orientation turned it onto a flatter base.
What drives print time
In order of effect, for a typical part: layer height (half the layer height is about twice the layers and close to twice the time), the speed preset, supports, the number of walls and the infill percentage. The 3D print time calculator page goes through each one and how to shorten a print.
The cost formula
The calculator adds these lines, and shows each one:
| Line | Formula | Example: 45 g, 2 h 30 min |
|---|---|---|
| Filament | grams ÷ 1,000 × price per kg | 45 ÷ 1,000 × 20 = 0.90 |
| Electricity | watts ÷ 1,000 × hours × price per kWh | 120 ÷ 1,000 × 2.5 × 0.15 = 0.045 |
| Machine and labour (optional) | hours × hourly rate | 2.5 × 2.00 = 5.00 |
| Markup (optional) | cost × markup % | 5.95 × 30% = 1.78 |
Without the optional lines, that print costs about 0.95 in filament and electricity. The electricity is usually a few percent of the material, so the price of the spool matters far more than the price of power, unless the print runs for days.
Filament prices, as ranges
Prices move with brands, colours and shops, so check the price you paid for your spool and divide it by its net weight. As rough ranges for 1 kg spools of 1.75 mm filament:
- PLA: roughly 15 to 30 per kg for common brands; silk, matte, marble and multicolour blends cost more.
- PETG: roughly 15 to 30 per kg.
- ABS and ASA: roughly 18 to 35 per kg.
- TPU: roughly 25 to 45 per kg, as it is usually sold on smaller spools.
- Nylon, polycarbonate and carbon-fibre blends: from about 40 per kg to well over 80.
The default of 20 per kg is a common PLA or PETG price. Spools of other than 1 kg are common (250 g, 500 g, 3 kg): divide by the weight on the label.
Electricity: the printer's power
120 W is an average for a desktop FDM printer printing PLA, not a rating. The heated bed dominates: the printer draws much more while heating up, then far less once the bed holds its temperature. A small bed-slinger printing PLA can average well under 100 W; a large bed, ABS at a high bed temperature, an enclosure heater or a cold room push the average higher. A plug-in energy meter over one print gives your own figure. Electricity prices range from well under 0.10 to over 0.40 per kWh depending on the country and the tariff: use the price on your bill.
Pricing a print for a customer
Filament and electricity are only part of what a print costs you. The optional section adds an hourly rate charged on the print time, to cover the printer's wear, spare parts, failed prints and your time, and a markup on the total. Hourly rates vary a lot between hobbyists and print farms; pick one that covers your costs and check what printing services near you charge. Post-processing (support removal, sanding, painting) is not in the print time, so add it separately.
After the estimate
- To print it: the online slicer slices the same file with the same settings and gives you the G-code (a .gcode.3mf for Bambu Lab printers). 1 free slice with a free account, no card.
- To change the part because it is too big for the bed, needs too much support or a hole is too small: edit the STL with SpeakCAD's AI, then estimate it again.
Your file
The file goes from your browser straight to the slicer service, never through SpeakCAD's web servers. It is sliced in a temporary folder that is deleted when the job ends, and it is not kept. The one exception is a file dropped on SpeakCAD's slicer page before signing up: it waits, as a compressed 3MF, in private storage until you open it in the slicer and for 24 hours at most, then it is deleted. Only the numbers come back to the page.
Questions
Mostly the filament: the grams the print uses times the price per gram of your spool. A 45 g part from a spool at 20 per kg is 0.90 in filament, and a 2.5-hour print at 120 W and 0.15 per kWh adds about 0.05 in electricity. To get the grams and hours for your own model, slice it: SpeakCAD's free print cost calculator does it from an STL or 3MF with your printer's OrcaSlicer profile, without an account.
Filament cost = grams used ÷ 1,000 × price per kg. Electricity cost = printer power in watts ÷ 1,000 × print hours × price per kWh. Someone selling prints adds an hourly rate × print hours for the machine and labour, then a markup percentage on the total. The grams and hours come from slicing the model, which is what the calculator does.
Slice it to know: print time depends on the layer height, the speeds and accelerations of your printer's profile, walls, infill and supports, not just the model's size. Upload the STL or 3MF to the calculator, pick your printer among 380+ models, and OrcaSlicer returns the print time for those settings. Add a few minutes for heating and bed levelling.
They treat the part as solid plastic. A printed part is walls and top and bottom layers around a partial infill, plus supports and a brim, so the real weight can be less than half of the solid-volume estimate for a chunky part and close to it for a thin one. Print time depends on move lengths and speeds, which volume does not capture. Slicing the model gives both numbers directly.
A desktop FDM printer printing PLA averages very roughly 70 to 150 W once the bed is hot, with peaks several times that while heating. The heated bed is the main load, so a large bed, ABS or ASA at a high bed temperature, or a cold room raise the average. At 120 W, a 5-hour print uses 0.6 kWh, which is 0.09 at 0.15 per kWh. A plug-in energy meter gives your printer's real figure.
Divide the spool price by its net weight in grams. A 1 kg spool at 20 is 0.02 per gram. Common PLA and PETG spools are roughly 15 to 30 per kg, ABS and ASA a little more, TPU and engineering filaments (nylon, polycarbonate, carbon-fibre blends) from about 25 to over 80 per kg. Check the price and weight of your own spool.
Yes, without an account: up to 10 estimates per visitor per day, counted over the last 24 hours. Changing a price (filament, electricity, hourly rate, markup) recalculates the cost in the page and does not use an estimate. The calculator returns the numbers only, not the G-code; to print, the online slicer slices the same file and gives you the G-code: 1 free slice with a free account, no card.
It is OrcaSlicer's own estimate with your printer's profile, the same one a desktop slicer shows. Real prints usually run a few percent longer because of heating, bed levelling, the purge line and firmware limits the estimate does not model exactly. If your printer's profile or firmware settings differ from OrcaSlicer's bundled ones, the gap can be larger.
380+ printer models from 60+ brands, with the profiles OrcaSlicer 2.4.2 bundles: Bambu Lab, Prusa, Creality, Elegoo, Anycubic, Qidi, Sovol, Voron, Flashforge, Snapmaker and more, with their nozzle variants, print profiles and filament presets.
Start from the material and electricity, add an hourly rate on the print time for the printer's wear, failed prints and your time, add post-processing separately, then a markup. The calculator's "Pricing a print for a customer?" section adds the hourly rate and the markup to the breakdown, in USD, EUR or GBP.