Multiply the filament cost by three (or two, or four, depending who taught it to you) and call that the price — it is the fastest pricing shortcut a maker has, and for a lot of small trinkets it happens to land somewhere reasonable. It is not a calculation of anything. It has no input for print time, so a 20-minute keychain and a 20-hour functional part cut from the same filament weight get the identical price, even though one used a fraction of the electricity and printer hours the other did.
This calculator charges what actually varies by print instead of hoping a constant absorbs it: the power drawn over however many hours the print takes, the share of the printer's own replacement cost those hours used up, the attempts that failed before one came out sellable, your finishing time, the packaging, and the percentage the marketplace takes out of whatever you list.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Isn't filament cost times three close enough? | Only if print time barely varies across what you sell. This calculator prices the hours directly, so a fast print and a slow print off the same filament weight stop getting the same answer. |
| What is a multiplier not charging me for at all? | This calculator's electricity and amortized printer wear lines — a flat constant has no input for either. |
| What do the prints that fail cost me on the one that sells? | This calculator's failure buffer, which a multiplier cannot see because it never asks your failure rate. |
| What is my true break-even before any margin? | This calculator's break-even figure — a number a multiplier does not produce at all. |
| I'm already charging a price I picked by eye. Is it actually profitable? | This calculator's check-a-price panel, which compares that price to the real break-even instead of to another guess. |
This tool needs no account and no upload: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and the figures you type stay on this device.
A pricing shortcut common among makers selling on Etsy, Shopify, or at a craft table: take what the filament in a print cost and multiply it by three (sometimes two, sometimes four — the constant varies by who is teaching it). It is fast, needs no other numbers, and for a lot of small trinkets it happens to land somewhere reasonable. It is not a calculation of anything; it is a habit that has not yet been tested against a print that breaks it.
Because filament weight and print time are not the same thing, and only one of them drives most of the real cost. A 20-gram print that takes 20 minutes and a 20-gram print that takes 8 hours can cost the same in filament and wildly different amounts in electricity and printer wear — the multiplier gives them the same price either way. The rule is really a bet that time-per-gram stays roughly constant across everything you print. Miniatures and multi-hour functional parts do not share that ratio, so one flat constant cannot price both correctly.
Three things it has no input for at all: the printer itself wearing out over its service life, the prints that fail partway through and still burn filament and hours before they are scrapped, and the percentage a marketplace takes out of whatever price you list — which is a cut of the price, not a cost you can multiply into it. A multiplier is silent on all three because it was never given the print time, the failure rate, or the fee percentage to begin with.
No — it has no break-even to compare against, because it never separately totals electricity, amortized printer wear, and the failure buffer. This calculator does, and the check-a-price panel takes a price you are already charging (to match a competitor's listing, say) and shows the real profit and margin against that break-even, rather than against a guess.
For a quick mental check on a small, fast, low-stakes print, sure — it costs nothing to eyeball. The risk is treating it as a price for everything, especially long or power-hungry prints, where the gap between the guess and the real cost is largest and least visible until a run of orders quietly loses money.