Extruse

Filament cost calculator

Filament is the part of the cost everyone can name, and it is still the part most people get wrong. The usual mistake is not the arithmetic — it is the weight. A slicer reports the plastic it will extrude; a spool loses more than that.

Type the grams your slicer shows and the price you paid for the spool. The number below is what the plastic in one part costs you.

Material
Printer
Sales channel

Preparation, post-processing, hardware and packaging. Without them the cost treats your time as free

True cost
$2.38
everything included, per unit
Profit per unit
$1.61
Per machine-hour
$0.81/h
Your selling price
$3.99
Break-even
$2.38
Three price levels — tap to apply

Where the money goes

Filament$2.16
Wear & maintenance$0.16
Failed prints$0.04
Electricity$0.02

Why the number is bigger than grams × price

Purge towers, skirts, the tail you cannot print with, the first layers you scrape off — none of it ends up in the part, all of it leaves the spool. The calculator adds a waste percentage on top of the part weight for exactly this reason.

The one case where it must not: a weight taken from a sliced file already includes supports and purge, because the slicer counted what the nozzle extrudes. Adding waste again would charge you twice for the same plastic.

What filament alone does not tell you

Plastic is rarely more than half of what a print costs. Electricity, the wear of the machine, and failed prints make up the rest, and none of them are visible on the spool. The breakdown above shows all of them side by side.