How to price your 3D prints for Etsy in 2026

The short version

Pricing a print is layered. You build a raw cost, pad it for reality, then solve for a price that survives Etsy's cut:

material + electricity + machine + labor + packaging = raw cost

raw × (1 + failure%) × (1 + overhead%) = loaded cost

(loaded + flat fees) ÷ (1 − Etsy fee% − target margin%) = list price

If you only remember one thing: the last line is why a 30% markup on filament loses money. The markup has to clear the fees first, and then the margin, and the fees come off the sale price, not the cost. We will build each piece below.

1. Material: what filament really costs

Start with cost per gram, not cost per spool. Divide the spool price by its weight:

25.00 spool ÷ 1000 g = 0.025 per gram

Your slicer tells you the grams for the model. Multiply the two. If you print multi-color with an AMS or MMU, add a little for purge waste, because every color change flushes filament that ends up in the bin, not the part. A part that weighs 40 g might consume 48 g once purge is counted. Use the filament-used figure from the slicer when it gives you one, since that already includes the waste.

2. The costs sellers forget

This is where most Etsy pricing quietly leaks. Filament is the obvious cost. These are the ones that disappear into “it feels about right.”

• Electricity. Printer wattage times hours times your power rate. Small per print, real across a year.
• Machine depreciation. Your printer wears out. Spread its purchase price plus expected maintenance over its useful life in hours, then charge per print hour. A 400 printer over 4000 hours is 10 cents an hour before maintenance. A 23 hour print quietly owes you a few dollars of machine cost.
• Labor and setup. Slicing, plating, removing supports, cleanup, packing. Even at a modest hourly rate, the fixed minutes per order add up. Charge setup once per order, not once per plate.
• Packaging. Box, mailer, infill, label. Per shipment, not per item. If three parts ship in one box, packaging is charged once.

3. Pad for reality: failures and overhead

Some prints fail. If one in twenty fails, every successful print has to carry that loss, so add a failure buffer (5% in that example). Overhead covers the costs with no line item: the spare nozzles, the glue stick, the corner of the desk, the time spent answering messages. A small overhead percentage keeps those honest. Multiply the raw cost by both:

raw × (1 + 0.05 failure) × (1 + 0.10 overhead) = loaded cost

4. Etsy's 2026 fees, and why margin comes last

Etsy does not take a single flat cut. In 2026 a sale typically carries:

• A transaction fee on the item total.
• A payment processing fee, which is a percentage plus a small flat amount per order.
• A listing fee per listing.
• An Offsite Ads fee, only when a sale comes through Etsy's ads. For some shops this is mandatory.

Rates change and vary by country, so put your real numbers in. The structure is the point: the percentage fees come off your sale price, so you cannot just add them to cost. You solve for the price. If your variable fees total roughly 9.5% and you want a 35% margin, the price is not cost plus 35%. It is:

(loaded + flat fees) ÷ (1 − 0.095 − 0.35) = list price

Dividing by that smaller number is what makes the margin survive the fees. Skip it and the fees come straight out of your profit.

A worked example

A functional desk organizer. 120 g of PLA, 6 hours of print time, a single color, sold on Etsy.

material: 120 g × 0.025 = 3.00

electricity: 6 h × 0.12 kW × 0.20 per kWh = 0.14

machine: 6 h × 0.12 per hour = 0.72

labor: 0.25 h setup × 20 per hour = 5.00

packaging: 2.00

raw = 3.00 + 0.14 + 0.72 + 5.00 + 2.00 = 10.86

loaded = 10.86 × 1.05 × 1.10 = 12.54

list = (12.54 + 0.45 flat) ÷ (1 − 0.095 − 0.35) = 23.40

Round to 23 or 24 dollars. Notice how far that is from “filament was three bucks, I'll charge ten.” The labor and the fee math are doing most of the work, and they are exactly the parts a gut feeling misses.

Common mistakes that quietly cost you

• Pricing off filament alone. It is usually the smallest real cost on a long print.
• Adding the margin, then forgetting fees. The fees come off the top and eat the margin you thought you had.
• Charging setup and packaging per part. If a set ships together in one box, those are once per order.
• Ignoring print time. Machine wear and electricity scale with hours. A 20 hour print is not the same product as a 2 hour one at the same weight.
• Never revisiting. Filament prices move, your failure rate changes as you dial in a model. Recheck the numbers a few times a year.