Costing & Quoting

The "what should I charge?" tier. Hobbyists usually want a slicer-side panel; small print services need invoice-grade calculators with electricity, depreciation, and labor; production shops integrate with Print Farm Management and Filament & Resin Tracking.

Slicer-integrated calculators

• ★ OrcaSlicer cost panel — built-in; reads filament price/kg, electricity rate. The cheapest accurate per-print number.
• ★ PrusaSlicer cost — same idea; first-party in PrusaSlicer.
• Bambu Studio cost estimate — built-in; AMS-aware, includes purge waste.
• Cura "Print Cost" plugin — Marketplace plugin; broadly equivalent.

Mainsail / Fluidd panels

• Print Cost Calculator (Mainsail panel) — community panel; reads Spoolman + electricity rate per print.
• Mainsail "Filament cost" column in print history — built-in once Spoolman is configured.
• Custom Klipper macros + Moonraker hooks — many small farms script their own per-print cost log.

OctoPrint plugins

• ★ OctoPrint Cost plugin — adds power + filament cost overlay to print jobs.
• OctoPrint PrintJobHistory — log per-job cost.
• OctoPrint Filament Manager — feeds filament cost into per-print totals.

Standalone web calculators

• ★ 3D Printing Calculator (3dprintingcalculator.io) — free; web; common starting point for new sellers. Hobby-grade, fine for ad-hoc.
• Slant3D pricing tool — free; closed; aimed at high-volume "print farm as a service".
• CraftCloud / Treatstock instant quote — paid services that quote for you (hosted print services).
• Hubs / Protolabs instant quote — for industrial / SLA / SLS quoting; not FDM hobby-grade.

Print-service / shop platforms

• ★ Slant3D Order Bot — closed; integrates orders → fleet → ship; for production farms.
• PrintShop / 3DEXPRT / Treatstock — marketplace + storefront platforms for print services.
• Etsy / Shopify + a 3D-print app — most small print sellers use a generic ecommerce stack (Ecommerce Platforms) and quote manually.
• WooCommerce + Print 3D plugins — paid plugins that turn a slicer estimate into a quote line.

Spreadsheets / templates

• Maker's Muse / Teaching Tech / 3D Printing Nerd cost spreadsheets — Google Sheets / Excel templates floating around YouTube comment sections; free.
• Notion / Grist / NocoDB templates — DIY tracking; pair with Spoolman exports (see Filament & Resin Tracking).

Cost components to track (input list)

• Filament cost — kg used × $/kg; pull from Spoolman.
• Electricity — print time × printer wattage × $/kWh; smart plugs (Tasmota / Shelly / Tapo) give exact numbers.
• Failure rate / waste markup — typically 5–15% added; varies wildly.
• Depreciation — printer cost ÷ expected lifetime hours; rarely tracked by hobbyists.
• Maintenance & consumables — nozzles, belts, build plates; usually folded into depreciation.
• Labor — slicing, post-processing, packing; the biggest line item for paid prints.
• Resin / wash / cure consumables — resin printers add IPA, gloves, FEP/nFEP replacement.

Quoting / invoicing tooling (generic)

• Stripe / PayPal / Square invoicing — standard small-business invoicing; pair with the calculators above.
• Wave / Akaunting / Invoice Ninja — free / FOSS invoicing tools.
• Subscription / billing — see Subscriptions & Billing.

Pick this if…

• Hobby, just want a number per print: OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer cost panel.
• Multi-printer farm with per-spool tracking: Spoolman + a Mainsail cost panel.
• OctoPrint user: OctoPrint Cost plugin.
• Quoting customers ad-hoc: 3DPrintingCalculator.io + manual margin.
• Running a real print service: Slant3D Order Bot or a custom Shopify/WooCommerce + Spoolman pipeline.
• Want to actually understand your unit economics: track filament + electricity + failure-rate + labor in a spreadsheet — tools rarely cover all four.