Most pricing pages for 3D printing explain what drives cost and then send you to a quote form. Here is the other thing: what our customers actually paid.
Every number below is a median computed from Makelab's own dispatched orders over the last twelve months: 4,277 parts. Prices exclude tax and shipping.
Cost by part size
Size drives price more than anything else, because it decides how long a machine is tied up and how much material goes into the part.
| Part size (longest edge) | Median per part | Parts measured |
|---|---|---|
| Under 25 mm (coin) | $8.94 | 943 |
| 25 to 75 mm (palm) | $14.80 | 1,353 |
| 75 to 150 mm (hand) | $39.04 | 959 |
| 150 to 250 mm (large) | $71.47 | 562 |
| Over 250 mm (XL) | $189.37 | 370 |
Cost by process
| Technology | Median per part | Parts measured |
|---|---|---|
| FDM | $16.18 | 2,544 |
| SLA | $25.19 | 1,245 |
| Industrial SLA | $149.37 | 41 |
Real example parts
Each of these is a median across real orders. None of them is a list price.
| Example | Median | Parts measured |
|---|---|---|
| Palm-sized PLA part on FDM | $5.63 | 399 |
| Hand-sized PLA part on FDM | $18.95 | 333 |
| Large PLA part on FDM | $60.81 | 161 |
| XL PLA part on FDM | $153.32 | 132 |
| Palm-sized standard resin part on SLA | $21.37 | 165 |
| Hand-sized standard resin part on SLA | $56.84 | 45 |
| Palm-sized PETG part on FDM | $11.39 | 64 |
How we calculated this
We took every dispatched part from the last twelve months and divided each line by its quantity to get a per-part figure. We excluded cancelled orders, parts not yet dispatched, our own internal and test accounts, wholesale orders placed through marketplaces, service lines that are not printed parts such as shipping and finishing, and a small number of records with known pricing-data errors.
We report medians rather than averages on purpose. A handful of very large jobs, including a four-metre sculpture, would otherwise drag the numbers somewhere no customer would recognise.
MJF nylon is not broken out here: the sample in this period is too concentrated to describe the market rather than a handful of repeat jobs.
Your part will not be the median. Upload it and the quoter will price it exactly, in a couple of minutes.