The hourly cost of a 3D printer: how to actually calculate it (2026)
How much does an hour of 3D printing cost? It's not just electricity: there's depreciation over real operating hours and maintenance. Formula, examples, and the lifetime-hours depreciation mistake.
"How much does an hour of printing cost me?" sounds like a simple question, and almost everyone answers by looking at the energy bill. But electricity, on an FDM printer, is often the lightest line in the hourly cost. The one that really weighs — and that almost nobody calculates properly — is depreciation.
Let's look at what a correct hourly cost is made of, why it matters, and the mistake that makes it look ridiculously low (or absurdly high).
The three lines of the hourly cost
The cost of one machine hour is made of:
- Electricity — real power draw while printing × your kWh rate. Careful: not the nameplate watts. Most FDM printers draw 50-150 W in practice, not the 1000 W on the label. I measured with a watt meter how much power a 3D printer really uses: usually 2-3 times less than people believe.
- Depreciation — the printer's price spread over the hours you actually print. It's almost always the biggest line in the hourly cost.
- Maintenance — nozzles, belts, lubricants, build plates: a small hourly share that grows with technical materials (CF, abrasives).
The depreciation mistake
Here's where almost everyone goes wrong. They take the printer's price and divide it by its theoretical lifetime hours (e.g. 10,000 hours). A €1,000 machine → €0.10/hour. Sounds like nothing.
The problem is that you don't print 24 hours a day for years. If your printer realistically runs 600-1,000 operating hours a year, the correct depreciation must be calculated over the real hours of use within the depreciation period (e.g. 4 years), not over the maximum lifetime hours.
Putting the numbers together
For a typical consumer-pro FDM printer in 2026:
| Line | Hourly cost |
|---|---|
| Electricity (100 W real × €0.30/kWh) | ~€0.03 |
| Depreciation (€1,000 / 3,200 operating h) | ~€0.31 |
| Maintenance | ~€0.05-0.15 |
| Machine total | ~€0.40-0.50/hour |
On a €3,000 machine with higher power draw, the hourly cost rises to €1.50-2.50/hour. On SLA or industrial MJF machines you go far beyond that. And remember: this is the machine cost — it doesn't include material or labor, which you need to add to reach the total cost of the print.
How I calculate it
Making these numbers add up by hand, for every printer and every quote, is a pain. I use Stimalo: for each printer you set the purchase price, the yearly operating hours and (if you have it) the power draw measured with a watt meter. From there the hourly cost — depreciation over real hours, not lifetime hours — flows automatically into every quote, together with material and labor.
It's free and you can try it without signing up: calculate a quote here. To save your printers and have them ready every time, open a free account.
How many hours do you depreciate your printer over? It's one of those things that changes your price more than it seems.
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