Turn your true cost into a price that survives marketplace fees, shipping, tax and returns — and shows the profit you actually keep.
| List price needed | — |
| Marketplace + payment fees | — |
| Tax collected | — |
| Profit per unit | — |
| Returns cost per unit sold | — |
| Net profit per month | — |
| Effective margin after everything | — |
A cost calculator tells you what a part costs you to make. A pricing calculator answers a different question: what do you have to charge so that what lands in your bank account is actually more than that cost?
Those two numbers are separated by four things that people routinely forget: the platform's commission, the payment processor's cut, the shipping and packaging you quietly pay for, and the small fraction of orders that get refunded. Individually each looks minor. Together they routinely consume a third of the headline price.
fees = price × (marketplace % + payment %) ÷ 100 tax = price × tax % ÷ 100 net kept = price − fees − tax − shipping − cost profit = net kept − (cost × returns % ÷ 100)
A part that truly costs $9.74 to make, with $4.50 of shipping and packaging, 12% marketplace commission, 3% payment fee and a 5% return rate.
A naive 60% margin gives a $15.58 list price. But 15% of that goes to fees ($2.34), $4.50 goes to shipping, and $9.74 goes to the part itself — leaving about $-1.00 before returns are even counted. The "profitable" price loses money on every sale.
The calculator above solves for the price that actually delivers your target margin after all deductions. In this example that comes out materially higher than $15.58, which is the point: the gap between those two numbers is the gap between a hobby that pays for filament and a business.
| Deduction | Typical range | Trap |
|---|---|---|
| Marketplace commission | 8% – 15% | Charged on the full price including shipping in many cases. |
| Payment processing | 2.5% – 4% | Often a percentage plus a fixed per-transaction fee. |
| Shipping | $3 – $12 | "Free shipping" means you pay it out of margin. |
| Packaging | $0.50 – $2 | Small per order, relentless in aggregate. |
| Returns & refunds | 2% – 10% | You eat the material and often the postage both ways. |
| Tax | 0% – 20%+ | Depends on whether your prices are quoted inclusive or exclusive. |
For made-to-order parts, 50% to 100% on true cost is normal, and it needs to be higher when marketplace fees are involved. Below about 30% after all deductions, one failed print or one refund wipes out the profit on several good orders.
Usually yes, or build it into the price deliberately. "Free shipping" is psychologically effective but it is a real cost, and absorbing it silently is the most common reason a print business looks busy and earns nothing.
Decide whether your listed prices are tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive before you publish them, and set the field above to match. If you are registered and quote exclusive prices, remember the buyer sees a higher number at checkout, which affects conversion.
Almost always fees and returns. Both scale with revenue rather than with units, so they grow exactly as fast as your sales do. If your margin was thin at ten units a month, it is thin at two hundred — just bigger in absolute terms.