Pricing model

A print is priced by weight. One all-in rate per gram covers the filament and the normal machine time, billable weight rounds up to the whole gram, and there is a $1.00 minimum per part. This page gives you the whole calculation, so you can work out your own quote before you upload anything.

The formula#

billable grams = ceil(grams)
per part       = billable grams x rate per gram x quality factor
order subtotal = max(per part x quantity x bulk factor, $1.00 x quantity)
order total    = order subtotal + shipping + Priority print and support removal, if chosen
                 + $15 per spool bought in, unless the goods are over $100

Everything else on this page is either where the grams come from or which number goes into which slot. Nothing is added for setup, file handling, supports or brim — supports and brim are plastic, so they arrive as grams and are paid for as grams. Taking the supports off afterwards is optional: support removal, $10 once per order at checkout.

Three charges sit outside the per-gram part and only appear when they apply: the $25 second-AMS fee for a print in five or more colours, below; Priority print, $5 once per order if you choose it at checkout to have the order printed first; and support removal, $10 once per order if you choose to have the supports taken off before it ships. Normal print is included. None of them is discounted or counted toward free shipping. See /docs/studio/checkout.

Two discounts can come off that total at the till, and neither is part of the quote above. An account that has never paid us for anything takes 10% off the goods at cart checkout — postage excluded — and a gift card can be applied on top of it. A Pro account takes 10% off an order placed straight from /print with its Order button, postage included, and any print credit on the account then comes off what is left.

Rate per gram#

Density is part of the price, not a footnote. The same model in ABS weighs about 18% less than in PETG, so at the same $0.12/g it costs about 18% less to print. See /docs/materials for what each plastic is actually good for.

A Custom filament, a spool you name on /print for us to buy in (API key custom on the quote API, with its name as customFilament), is $0.20 per gram for the same reason, plus the same $15 new-filament fee on the website (free over $100 of goods). Its grams are worked out at the density of the plastic the name states, and at PLA's 1.26 g/cm³ when it names none.

Quality factor#

Premium halves the layer height, which roughly doubles the machine time for the same weight of plastic. The factor multiplies the per-gram charge; it does not add an hourly line.

Where the grams come from#

Two sources, and the quote says which one it used. Measured always beats modelled.

• Measured — the file is sliced by OrcaSlicer with the real Bambu profile for the farm's H2S, in the pose the farm prints it (an uploaded GLB lying the way the page shows it, with glTF's Y as up, unless the file was plainly written Z-up, when it stands on the flat base it was written with), and the filament volume it reports is converted to grams with the material's density. TPU is sliced on the farm's own TPU preset, the one it prints TPU with; the other plastics are measured on Bambu PLA Basic. This is what the quote uses wherever a slice can be run. It takes ten seconds to a minute, so the first number on the page may still be the estimate.
• Estimated — a geometric fallback used before a slice lands: model volume x (0.30 + 0.70 x infill), then x density. The 0.30 is the solid perimeter walls; infill fills the rest. Requested infill is clamped to 5–100% and defaults to 20%.
• A pre-sliced plate (a .3mf / .gcode.3mf plate export, or a .gcode sent to the print API) is always measured: the grams and hours come out of the file's own header, and they already contain every purge, support and brim.
• A print in colour is always measured too: a project or a generated model is sliced in its colours, and that slice's grams and hours are the price.

Rounding and the minimum#

• Billable weight rounds UP to the whole gram, like postage. 39.92 g bills as 40 g. Nothing is added before that rounding — the multi-colour purge surcharge the code can model is switched off, so it contributes nothing.
• $1.00 is the minimum per part. A 3 g PLA keychain works out at $0.36 and bills at $1.00. The floor is applied per unit, so ten of them floor at $10.00 and not $1.00.

Worked example#

A part measuring 60 x 40 x 30 mm, PLA, Standard quality, 20% infill, one unit, shipped in the US. Every step below is arithmetic you can repeat.

1. 1
   Start from volume

   An uploaded mesh gives its real volume. This example uses the bounding box, which is what the quote API works from: 60 x 40 x 30 mm = 72,000 mm³ = 72 cm³.

   textCopy

   60 x 40 x 30 / 1000 = 72 cm3

2. 2
   Apply walls and infill

   30% of the volume is solid wall; the remaining 70% is filled to the requested infill.

   textCopy

   72 x (0.30 + 0.70 x 0.20) = 31.68 cm3

3. 3
   Convert to weight

   Multiply by the density of PLA, 1.26 g/cm³.

   textCopy

   31.68 x 1.26 = 39.92 g

4. 4
   Round up

   Billable weight is a whole number of grams.

   textCopy

   ceil(39.92) = 40 g

5. 5
   Apply the rate and the quality factor

   PLA is $0.12/g and Standard quality is 1.00. This is above the $1.00 minimum, so the minimum does not bite.

   textCopy

   40 x 0.12 x 1.00 = $4.80 per part

6. 6
   Multiply by quantity, then add shipping

   One unit gets no bulk discount, and US shipping is $7.00 flat below $49.50.

   textCopy

   4.80 x 1 x 1.00 = $4.80
   4.80 + 7.00 = $11.80

You can check that against the quote API, which is public and needs no key.

curl -X POST https://x3dstudios.com/api/price \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "bboxMm": { "x": 60, "y": 40, "z": 30 },
    "material": "pla",
    "quality": "standard",
    "quantity": 1,
    "color": "Black"
  }'

{
  "filamentChanges": 0,
  "multiColorGrams": 0,
  "multiColorHours": 0,
  "grams": 40,
  "printHours": 1.98,
  "materialCost": 4.8,
  "machineCost": 0,
  "shipping": 7,
  "baseFee": 0,
  "perUnit": 4.8,
  "subtotal": 4.8,
  "total": 11.8,
  "currency": "USD",
  "material": "pla",
  "quality": "standard",
  "quantity": 1,
  "color": "Black",
  "customColor": false,
  "pricePerGram": 0.12
}

This route quotes a box, not a mesh, so it is an upper bound — a real model inside that box weighs less. Upload the file at /print for a quote from the model itself.

Quantity and bulk#

Multi-colour#

A print in colour is priced from a real slice of it in those colours, never from an estimate. There are three ways to get one: a plate you sliced yourself, priced from its own header; a Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer project, which we slice plate by plate in its own colours; and a model generated in the Studio, which we paint and slice in the colours of its texture. In every case the purge and the filament-change time are already inside the measured grams and hours, so nothing is added on top for them. Charging them twice would be an overcharge.

What colour does change is the rate per gram: +$0.03/g at two colours and +$0.02/g for each colour after (PLA $0.15, $0.17 and $0.19 for two, three and four). The same steps apply to every material that prints in colour (ASA is $0.17/g at two colours), and the quality factor multiplies the whole rate. A colour print spends hours swapping and purging that a one-colour print of the same weight does not: 100 g in one colour is about two hours on the printer, in three colours four to five, so 100 g of PLA is $12.00 in one colour and $17.00 in three. Set by the owner on 21 October 2026.

Colours are counted by what prints. A filament the file assigns but the slicer never feeds is not counted and not charged for. Up to eight colours print, which is two AMS units.

A colour project is priced at 100% scale and standard quality, at the rate of the base plastic its own filaments name (a plate in PLA-CF is priced as PLA), because that is what its slice measured; those controls are locked on /print while colour is chosen. The surcharge estimate in the pricing code (one filament change per layer per extra colour, 84 mm³ purged per change, 1.3 minutes per change, change hours at $1.50/hour) stays switched off behind a flag, because a real slice sees the changes a plate actually makes. The quote API returns filamentChanges: 0, multiColorGrams: 0 and multiColorHours: 0 for that reason. See /docs/studio/multi-color for how colours are checked and mapped to trays.

Shipping#

Shipping is charged once per order, not per part, and appears as its own line at checkout. One caveat if you are reading the quote API: it returns shipping: 7, or 15 when you send shippingSpeed express, whatever the total, because it prices a part and not a basket. The free-shipping thresholds are applied at cart checkout against the order subtotal. Express is US only.

The other model: reserving a printer by the hour#

1. You pick a printer that is AVAILABLE and choose hourly (1–24 hours) or daily. A card on file is required — the reservation is refused with 402 and CARD_REQUIRED without one.
2. Nothing is charged at booking. The reservation starts at $0.00 and accrues.
3. Releasing it meters the real elapsed time between reserve and release. Hourly bills elapsed hours x $1.50, rounded to the cent; daily bills each started 24-hour block at $15.00.
4. Filament is billed on what a job actually used, at the raw rate above. A job's machine time is charged from its actual run time whether it finished, failed or was cancelled.
5. The balance settles on the monthly card charge, run on the 1st. A declined card leaves the balance open and emails you rather than cancelling anything.

The public /farm page does not publish these rates, so this page and /docs/farm/reservations are where they live.