Laser & CNC pricing guides · free guide

How much to charge for laser cutting: the 7 costs to put in every quote

A customer sends a file and asks "how much?". The quick answer is a bit of material, a few minutes on the machine, a margin, done. The trouble is that a laser cutting price is not just cutting time. Plenty of small shops lose money on jobs that looked profitable, simply because several costs never made it into the sum.

Before cutting, check your DXF/SVG with our free Laser File Checker — it runs in your browser and your file never leaves your computer.

This guide works in two steps: first your real machine hourly cost, then the seven costs most quotes forget. Every figure below is a worked example; swap in your own.

Step 1: your real machine hourly cost

Before you quote anything, you need to know what one hour of laser time costs you:

Machine cost per hour = (machine price ÷ hours of use over its life) + maintenance per hour + electricity per hour + consumables per hour

Worked example: a $12,000 machine used about 1,000 hours a year for 5 years gives 5,000 hours, so $2.40 an hour of depreciation. Then add maintenance (lenses, mirrors, servicing), electricity (including the extraction fan, chiller and air compressor) and consumables.

Your time comes on top. An hour standing next to the machine, even just watching it, is not free. The total is your price floor: below it, every hour you sell loses money. Our laser machine hourly rate guide walks through the full calculation.

Step 2: the 7 costs of a laser cutting job

1. Setup and test cuts

New material, new thickness, new batch: you adjust power, speed and focus, and run a test or two. That time is real and it uses material and machine time, yet it is rarely billed. Write down the settings that work, so the next job needs less setup and your quote gets more accurate.

2. Scrap and offcuts

A part takes up a certain area, but you buy a whole sheet. The skeleton left after cutting, unusable edges and failed parts are all part of the cost. Example: if a part measures 12 × 12 in (about 305 × 305 mm, 144 sq in) but ties up 12 × 20 in of sheet (240 sq in), you are paying for 240 sq in. Charge for the material you consume, not the area of the part. Measure your real scrap rate over a few weeks: it is the only reliable figure.

3. File preparation

A clean DXF or SVG cuts straight away. A file with duplicate lines, open contours, the wrong scale or a rough sketch needs work: clean-up, vectorising, nesting. Those minutes add up. Add a "file preparation" line to your quote, or a flat fee depending on the quality of the file you receive.

4. Finishing

Deburring, peeling masking or protective film, cleaning smoke marks, sanding, assembly and careful packing all happen after the machine stops. On a batch of small parts, finishing can take longer than the cutting itself.

5. Consumables

Assist gas, nozzles, lenses, extraction filters, masking tape: they wear in proportion to use. If they are not already in your hourly cost, add them per job. On some materials (metal cut with nitrogen or oxygen, for example) gas is a major cost.

6. Admin time

Reading the request, asking questions, writing the quote, following up, invoicing and preparing shipping: this "invisible" time is essential and never shows on the machine. A simple fix is a minimum order value that covers at least this fixed time, whatever the size of the job.

7. A risk allowance

A faulty sheet, a part that shifts, a customer who changes their mind: things go wrong. A small risk percentage, higher on tricky materials or new customers, stops the first incident from wiping out the job.

The markup trap

A common mistake is to confuse markup with margin. Adding 30% to a $100 cost gives $130, but the real margin is 30 ÷ 130, about 23%. To keep a true 30% margin you divide the cost by 0.70: $100 ÷ 0.70 = $142.86. On this one example, the gap is almost $13 per quote.

Think about unit price by quantity too: a single part carries all of the setup and admin, while on a hundred parts those fixed costs are shared. Your unit price should fall with quantity, but never below your floor.

Checklist before every laser cutting quote

• Machine hourly cost worked out, including your time
• Setup and test cuts
• Scrap and offcuts (material consumed, not part area)
• File preparation
• Finishing
• Consumables
• Admin time and minimum order
• Risk allowance, then a margin worked out properly (divide, don't mark up)

Tick these points on every request and your quotes become consistent from one customer to the next, and you know exactly what you make on each job.

For a first calculation for free, try our job cost calculator.

Free calculators

Want a first estimate without a spreadsheet? Our free calculators run in your browser, with no sign-up, in $, £ or €: laser & CNC cost per part, hourly rate, margin & markup and break-even.

Quote a laser cutting job in two minutes

To stop redoing these sums by hand, Atelier Pilot is an Excel workbook (no macros; built for Microsoft Excel, checked in LibreOffice, Google Sheets not guaranteed) that covers these costs: material with scrap, setup, machine time, finishing, packaging, selling fees and margin. It shows no price if an input is invalid, so a wrong figure never ends up in a quote. It is not accounting software and promises no income: it is a calculation tool that runs on your own numbers.

Get the Atelier Pilot quote calculator — €27, one-time

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