How Much to Charge for Tattoos: Hourly Rate, Size and Minimums

October 26, 2026 · Pricing a service business

To work out how much to charge for tattoos, turn the income you want, your costs and the shop’s cut into an hourly rate per paid chair hour, then price each piece as its chair hours at that rate plus its supplies, grossed up so the shop’s share comes out of the price and not out of your pocket. In the illustrative example below the artist needs $114.27 a chair hour, a 4 by 6 inch piece quotes at $470.00, and the smallest piece worth doing has a minimum of $140.00.

None of these are market prices. The income, costs, minutes and supply prices belong to one made-up artist working on a percentage split in a shop. Put in your own figures before you quote anyone. Nothing here is health, hygiene or licensing guidance.

The tattoo pricing formula

revenue you need  = income to keep / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs
billing needed    = revenue you need / (1 - shop's share)
paid chair hours  = hours booked a week x (1 - share lost) x weeks
hourly rate       = billing needed / paid chair hours
piece price       = chair hours x hourly rate
                    + supplies / (1 - shop's share), rounded up

Step 1: the hourly rate from your year

The example artist wants to keep $50,000 a year, sets aside 25% of profit for tax, and carries $6,000 of business costs of their own. The shop keeps 40% of every price. The artist works 48 weeks, books 24 chair hours a week and loses 8% of them to no-shows and moved appointments.

The cut is the big step. Without it the same year would need $68.56 an hour; with it, every paid chair hour has to bill $114.27. On top of the chair the artist spends 10 hours a week drawing and 5 on messages, consults and booking, none of it paid. Over 1872 hours worked a year, only 57% are paid, so the artist keeps $26.71 per hour actually worked. The freelance hourly rate calculator walks the same floor in general terms.

Step 2: supplies for one session

Count what one session uses, from your own receipts. For a 4-hour session in the example:

Ink is costed by the milliliters used, not by the bottle opened. The last line is the one to put on the quote: because the shop takes 40% of the whole price, every dollar of supplies has to be quoted as $1.67 for the dollar to come back to you. Here supplies are 12.7% of the session’s price.

Step 3: how much to charge for a tattoo by size

A size-based price works if the minutes per square inch are your own, timed on a few of your own pieces in the same style. The example piece is 4 by 6 inches, 24 square inches. At 6 minutes a square inch and a detail factor of 1.25 for this design, it is 180 minutes of tattooing; with 30 minutes of setup, stencil and breakdown, that is 3.50 chair hours.

Lines are rounded to the cent and the price is added before rounding, so the first two money lines can look a cent off their sum. The quote works out to $19.58 a square inch, but that figure is a result, not an input: a different detail factor or a slower style changes it.

Step 4: the minimum charge

A tiny piece still needs a full setup and breakdown. In the example a 20-minute piece takes a 30-minute setup and $25.00 of supplies, because much of a setup is used however small the piece. At the same rate that prices at $136.89, rounded up to a minimum of $140.00, of which the artist keeps $59.00 after the cut and supplies.

Supplies are 29.8% of the minimum, against 12.7% of the full session in step 2. That is why a minimum built as “a bit of the hourly rate” comes out short: the fixed part of a small piece is a much bigger share. A 8-hour flash day fits 9 minimums back to back and leaves the artist $531.00.

The insight: the cut and the clock decide the price

Two things in this example move the price more than anything on the design.

The first is the shop’s share. It is taken from the whole price, so it is taken from the supplies too. Quote supplies at cost and you hand the shop 40% of your own receipts. Gross them up and you are repaid in full.

The second is what happens when a flat quote meets the clock. The $470.00 piece was estimated at 3.50 chair hours and took 4.25. Billed hourly it would have been $552.31, $82.31 more. On the flat price the artist keeps $56.94 an hour instead of the $68.56 the rate was built to pay. Past 3.53 chair hours the flat quote is the cheaper deal for the client. A flat price is fine; it just has to come from your own timed minutes, and a piece that runs over is paid for out of your hour.

Drawing time and the deposit

The example’s design took 4 hours of drawing and revisions. At the $68.56 the artist keeps per chair hour after the cut, that is $274.24 of time, so a $150.00 deposit falls short of the drawing alone. Charged as a separate design fee through the shop, it would be $457.07.

If the client does not show, the artist also loses the 4 booked chair hours, less the 25% of such slots refilled: $205.68. A no-show costs $479.92, and $329.92 of it is still lost after the deposit. At 6 no-shows a year, that is $1,979.52. Whether and how a deposit is refunded is your own policy.

Split or booth rent?

The same arithmetic settles the shop deal. Billing $8,000 a month, the 40% split leaves $4,320.00 after the artist’s own supplies, and a $1,600 booth leaves $5,920.00: $1,600.00 more renting. Below $4,000 of billing a month, the split keeps more. The booth rent vs commission post works the same comparison for a salon chair. If you rent, set the cut to zero in step 1 and put the rent in your costs.

How these were calculated

Revenue needed is the income to keep divided by (1 - tax set-aside), plus business costs; billing needed divides that by (1 - shop’s share). Paid hours are hours booked a week x (1 - share lost) x weeks. The rate is billing needed over paid hours, carried into the later steps to the cent. Supplies are summed line by line and grossed up by dividing by (1 - shop’s share). Chair hours are square inches x minutes per square inch x detail factor, plus setup, over 60; the quote is chair hours x rate plus grossed-up supplies, rounded up to the next $10. What you keep is the price x (1 - shop’s share) less supplies. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program using exact fractions, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices or measured times. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own year, clock and shop agreement, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly rate to a multi-session piece.