Screen Printing Pricing Calculator: Build Your Pricing Matrix

October 21, 2026 · Selling products and running the numbers

A screen printing price per piece is the blank, plus ink and press time for each print, plus the setup for every color spread across the pieces on the order. Work those three out from your own hourly floor and you can fill in a pricing matrix by quantity and color count. In the illustrative example below the floor is $58.48 an hour, setup costs $41.14 a color, and a 3-color print is priced at $20.20 a shirt at 12 pieces and $8.98 at 144, blank markup included.

None of these are market prices. The income, costs, press speed, ink yield and blank prices belong to one made-up owner-operator with one press and a part-time helper. Time your own screens and runs, count your own prints per container, and use your own figures. Read this as a screen printing pricing guide; the pack at the end is a screen printing pricing sheet you fill in.

The screen printing price formula

floor rate      = (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs)
                  / paid hours of job work a year
setup per color = screen wear + chemicals + film
                  + floor x (coat + reclaim + register + clean-out minutes) / 60
press per print = colors x ink per color + (floor + helper pay + dryer) / prints an hour
blank charge    = (blank + shipping / garments) x (1 + markup) + handling
price per piece = (blank + shipping / pieces) x (1 + markup) + handling
                  + colors x ink per color
                  + (floor + helper + dryer) / prints an hour
                  + colors x setup per color / pieces

Step 1: the hourly floor

The example operator wants $48,000 a year kept and books 30 hours a week on job work: screens, press, cleanup and packing for paid orders. Quotes, mockups, ordering and supply runs are real hours too, but no customer pays for them directly.

Ignore the lost hours and the answer is $55.56, short of the floor. Of the 1,968 hours worked in the year, only 1,368 are paid, 70%, so the income works out to $24.39 for each hour actually worked. The same split is worked through in the freelance hourly rate calculator.

Step 2: screens and setup per color

Every color needs its own screen, and every screen is time before a single print: coating, exposing, taping, registering on press, cleaning ink out, reclaiming.

The materials are $3.13 a color; the 39 minutes are $38.01. Setup is a labor cost far more than a materials cost, which is why a short run cannot hide it. This 3-color job carries $123.41 of screens and setup. Follow the label or manufacturer for emulsion, reclaim chemicals and their disposal; this is cost arithmetic, not handling advice.

Step 3: ink and press time per print

Ink is priced per color per print: a $60.00 container that gives 600 one-color prints in the example comes to $0.10. At 60 prints an hour, the operator’s floor plus helper pay of $18.00 an hour is $1.27 a print, and the dryer adds $0.05. On 3 colors that is $1.62 a print on press. Follow the manufacturer for curing and ink handling.

Step 4: the blank charge

A $4.50 blank with $18.00 of shipping spread over 48 garments lands at $4.88. A 30% markup, plus 0.5 minute to count, fold and bag ($0.49), makes the blank charge $6.82. Larger sizes that cost $2.00 more come to $9.42. The markup is your own number; what a markup does to your margin is worked in markup vs margin.

Step 5: the screen printing pricing matrix

Every cell is the same sum: the blank charge, with the blank shipping spread over that row’s pieces, plus crew and dryer per print, plus ink for each color, plus each color’s setup divided by the pieces. The cells are prices, not bare floors: each one carries the 30% blank markup.

A 1-color print runs from $13.14 a piece at 12 down to $8.21 at 144. A 3-color print costs more at every quantity: $20.20 at 12 down to $8.98 at 144. Every cell uses one press speed; if more colors slow you down, price those columns at the slower speed. Copy the cells into your price list and round as you like.

The insight: the matrix is a setup table

Read down the 3-color column and only two things change: setup, and the blank shipping, both spread over more pieces. Ink and press time per shirt are the same in every row. At 12 pieces the 3 screens add $10.29 to every shirt, 51% of the price. At 144 pieces they add $0.86. Of the $11.22 step between the top and bottom of the column, $9.43 is setup (84%) and $1.79 is marked-up shipping: the blank charge falls from $8.29 to $6.50.

So in this example the price per piece follows two numbers above all: the screens the job needs, and the pieces that share them. A pricing matrix with quantity breaks that are not tied to your own setup cost is a guess. Built from your setup cost per color, each break is just that cost divided by a different number.

Second locations and reorders

A second print location is another setup and another pass. A 1-color back print at 90 prints an hour adds $1.84 a piece on 48 pieces, $88.33 on the order.

A reorder on kept screens skips coating and reclaiming. Press setup and cleanup plus $1.00 to keep each screen come to $14.65 a color against $41.14, saving $79.47 on a 3-color reorder, $1.66 a piece.

Misprints and spares

At 3% of prints going wrong in the example’s own records, 48 pieces expect 1.44 misprints, so the order buys 2 spare blanks. Each misprint loses the blank and the print, $6.50, so each piece carries $0.20 for misprints.

Did the order pay?

After the fact, check each order. 48 pieces at $14.00 that took 3.5 hours leave $366.44 after blanks and spares, ink and screen materials, helper pay, dryer and card fee: $104.70 an hour, above the $58.48 floor. The price per piece that pays exactly the floor on that order is $10.53.

How these were calculated

The floor rate is income divided by (1 minus the tax set-aside share), plus business costs, divided by booked hours a week x (1 minus the lost share) x working weeks. Setup per color is screen price over jobs per screen plus chemicals and film, plus the floor for coating, reclaiming, registering and clean-out minutes. Ink per color per print is container price over prints per container. Crew and dryer per print is (floor + helper pay + dryer cost an hour) over prints an hour. The blank charge is (blank + shipping over garments) x (1 + markup) plus the floor for handling minutes; in the matrix the shipping is spread over each row’s own quantity. Each matrix cell adds those, with setup per color x colors divided by pieces. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that adds the paid hours week by week, sums screen materials and screen time separately, rebuilds each 3-color cell as a whole order divided by its pieces, and splits each column’s step into setup and shipping, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs are illustrative, not market rates, measured press speeds or product advice. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own year, screens and press, the pack below has eight linked calculators, so a change to your floor rate flows through every cell of the matrix.