What markup is normal on printed products?

It varies far too much by product, market and volume for anyone to hand you a single number honestly. Short-run digital work carries a very different margin from long-run litho or wide-format. Rather than copy someone else's percentage, work out your true cost per job - including the time spent quoting and fixing artwork, which most shops leave out - and set a margin you can defend. This calculator is a sanity check against your own numbers, not a price list.

Why do prices per unit drop on bigger runs?

Because setup cost is spread further. Plate-making, machine setup, colour matching and the first few sheets cost roughly the same whether you print 100 or 1,000. On a short run each piece carries a big share of that fixed cost; on a long run it is diluted. That is exactly what quantity-break pricing expresses - and why quoting a long run at the short-run unit price leaves money on the table.

Should I show my prices online?

For standard, well-defined products - business cards, flyers, standard-size posters - yes. Buyers increasingly expect a number, and "request a quote" loses the ones who will not wait. Genuinely bespoke work still deserves a conversation. The practical answer for most shops is a mix: publish instant prices on the catalogue items you sell repeatedly, and keep a quote path for the custom jobs.

How is this different from pricing inside Printmio?

This page is a static estimate you run by hand. Inside Printmio, your pricing rules do the same maths automatically on your storefront, the moment a customer changes a quantity, size or stock - so the price they see is yours, calculated live, with no email and no spreadsheet. This tool is here to sanity-check the numbers you would put into it.

Free tool · No sign-up

Print Pricing Calculator

Not sure what to charge for a job? Pick the product, drop in your numbers, and get a quick guide price with quantity breaks worked out - so you can stop doing the maths at the counter (or at midnight).

Illustration of a colourful vintage adding machine with a paper ribbon of abstract marks and stacks of coloured discs beside it

Tell us about the job

Change anything below - the guide price updates as you go.

Product

Quantity

Quantity break: Medium (250+)

Sides

Single-sided Double-sided

Your base cost per card

What it costs you to make one - paper, ink, blank, labour.

Markup50%

0%200%

Your guide price

Estimate

Total for 500 cards

$36 – $45

Around $41 in the middle of the range.

Per card

$0.07–$0.09

Your cost

$0.05

per card, after volume

Estimated guide price based on your inputs - not a quote. Real prices depend on your shop, equipment, materials and local market.

Printmio runs quantity breaks and markup like this automatically on your storefront - customers see the price live as they configure the job. See the pricing engine →

Base cost / card: $0.06
Sides (Single-sided): ×1
Quantity break (Medium (250+)): ×0.9
= Your cost / card: $0.05
+ 50% markup: $0.08
× 500 cards: $41

We show a low–high range (about ±12%) because every job has little extras - setup, proofs, delivery. Bigger runs lower your cost per piece, so the per-unit price drops as quantity climbs.

How to use it

A quick sanity-check, not a price list

This calculator is here to give you a fast gut-check before you quote - a starting number you can adjust. It works the way print has always been priced by hand: take what a job costs you to make, add a markup, and lower the per-piece cost as the run gets bigger.

✓Base cost is your real cost to make one - materials, ink, blanks and a slice of labour.
✓Markup is your margin on top. A range of 40% to 150% is a common starting point, depending on the product and your market.
✓Quantity breaks lower your per-piece cost on bigger runs - that's why 5,000 cards cost far less each than 100.

Stop quoting by hand

Printmio runs pricing like this automatically

Doing this for every job, by hand, is the thing that keeps you at the counter after close. Printmio runs pricing strategies like this automatically on your branded storefront - so the moment a customer configures their job, they see the price instantly and can pay. No back-and-forth, no quoting at midnight.

See the pricing engine Request your free trial

We review every request personally and reply within one business day - then your 14-day trial starts, no card needed.

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No coding required
$0 setup fee
Free migration for the founding 100
Cancel anytime

Questions we get asked

Most shops build from the floor up: materials, plus machine and labour time, plus a share of overhead, then a margin on top. Once that is known, the day-to-day question becomes which pricing model fits the product - a flat price for a fixed item, a percentage markup on cost, per-square-area for signage and wide format, or quantity breaks where the unit price falls as the run gets longer. The trap is pricing every product the same way when they behave differently.

See it running on your products.

A 30-minute screen share built around how your shop quotes, proofs and prints. We approve every founding shop personally and set it up with you - no credit card, no setup fee.

Book a demo See the live demo

14-day free trial after approval · No credit card · $0 setup · We set it up with you