DTF pricing calculator: what to charge for DTF transfers and shirts
A free DTF pricing calculator: enter what you pay for gang sheets or transfers, the design’s size, the blank, your pressing time and the margin you want, and see the cost per transfer, the cost per printed shirt and the price for 1, 10, 25 and 50 shirts in your currency. Nothing leaves your browser.
To price DTF work, divide a gang sheet’s price by the designs that fit on it for the cost per transfer, add the blank, your pressing time and extras for the cost per printed shirt, and divide that cost by one minus your margin and payment fee. With the calculator’s example figures, which show the sums and are not market prices, 8 designs of 10 × 12 in fit on a 22 × 60 in sheet, so at 20.00 a sheet each transfer costs 2.50, a printed shirt costs 8.30, and a 40% margin after a 3% payment fee prices it at 14.56.
How the calculator works
- Transfers on a sheet. It lays the design out in rows and columns with your spacing between them, upright and turned on its side, and keeps whichever fits more: across the sheet, (sheet width + spacing) ÷ (design width + spacing), rounded down; down the sheet, the same with the lengths. A sheet of different designs nested by hand can hold more.
- Cost per transfer. The sheet’s price divided by the transfers on it, or what you pay for each transfer when you buy them one by one.
- Cost per printed shirt. The blank, the transfer, your pressing time (minutes ÷ 60 × your hourly rate) and extras such as packing.
- Price. Price = cost ÷ (1 − (margin + payment fee) ÷ 100). The payment fee is a share of what the customer pays, so the price covers it as well as the margin: what is left after the fee and the cost is your margin of the price. An order’s total is the price per shirt, rounded to the cent, times the shirts.
- Orders. When a sheet’s leftover space goes to other orders, a shirt costs the same at any quantity. When it is wasted, an order pays for every sheet it starts: one shirt pays for a whole sheet, and larger orders share the sheets between more shirts.
A worked example
With the example figures, which show the sums and are not market prices: a 22 × 60 in sheet at 20.00 holds 8 designs of 10 × 12 in with 0.5 in between them (2 across, 4 down), so each transfer costs 2.50. Add a 4.00 blank, 3 minutes of pressing at 24.00 an hour (1.20) and 0.60 of packing, and a printed shirt costs 8.30. With a 40% margin and a 3% payment fee, its price is 8.30 ÷ (1 − 0.43) = 14.56.
| Shirts | Price per shirt, leftover space used | Cost per shirt, leftover space wasted | Price per shirt, leftover space wasted |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14.56 | 25.80 | 45.26 |
| 10 | 14.56 | 9.80 | 17.19 |
| 25 | 14.56 | 9.00 | 15.79 |
| 50 | 14.56 | 8.60 | 15.09 |
Questions
How much should I charge for a DTF transfer?
Your cost per transfer, divided by one minus the margin you want and your payment fee. The cost is the gang sheet’s price divided by the transfers on it: with the example figures, a transfer costing 2.50 sells at 4.39 for a 40% margin after a 3% fee. Selling pressed shirts, price the whole shirt: the blank, the transfer, your pressing time and extras.
How many designs fit on a DTF gang sheet?
Across the sheet, the sheet’s width plus the spacing divided by the design’s width plus the spacing, rounded down; down the sheet, the same with the lengths; then the two multiplied. With the example figures, 8 designs of 10 × 12 in with 0.5 in between them fit on a 22 × 60 in sheet: 2 across and 4 down. Turned on its side a design sometimes fits more often, so the calculator tries both ways.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Margin is profit as a share of the price; markup is profit as a share of the cost. A 40% margin is a 67% markup, and a 50% margin is a 100% markup: the price is double the cost. The calculators ask for the margin you keep after the payment fee.
Why is the payment fee part of the price?
Card and payment fees are a percentage of what the customer pays, so they grow with the price. The calculators divide the cost by one minus the margin and the fee together, so that once the fee is taken, the margin left is the one you chose.
Should one shirt cost more than a shirt in a larger order?
When a sheet is printed for one order and the rest of it is wasted, yes: one shirt pays for a whole sheet. Choose that the leftover space is wasted to see each quantity’s price; with the example figures one shirt then costs 25.80 and each of 50 costs 8.60. When leftover space goes to other orders, a shirt costs the same at any quantity, and a discount for larger orders comes out of your margin.
Is anything I type sent anywhere?
No. The page does the sums in your browser: nothing is sent to printblob.com or anyone else, and nothing is saved.
Does PrintBlob make the DTF print files?
PrintBlob Pro does: when a customer adds a design to the cart, it renders each printed side as a transparent PNG at the print area’s size at 300 DPI, ready to go on a gang sheet next to other orders.
Putting the price in your shop
In a WooCommerce shop with PrintBlob, the shirt’s price is the product’s price and you set a print price for each printed side, which the designer adds when that side has a design, so customers see the total change as they design. The free plugin prints the front; back and sleeve printing are PrintBlob Pro. How to price custom t-shirt printing explains splitting the price into the shirt and each side. To compare DTF with DTG and screen printing at other quantities, use the t-shirt printing cost calculator; for the file a DTF printer needs, read DTF print file requirements.