Can a 3D Printer Save You Money?

To save you the long read - yes, but it takes time. Three years in, my printer has roughly paid for itself, and almost all of the savings came from things I would have bought anyway. Most of them for my kids.

After breaking down the cost of doing my own car maintenance, I wanted to run the same kind of numbers on my 3D printer - everything I've spent, everything I've saved, and whether it actually comes out ahead.

So I Finally Bought One

I didn't buy a 3D printer to save money. I bought it to make one part - a bracket for a Govee light that simply didn't exist on the market. And back then AI wasn’t really as evolved as it is now and there weren’t dozens of “CAD AI” services to conjure up a design based on a few words.

On paper, spending $649 on a printer to make a part that should cost $15 to $20 makes no sense. But I'd wanted a printer for years and always had an excuse. There's no space. It'll be a novelty I stop using. The bracket was the push I needed.

I made the space, and the novelty never wore off. The printer has logged about 1,000 hours over three years, just under an hour a day. And the bracket? Still in use every day.

Once it was done, I started noticing how many other things I could make instead of buy. What started as a way to make one custom part slowly turned into a small home factory that saves money and keeps the kids entertained. As you'll see below, most of the savings came from toys and fidgets.

What It Cost Me

Here's everything I've spent on the hobby over three years. The table has three columns:

• List price: what everything would cost at full price.
• What I paid: what actually left my account.
• What I've used: the share of that spending that's actually been used up.

I included list prices to show that if you're patient and wait for deals, this hobby is far more affordable than it looks. I bought my printer during a Black Friday sale. As I write this, the P1S is on sale for $519 as Bambu Lab phases it out.

The gap between "paid" and "used" is stock I haven't touched yet. Of the 37 rolls of filament I've bought, 10 are still sealed and 15 are about half used. I have spare nozzles and motors I haven't needed. Lubricants only get used every few months, and I still have plenty. The desiccant that keeps filament dry is reusable. I dry it out in a cheap toaster oven at the lowest setting.

The MakerWorld Credits

MakerWorld is Bambu Lab's site for sharing printable models. When people print a model you designed, you earn credits that can be cashed out for Bambu Lab store gift cards.

Since early 2025, I've cashed out $605 from just 15 models of my own, printed a little under 3,000 times. That paid for the AMS, which allows multi-colour printing, plus replacement parts and filament. It works out to about 20 cents every time someone prints one of my designs. Not life-changing, but it adds up, and it's the single biggest reason the math works.

What It Saved Me

Now for the other side. Each item below is priced at the cheapest alternative I could find online that I would actually buy.

That's an important rule. Printing something you'd never have bought isn't saving money, it's spending it. If it doesn't pass the "would I have bought this anyway?" test, it doesn't count.

A few items were for friends and family who needed a replacement part or didn't want to pay a ridiculous price for one.

Most of these are self-explanatory, but a few deserve a closer look.

Toilet seat hinges ($120). My two kids are young and rough. They've broken three soft-close toilet seat hinges in the last five years. The first time, I just bought a new seat. Since getting the printer, I've printed replacement hinges from a model I found online. The kids broke those too. Twice. But printing a hinge sure beats buying a $60 toilet seat every time. By the way, if you don’t have a soft-close toilet seat, the replacement seats would be about half.

Toys and fidgets ($445). This is the big one. I bought the printer right around the time 3D-printed dragons were popping up everywhere online and at markets. I printed tons of them for my kids and their friends, along with fidget toys, small toys for gift bags, accessories for their playsets, and moulds and tools for Play-Doh. Dragons were going for $20 to $25 a few years ago, so the real savings are higher. But I priced them at what I can find them for online today, around $9 to $12, to keep the numbers conservative.

CD player stand ($100). A friend didn't want to pay Sony $100 for what is essentially an L-shaped piece of plastic, so I designed one for him. Strictly speaking, that's his saving, not mine, which is why it sits in its own group.

So, Does It Pay for Itself?

Like the car post, it depends on how you count. Here are three ways to look at it.

Every dollar out of pocket: $1,944. Ignore the credits and count everything I've ever bought, and I'm $730 behind. If I'd never shared a design, the printer wouldn't have paid for itself yet.

Net of MakerWorld credits: $1,339. This is what actually left my bank account. Against $1,214 in savings, I'm $125 short. At the pace of the last three years, that gap closes within a few months, and I've already paid for the filament to close it.

What I've actually used up: $908. This is the true cost of everything I've printed so far. Against $1,214 in savings, I'm $306 ahead. Even if you remove the CD stand, I'm still more than $200 ahead.

The middle number is the honest one, and it's essentially break-even. But the last number shows where this is headed. I'm sitting on about $430 of filament, spare parts and supplies that are already paid for. Everything I print from that stock is close to pure savings.

That's the same lesson as the car post. The printer is a one-time cost. Every print after that costs cents.

What the Table Doesn't Count

Electricity. A P1S draws roughly 120 watts while printing PLA. Over 1,000 hours, that's about 120 kWh, or roughly $20 on an Ontario hydro bill. Small enough that it doesn't change the answer.

My time. The printer runs on its own, so 1,000 hours of printing isn't 1,000 hours of my time. The real time goes into designing. I'd be doing that for fun anyway, so I don't count it as a cost. If you'd rather be doing anything else, factor it in. One of my designs took about a week of partial mockups and minor tweaks. I used up about half of a roll on partial test prints to check the fit. I have 15 designs online. I estimate I have spent 150-200 hours on designs. 

After-tax value. As I mentioned in the car post, money you save is after-tax money. At a 30% marginal tax rate, $1,214 in savings is the same as earning about $1,730 before tax.

Would It Pay Off for You?

You don't need to design models or earn credits to come out ahead. Here's what my three years would have cost if I started today, skipped the AMS since I rarely do multi-colour prints, and only counted what I actually used:

Against $1,214 in savings, that's ahead within three years without selling a single design. Most functional prints like brackets, hooks and organizers are single colour, so the AMS is a nice-to-have, not a must. It is convenient since I don’t have to manually swap colours.

The catch is that my numbers come from using the printer almost every day. If you'd print a few things a year, it'll take a lot longer to pay off, and you'd probably be better off ordering the odd part from a print service.

Tips If You Want to Start

• Wait for a sale. Printers go on sale often, especially around Black Friday and when a model is being replaced. I saved $250 on the printer and $100 on the AMS just by waiting. Same goes for replacement parts. Buy them before you need them and need to pay full price. Parts will eventually need to be replaced anyways.
• Skip the multi-colour add-on at first. Learn on one colour. Add the AMS later if you find yourself wanting it.
• Search before you buy. Before buying a small plastic part, replacement clip or organizer, check MakerWorld or Printables. Someone has often designed it already.
• Learn basic CAD. Custom designs are where the real value is. I'm currently designing clips for our blinds. A generic set sells for $16. My custom design prints a pair for about $0.25. That doesn't account for the CAD software I already had or the time I spent learning it, but free options exist for hobbyists. But there are lots of free CAD options online and lots of free YouTube tutorials.
• Share your designs. If you design something useful, upload it. My 15 models have earned more than enough to cover the AMS and replacement parts.
• Don't overbuy filament. Do as I say, not as I do. I have 10 sealed rolls on a shelf. It's tempting to stock up during sales, but filament sitting on a shelf is cash sitting on a shelf. In my defense, I bought extras of the colours I constantly use for functional prints - black and white PLA and PETG.
• Keep filament dry. Moisture ruins prints. Reusable desiccant and a cheap toaster oven dedicated to drying it cost me $45 total and I am still using both 3 years later.
• Mind small parts around young kids. Small printed toys and fidget parts can break along layer lines. Supervise the little ones.

The Bottom Line

A 3D printer isn't a money-saving machine on day one. Mine took three years to roughly break even, and it got there because I used it almost daily, priced every saving honestly and shared my designs along the way. But the printer is paid for, the stock is on the shelf, and every print from here costs cents. Like most tools, the more you use it, the cheaper it gets.