Guide

How Much Does It Cost to Start Print-on-Demand?

The short answer: $0 upfront. Unlike traditional retail, print-on-demand has no inventory to buy — products are printed and shipped only after a customer orders. Signing up with Printful or Printify is free, and you don't pay for a product until you've sold it. Here's where money actually changes hands.

Per-sale costs (you only pay when you sell)

• Product base cost — what the provider charges to print the item, e.g. ~$9–12 for a t-shirt.
• Shipping — the provider's shipping charge to you, which you typically recover from the customer.
• Marketplace fees — Etsy's ~11–12%, Amazon's referral fee, or card processing on your own site.

These come straight out of each sale, so your only real question is pricing high enough to cover them — that's what the calculator is for.

Optional monthly costs

• Sales channel: a Shopify store is ~$39/month; Etsy and your own simple site have no monthly fee.
• Printify Premium (~$29/month) cuts base costs up to 20% — worth it only once you're past roughly 30–40 orders a month.
• Samples & ads — optional, but ordering a sample of your own product (one base cost + shipping) before you list is money well spent.

A worked example

Say you sell a t-shirt for $24.99 on Etsy with free shipping. The provider takes ~$9 base + ~$4 shipping, and Etsy takes ~$2.80 in fees — about $16 in costs, leaving roughly $9 profit. You paid nothing until that sale happened. Start with one design, one product, and reinvest the profit.

Ready to see the numbers on a specific product? Run the calculator, or read how to price your products so every sale actually clears a profit.