How Much to Charge for Custom T-Shirts (At-Home Shop Guide)

Short answer: Add up what one shirt really costs you (the blank, the transfer or ink, supplies, and your time), then divide that cost by 1 minus the profit margin you want. At a 50% margin, a shirt that costs you $10 sells for $20. Printavo's guide to pricing DTF transfers recommends margins of about 30% for wholesale customers and 50% or more for retail, so that's a reasonable place to start before you adjust for your market.

I'm Sam Hernandez, owner of Studio208 Print Shop in San Francisco. I run a working screen printing shop, and the same math applies whether you press DTF transfers in a spare room or print from a garage. The dollar figures in the tables below are example numbers I chose to show the method. Swap in your own costs before you quote anyone.

How do you figure out how much to charge for custom shirts?

Use cost-plus pricing. It's three steps:

1. Total your cost per shirt. Everything it takes to make and deliver one finished shirt.
2. Pick a margin. The share of the sale price you keep as profit.
3. Divide. Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin).

Then sanity-check the result against your market. Three things have to line up: what the shirt is worth where you sell, what your customers will actually pay, and what you need to make. If the formula gives you a price well above what local shops charge, look for costs to cut or a reason your work is worth more, like speed, quality, or service.

What goes into the cost of one shirt?

Most new home shops undercount. Here's the full list:

• The blank. Price drops as you buy more and varies by brand, color, and size. Check current pricing with a distributor like S&S Activewear or SanMar instead of guessing.
• The print. DTF transfers or gang sheet cost, heat transfer vinyl, or ink and emulsion for screen printing.
• Consumables. Parchment or teflon sheets, lint rollers, polybags, labels, packaging.
• Waste. Misprints, bad presses, and test shirts. Build in a little every time.
• Your time. Pressing or printing, weeding vinyl, prepping art, packing, and the time you spend on each order's quote, emails, and invoice.
• Overhead. Press and printer wear, software, supplies you buy in bulk, and utilities.
• Selling costs. Card processing fees and shipping if you ship.

The one people skip is time. If you pay yourself nothing, every price looks profitable until you count the hours.

What's the difference between markup and margin?

They sound alike and give different prices, which is where a lot of underpricing starts.

A "50% markup" earns you less than half the sale price. If a guide says "aim for 50%," check whether it means markup or margin. Printavo's DTF pricing guide uses margin: about 30% for wholesale customers and 50% or higher for retail. I use margin in this guide too.

How much should you charge for DTF and heat press shirts?

Here's a worked example for a front-print shirt with a bought DTF transfer. Every number is an assumption you should replace:

At a 50% margin, $9.26 ÷ 0.5 = $18.52, which rounds up to $19.00 per shirt. That's $9.74 profit on each shirt.

Now see what happens as the quantity changes:

Prices are rounded up to the nearest 50 cents. The inputs: blanks fall from $4.25 to $3.00 with volume, the transfer stays $3.50, and each order carries 20 minutes of fixed handling time.

Why one shirt costs so much more: the 20 minutes of quoting, art checking, invoicing, and packing don't shrink with order size. Spread across one shirt, that's $6.67 of your time. That's why single shirts need either a one-off price like the one above or a minimum order.

Heat transfer vinyl (HTV) works the same way. Swap the transfer line for vinyl material, and add weeding time, which can be a big chunk of labor on detailed designs. DTF and HTV can land at similar costs, so price each from your own numbers.

How do you price small-run screen printing from home?

Screen printing has fixed setup costs that DTF doesn't, so price it in two parts:

• Setup, per screen or per color. Covers screen prep, emulsion, exposure, and registration time. A common approach is a separate setup fee on the quote so small orders don't lose money.
• Per-shirt cost. Blank, ink, consumables, and print time per shirt, which drops as quantity rises because the setup is spread over more shirts.

Then apply the same cost ÷ (1 − margin) formula. Add extra locations, extra colors, and specialty inks as their own line items. For a full walk-through with setup fees, quantity breaks, rush fees, and a worked example quote, see How to Price Screen Printing Jobs.

What should you charge for minimums, art, and rush orders?

The shirt price is only part of the quote. Decide these ahead of time so you aren't inventing policies mid-conversation:

• Minimum order. Set one that covers your fixed handling time, or charge a one-off price like the 1-shirt row above.
• Art and setup fees. If you clean up artwork or build a layout, charge for the time. If you don't, expect more "can you tweak this" requests.
• Rush fees. Rush work bumps other jobs and eats your evenings. Charge extra, and say the rule before the customer asks.
• Reorders. Decide whether repeat customers get the same price or a reorder discount, and write it down.

What mistakes do at-home shops make when pricing?

• Pricing time at zero. The most common one. If you wouldn't do it for free for an employer, count it.
• Matching the cheapest price you can find. Big shops and online printers buy at volumes you can't. Compete on speed, local service, and custom work instead.
• Forgetting waste. Misprints and test presses are a real cost.
• Using markup when you meant margin. See the table above.
• Pricing from memory. When prices live in your head, they drift. Two customers ordering the same shirt a month apart get different quotes.
• Never revisiting prices. Blanks, transfers, and shipping change. Review your price sheet on a schedule.

How do you keep your prices consistent?

Write your costs and prices into one price sheet, such as a spreadsheet with your blank cost by quantity, your transfer or ink cost, your hourly rate, and your margin targets. Quote from it every time.

If quoting from a price sheet eats your time, that's what I built Prinquo for. You describe the job in plain English, like "24 black Gildan 5000 tees, full-color front, need them Friday," and the AI builds an itemized quote from your own price sheet and rules. Each AI-built quote uses 1 AI credit, and the Starter plan includes 100 credits a month, about 100 AI quotes. Manual quotes are unlimited. It's one login per account right now, which works for most solo and at-home shops. If you're comparing tools, see Best AI Quoting Software for Print Shops.

Want to quote custom shirts faster?

Try Prinquo free for 14 days at www.prinquo.com. No credit card required.

FAQ

How much should I charge for a custom t-shirt?

Start from your total cost per shirt and divide by 1 minus your target margin. In the example above, a $9.26 cost at a 50% margin gives $19 for a 24-shirt order. Your number will differ based on your blanks, print method, time, and local market.

What is a good profit margin on custom shirts?

Printavo's DTF pricing guide recommends about 30% margins for wholesale customers and 50% or higher for retail. Your right number depends on your costs, your time, and your market.

How much should I charge per hour for my time?

Pick a rate you'd accept from an employer for the same work and count it on every order. The examples here use $20/hour as an illustration only.

Should I charge more for one shirt than for a dozen?

Yes. Fixed time for the quote, art check, invoice, and packing doesn't shrink with order size, so a one-off costs far more per shirt. Charge a one-off price or set a minimum order.

Do I charge a setup fee for DTF or heat press?

Usually not for a standard front print with a bought transfer, since there's no screen to prepare. Charge for artwork cleanup and for jobs with extra complexity, like names and numbers. Screen printing does need setup fees because of screen prep.

Is DTF cheaper than screen printing for small orders?

For very small quantities, DTF usually avoids the setup cost of making screens, so it's often cheaper for a handful of shirts or for full-color designs. As quantities grow and the number of colors stays low, screen printing's per-shirt cost drops and it usually wins. Run both through your own numbers for the job in front of you.