DTF pricing calculator

How DTF pricing works

DTF is deceptively simple to price badly. The transfer itself is cheap, so shops undercharge — then discover the labour ate the margin. Four components:

• Transfer cost.Film, ink and adhesive powder, calculated per square inch. A 10"×12" transfer uses 120 sq in — roughly ten times a 3"×4" left chest. Add a waste allowance (10–20%) for misprints, purges and sheet offcuts, because you will have them.
• Markup. Most shops sell transfers at roughly 3–4× the raw consumable cost. That covers the printer, maintenance, and the fact that you took the risk of owning the machine.
• Press labour.The part everyone forgets. Position, press, peel, and handle — call it 30–60 seconds a piece. At $25/hour, 45 seconds is about $0.31 per piece. On a 144-piece order that's $45 of real labour.
• Garment markup. Same as any decorating method — usually about 2× your blank cost.

DTF vs screen printing

The break-even question comes up constantly. Screen printing has a high one-time cost (screens, setup) and a very low per-piece cost, so it wins on volume. DTF has near-zero setup and a fixed per-piece cost, so it wins on small runs and full-colour art. The crossover for a multi-colour design usually lands somewhere around 30–70 pieces depending on your screen fees and colour count — worth calculating for your own shop rather than guessing.

A practical rule: if the design has more than three colours, DTF is usually cheaper further up the quantity curve than people expect, because screen printing charges you per colour and DTF doesn't.