QuotedPartAnswers · Updated 2026-10-30
How much should I charge as a one-man garage shop?
Price one of your own parts: Drop a STEP model or PDF drawing — about 90 seconds, no account.
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For the example garage shop below (a $35,000 used mill, a one-person operator paid $35 an hour, 1,000 working hours a year, half of them billable), the break-even rate is $111.26 an hour and the rate with a 15% profit is $127.95. Rent is not the reason: with no rent at all the rate only falls to $125.19. The number that matters most is how many of your hours you can bill, and your own pay. Replace each input with your own.
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Where a garage shop's hour goes
The calculation divides yearly cost by billable hours, so every dollar of cost and every unbilled hour counts. In this example the shop's yearly cost is $55,630.00, and only 500 of the 1,000 working hours are billed. The unbilled half is quoting, setup you can't charge for, ordering material, cleaning, talking to customers and waiting. It's real work, and the price of an hour has to pay for it.
Most of the cost is you: $40,355.00 a year of wages with self-employment taxes and insurance at 15.3%. The machine's payments and interest are $4,725.00, space is $1,200.00 even at $8 a square foot, and power is only $350.00.
| Line | Per year |
|---|---|
| Machine payments and interest | $4,725.00 |
| Floor space | $1,200.00 |
| Power | $350.00 |
| Service, coolant and tooling | $3,000.00 |
| Operator, with taxes and benefits | $40,355.00 |
| Share of shop overhead | $6,000.00 |
| Total | $55,630.00 |
| Billable hours (50% of 1000) | 500 |
| Break-even per billable hour | $111.26 |
| Rate with 15% profit | $127.95 |
No rent is not no overhead
Garage space costs you something even if you pay no landlord. It could be rented, it needs heat and insurance, and it takes your car's place. Setting the rent to zero cuts the rate from $127.95 to $125.19, a change of $2.76 an hour. Pay yourself nothing and the rate drops to $35.13, which is what a shop charges when the owner works for free. That is where a hobby ends and a business begins.
Underpricing hurts you first, because every job loses money you will have to make up on another. It also hurts the next shop: a buyer who gets $60 an hour from a garage expects it from everyone, and if you are the low price the buyer compares others to, your price sets the market in your town. Quote at a rate that would let a second person do the same work.
What moves the rate most: billable hours
Change one input at a time. Utilization is the largest lever, and the one a beginner underestimates.
| Billable share of working hours | Billable hours | Break-even per hour | Rate with 15% profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | 300 | $184.97 | $212.71 |
| 50% | 500 | $111.26 | $127.95 |
| 70% | 700 | $79.67 | $91.62 |
Using the number
A rate is a floor for a typical job, not a price. Multiply it by your time estimate, add material at cost plus a markup, add outside services, and then check the price makes sense for the buyer and the job. A quick one-off with several setups should cost more per hour of cutting than a long run on one setup, because the unbilled hours land on the first.
Review it every year, and again after buying a machine or taking a part-time job somewhere else. Run the shop-rate calculator on this site with your own books to see the number.
Example inputs
- • Machine $35,000 used mill, paid off over 10 years, 7% interest on the average balance.
- • Space 150 sq ft at $8 per sq ft per year; 5 kW average draw at $0.14/kWh.
- • Service, coolant and tooling $3,000 a year; overhead (insurance, software, accounting, tools) $6,000 a year.
- • Your pay $35 an hour with 15.3% for self-employment tax and insurance; 1,000 working hours; 50% billable; 15% profit.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Break-even per billable hour | $111.26 |
| Rate with 15% profit | $127.95 |
Sources and limits
Claims are dated where they can change. Product calculations are examples from the stated inputs, not a promise about a customer's quote. Competitor wording is attributed to the source shown.
- Every input of the example garage shop is a stated assumption (machine price, wage, rent, hours, billable share); the rate comes from QuotedPart's published shop-rate formula. It's an example, not a market rate.
Questions
What if I'm doing this part-time?
Use your real working hours. A shop open 500 hours a year has half the hours to cover the machine and the overhead, so its hourly rate is higher, not lower.
Should I charge less because I'm small?
Charge for the work. You can offer buyers things a big shop can't, such as a quick answer and a part made by the person who quoted it, but not a price that loses money.
Price one of your own parts
Drop a PDF drawing or a STEP file. QuotedPart reads the print, measures the model and prices it in seconds, on default shop rates you can change.
Your STEP file or PDF drawingDrop a PDF drawing, a STEP file or both
Free. No account, no email. Priced at our default US rates until you set yours.
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