How to quote welding jobs
The whole method on one page: set your hourly rate, cost the material with markup, price the weld, add consumables, put margin on top, and get it on paper with a signature line.
Updated August 2026
Quick answer
A welding quote is hours times your shop rate, plus material at your cost with 20% to 35% markup, plus a consumables allowance, with profit margin applied on top. Price from your numbers, not from what the shop across town charges. Then put it on paper with terms and a validity date.
Step 1: Know your shop hourly rate
Everything starts here, and most bad quotes die here. Your rate is not what the shop across town charges and not what feels fair. It is your monthly overhead (rent, insurance, truck, consumables account, payroll taxes, your own draw) divided by the hours you can actually bill, then adjusted for profit.
A one-man shop with $6,000 a month in overhead billing 100 hours is at $60 break-even before profit. Charge $60 and you bought yourself a job that pays nothing. Divide by 0.85 for a 15% margin and the floor is $71. Most small shops land between $75 and $150 depending on region and specialty.
Run your own numbers in the welding shop rate calculator. Ten minutes, once, and every quote after that stands on solid ground.
Step 2: Cost the material, then mark it up
Material cost is weight times price per pound, or per-stick pricing from your supplier. Get the weight right first: a 20 ft stick of 3x2x1/4 rectangular tube is 153 lb, and guessing it at 100 lb quietly eats $60 of steel at $1.10 a pound. The metal weight calculator covers plate, pipe, bar, angle, and tube in steel, stainless, and aluminum.
Then mark it up 20% to 35%. The markup is not padding. It pays for the supply-house run, the drops you eat, and the price jump between the day you quote and the day you order. Bake it into the per-item price. The customer sees "3x2 tube, 40 ft: $220", never a markup line.
Step 3: Price the welding itself
For repair and one-off fab, hours times rate covers it: estimate the hours honestly, including setup, fitup, and grinding, not just arc time. Arc-on time is usually a third or less of the clock.
For production work and anything bid by the foot, price per inch of weld. Cost per inch is travel speed (minutes per inch of your process on that joint), filler, and gas. MIG on 1/4" fillet typically lands between $1 and $3 per inch all-in. The weld cost per inch calculator breaks it out by process, wire, and gas so a 40 ft seam stops being a guess.
Step 4: Consumables and overhead
Wire, gas, discs, wheels, tips, nozzles, and the argon bottle rental all get used on every job whether you bill them or not. Two clean ways to handle it: build it into your shop rate (most one-man shops), or add a consumables line of 3% to 8% of labor on each quote (easier to defend on bigger bids). Pick one. Doing neither is a slow leak; doing both double-charges the customer.
Same rule for overhead: if your shop rate came out of Step 1, overhead is already in it. If you quote labor at a bare welder wage, overhead has to show up somewhere else on the sheet.
Step 5: Margin, then the final number
Margin goes on top of everything, and the math matters: divide by (1 minus margin), do not multiply by (1 plus margin). A $1,578 cost at a 10% margin is $1,578 / 0.9 = $1,753. Multiplying by 1.1 gives $1,736 and you just donated $17. Small on one job, real money over a year.
The job pricing calculator runs the whole stack (tasks, materials, consumables, overhead, margin) and prints a bid sheet PDF.
A worked example: trailer frame repair
Customer brings in a tandem-axle equipment trailer with two cracked crossmembers and asks you to replace all four. Shop rate is $95/hr from Step 1.
Ten billable hours, $580 of marked-up material, and margin on top. The quote goes out at $1,750, valid 30 days, 50% deposit to schedule. Next spring when the same customer wants the same repair on the second trailer, the quote takes five minutes because the numbers are written down.
Step 6: Put it on paper
The number is half the quote. The paper is the other half: labor lines the customer can follow, materials priced with markup baked in, terms (deposit, balance, validity window), and a signature line. A signed quote settles the "that's not what we agreed" conversation before it starts.
Questions welders ask about quoting
How much should I charge per hour of welding?
Most small shops land between $75 and $150 per hour depending on region and specialty. Mobile repair runs $75 to $150, mixed fab shops $80 to $120, specialty TIG and pipe $100 to $150. The wrong answer is copying another shop. Your rate has to cover YOUR rent, insurance, truck, and draw, divided by YOUR billable hours. Run the numbers with the shop rate calculator.
How do you estimate a welding job by the inch?
Figure the inches of weld, then the cost per inch for your process. Cost per inch is labor (travel speed determines minutes per inch), filler metal, and gas. MIG on 1/4" fillet typically lands between $1 and $3 per inch all-in at small-shop rates. The weld cost calculator does this math by process for you.
What markup should I put on materials?
20% to 35% is typical for small welding shops. The markup covers the pickup run, the drops and offcuts, the price risk between quote and order, and the cost of carrying stock. Bake it into the per-item price the customer sees. Never show a separate markup line on the quote.
Should I quote flat rate or time and materials?
Flat rate when you can see the whole job: defined scope, material you can count, work you have done before. Time and materials when the scope is unknowable, like crack repair on cast or rusted-out equipment where you cannot see the extent until you grind. On T&M, give a range and an hourly rate up front, and set a check-in point at the top of the range.