The Tack Box · Job Pricing

What should I charge for this whole job?

Build a bid from scratch. Add your tasks, materials, consumables, overhead, and profit margin. Get a total number you can hand to the customer and an effective hourly rate to gut-check it.

Updated September 2026

Quick answer

A welding job bid is its cost (labor, material with markup, consumables, overhead) divided by (1 − your profit margin). On the defaults below, $736.50 of cost at a 20% margin is a $920.63 bid. Then divide the bid by total hours and check that effective rate against your shop rate.

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Labor tasks

The $/hr is what an hour of labor costs you. Not your shop rate: overhead and profit get added below, and your shop rate already has them in it.

TaskHoursCost $/hr

Materials

Overhead & profit

Consumables allowance% of (labor + raw materials). 15% is a starting guess; track what you burn and adjust.

Overhead

Profit margin (% of the price)price = cost ÷ (1 − margin), up to 80%. 20% margin is a 25% markup on cost.

Total bid price

$920.63

Effective rate: $153.44/hr across 6 hours. Check it against your shop rate. Materials are in this number too, so a steel-heavy job runs higher.

Labor56%$510.00

Materials (with markup)0%$0.00

Consumables8%$76.50

Overhead16%$150.00

Cost$736.50

Profit (20% margin)20%$184.13

Total bid100%$920.63

Cost breakdown

LaborMaterialsConsumablesOverheadProfit

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How to price a welding job without leaving money on the table

Most shop owners price jobs by feel: "that looks like about $800 worth of work." The problem is that feel does not account for the $200 in materials you forgot, the hour of grinding you did not plan for, or the 30% of your overhead that should have been allocated to this job.

Task-based pricing forces you to think through every step of the job before you write the number. When you break it into cut, fit-up, weld, grind, and finish, you spot the grinding hour you would have eaten. When you list materials with a 30% markup, you cover the ordering and handling time. When you add consumables at 15%, you stop giving away cutting discs.

The effective hourly rate at the bottom is your reality check. If you quoted a 6-hour job at $800 and your effective rate shows $133/hr, you are probably fine. If it shows $65/hr and your shop rate calculator says you need $95, go back and find what you missed.

Shop rate vs weld cost vs job pricing

These three tools work together:

Shop rate tells you what to charge per hour so you cover overhead and make a profit. Use it once, update it quarterly. Don't paste it into the job pricing task rate: job pricing adds overhead and profit on its own, so the task rate there is what the labor costs you. Your shop rate is the yardstick for the effective rate at the end.
Weld cost tells you the cost per inch of a specific weld: labor, filler, gas, and markup. Use it when you need a precise number for a specific weld joint in a quote.
Job pricing builds the total bid for a complete job from what the labor costs you. It adds materials, consumables, overhead, and profit to get the number you actually put on the quote.

Got the number? Put it on paper: the welding quote calculator turns work lines and materials into a customer-ready quote PDF with terms and a signature line.

Materials markup: what is fair?

You are not a materials warehouse. You are buying, transporting, storing, cutting, and managing material for the customer. That costs time and money. Forum consensus from thousands of welders:

25% minimum: bare floor for heavy plate you pick up yourself.
30–40% typical: standard markup for custom fab work where you source, cut, and prep.
50%+ for specialty: exotic alloys, small fasteners, items with long lead times or minimum orders.

If the customer wants to supply their own material, drop the markup but add a handling fee and make them sign off on quality. Material they bring in that is rusty, out-of-square, or wrong spec costs you time they will not pay for after the fact.

To price the steel itself, you need the weight. The metal weight calculator gives you the pounds for plate, pipe, bar, and tube, then you multiply by your price per pound and add the markup.

New to bidding? The full method is written up in how to quote welding jobs, and the free welding quote template puts the finished number on paper with terms and a signature line.

Questions welders keep asking about pricing jobs

How much should I charge for a welding job?

Add up your cost: labor hours × what that labor costs you, materials with markup, a consumables allowance, and overhead. Then divide by (1 − your profit margin). With the calculator's defaults, 6 hours of work comes to $736.50 of cost, and at a 20% margin the bid is $736.50 ÷ 0.80 = $920.63. For a typical custom fab job, labor is 40–60% of the bid and materials 20–35%. Check the effective hourly rate (total bid ÷ total hours) against your shop rate. On a labor-heavy job, landing well under it means something is missing.

How do you quote a fabrication job?

Break the job into tasks (cut, fit-up, weld, grind, finish, deliver). Estimate hours for each. Price your materials from supplier quotes and add 25–40% markup. Add a consumables allowance (15% of labor + materials is a starting guess). Add overhead per hour or per job. Then set your profit margin as a share of the price: bid = cost ÷ (1 − margin). A 20% margin is not cost × 1.20; on the defaults that shortcut gives $883.80 instead of $920.63.

What markup should I put on welding materials?

Forum consensus from Miller and WeldingWeb: 25% minimum, 30–40% typical for custom fab, up to 50% for specialty materials you source and cut. The markup covers your time ordering, receiving, storing, handling, and the risk that the material gets damaged or the customer cancels. Some shops mark up 100% on small fasteners and hardware because the handling time exceeds the material cost.

What is a consumables allowance in welding?

Consumables are items that get used up on every job but are not worth line-iteming: cutting discs, flap discs, wire brushes, anti-spatter spray, PPE replacement, tungsten electrodes, shielding gas, soapstone, and cleaning solvents. 15% of (labor + raw material cost) is a starting guess, not a rule. Some shops use 10% for simple MIG work and 20% for TIG or specialty work. The real number is what you spend on consumables in a month divided by what you bill in labor and materials, so track it for a month or two and set your own.

How do I calculate overhead for a welding job?

Two methods: (1) Per-hour: total monthly overhead ÷ monthly billable hours = overhead per hour. For a shop with $10,000/month overhead and 280 billable hours (2 welders), that is $35.71/hr. (2) Flat per job: estimate the shop time this job occupies as a fraction of the month and charge that fraction of monthly overhead. Method 1 is more common because it scales with job size.

What profit margin is normal for welding shops?

Margin here means profit as a share of the price, so a 20% margin keeps $20 of every $100 the customer pays. Forum numbers are usually quoted as markup on cost, which reads higher: a 25% markup is a 20% margin, a 43% markup is a 30% margin. As margins: commodity work (repetitive production) runs about 9–13%, custom fabrication 17–23%, specialty or certified work (pipe, aerospace, structural) 23–29%. Rush work: add 25–50% to the price. If you are consistently below about 13%, you are trading time for money with no buffer for bad months, callbacks, or equipment failure.

What is the difference between shop rate and job pricing?

Shop rate is what you charge per hour, a single number with overhead and profit already inside it. Job pricing builds the total bid for a complete job from cost: tasks at what the labor costs you, plus materials, consumables, overhead, and profit. So do not type your shop rate in as the task rate. The calculator adds overhead and profit again on top and you end up charging them twice. Put in the labor cost (wage plus payroll taxes and comp), then use your shop rate to check the effective hourly rate at the end. If you would rather price labor at your shop rate, set overhead to $0 and margin to 0% so they are not counted twice.

How do I price mobile welding jobs differently?

Add travel time as a task (or a minimum trip charge). Add truck and fuel as a material line or roll it into a higher hourly rate. Use a higher consumables percentage (20%) because field conditions waste more material. Many mobile welders charge a minimum first-hour fee ($150–$250) plus hourly after that.

Building bids in a spreadsheet?

This calculator builds one bid. Bead Board saves every quote, generates a PDF you can share, tracks the job on your board, and shows a P&L when it is done so you know if the bid was right.

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