← Back to Bead BoardWhat 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.
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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. That number becomes the default rate in your job pricing tasks.
- 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 using those hourly rates. It adds materials, consumables, overhead, and profit to get the number you actually put on the quote.
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.
Questions welders keep asking about pricing jobs
How much should I charge for a welding job?
Total bid = labor hours × rate + materials with markup + consumables allowance + overhead + profit margin. For a typical custom fab job: labor is 40–60% of the bid, materials 20–35%, and overhead + profit make up the rest. The effective hourly rate (total bid ÷ total hours) should be higher than your shop rate — if it is not, you are undercharging.
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). Add overhead per hour or per job. Add your profit margin (20% minimum for custom work). The total is your bid.
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. Standard practice is 15% of (labor + raw material cost). Some shops use 10% for simple MIG work and 20% for TIG or specialty work.
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?
Commodity work (repetitive production): 10–15%. Custom fabrication: 20–30%. Specialty or certified work (pipe, aerospace, structural): 30–40%. Rush work: add 25–50% on top. If you are consistently below 15%, 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. Job pricing is the total bid for a complete job: multiple tasks at different rates, plus materials, consumables, overhead, and profit. You use your shop rate as the default hourly rate for each task, but the total bid includes everything else that makes the job profitable.
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.
Other tools in the Tack Box
Pricing formulas from TheFabricator estimating articles, WeldingMart quoting guide, and Miller/WeldingWeb forum pricing threads. Markup and consumables ranges aggregated from shop-owner discussion 2024–2026. Other Tack Box tools.