Quick Answer: A typical Printify shirt costs you $8.80–$13.50 in base cost plus $4.29–$4.99 US shipping. The total delivered-to-customer cost lands between $13 and $19 per shirt depending on the garment, color, and print provider.
Premium ($39/mo or $299/yr) takes up to 20% off the base, dropping a Bella+Canvas 3001 from $9.50 to $7.60. Premium does not discount shipping or sales-channel fees.
Real net profit on a $24.99 Etsy tee is roughly $8 on Free and $10 on Premium. The garment and provider you pick swings the number more than the plan does.
The Three Lines That Make Up Cost Per Shirt
Every shirt you ship through Printify has exactly three cost lines that Printify itself controls.
- Base product cost — what the print provider charges you for the blank shirt plus the print job. Bundled into one figure.
- Color or size uplift — extra charges on dark colorways (typically $0.75–$1.00) and on 2XL+ sizes ($1.50–$3.00). Standard sizes and white have no uplift.
- Shipping — calculated by provider, by destination, by order weight. Shown at checkout time per order.
Printify itself charges no transaction fee, no listing fee, and no per-sale commission. The base cost is what flows to the print provider, and the shipping is what flows to the carrier.
Everything else that hits your margin — Etsy fees, Shopify processing, ad spend, customer service hours — sits outside Printify and gets billed by whoever owns that lane.
Base Cost by Garment
The garment you pick swings cost per shirt more than any other variable. Here are the most popular tees in the Printify catalog and what they actually run, before any Premium discount.
| Garment | Free Plan Base | Premium Base (~20% off) |
|---|---|---|
| Gildan 5000 (heavyweight cotton) | $8.80 | $7.04 |
| Gildan 64000 (softstyle ringspun) | $9.30 | $7.44 |
| Bella+Canvas 3001 (unisex jersey) | $9.50–$10.98 | $7.60–$8.78 |
| Next Level 3600 (premium fitted) | $11.20 | $8.96 |
| Comfort Colors 1717 (garment-dyed) | $13.50 | $10.80 |
| Bella+Canvas 8800 (women's flowy) | $12.40 | $9.92 |
The Gildan 5000 is the budget workhorse: stiff cotton, blocky cut, great for screen-print-style designs that need a thick canvas. Most volume Etsy sellers start here.
The Bella+Canvas 3001 is the soft-fashion default: thinner, drapier, more flattering on a body. Premium niches usually prefer it.
The Comfort Colors 1717 commands a price premium because of the garment-dye finish and the loyal niche that recognizes it. Faith-based, vacation, and Southern niches over-index on Comfort Colors.
Numbers in this table are typical mid-range US provider prices as of 2026. Individual providers vary by ±$1–$2 either direction. Always price-check inside the Printify dashboard before publishing a SKU.
Shipping: First Item vs Additional Items
Printify shipping is tiered per order. The first item in a US-to-US order carries the full base shipping rate. Each additional item in the same order ships at a much lower marginal rate.
| Order Composition | Free + Premium Plan Shipping |
|---|---|
| 1 tee, US-to-US | $4.29–$4.99 |
| 2 tees, same order, US-to-US | $4.29 + $2.69 = $6.98 |
| 3 tees, same order, US-to-US | $4.29 + $2.69 × 2 = $9.67 |
| 1 tee, US-to-Canada | $8.00–$11.00 |
| 1 tee, US-to-EU | $10.00–$14.00 |
| 1 tee, US-to-AU | $12.00–$18.00 |
The takeaway: multi-item carts have dramatically better unit economics than single-item carts. The shipping isn't doubling — it's adding ~$2.69 per additional item.
This is why bundling, cross-sells, and "buy 2 save 10%" promos work on Printify. Every time you push a customer from a 1-item to a 2-item cart, the marginal shipping is roughly half of what the first item paid.
Premium does not discount shipping. The shipping rate above applies on both Free and Premium plans.
Same Shirt, Different Provider, Different Cost
Printify is a marketplace of 90+ print providers, not a single fulfillment operation. The same Bella+Canvas 3001 can cost meaningfully different amounts depending on which provider you route through.
| Provider (Bella+Canvas 3001, white, L, front print) | Free Plan Base |
|---|---|
| Monster Digital (Florida) | $9.50 |
| SwiftPOD (California) | $9.65 |
| Print Geek (Canada) | $10.05 |
| Marco Fine Arts (California) | $10.98 |
| Underground Printing (Michigan) | $10.40 |
The cheapest isn't always the right pick. Provider selection involves three real trade-offs.
- Print quality. Some providers run cleaner DTG with better ink saturation. Read recent reviews inside the dashboard.
- Production speed. Providers post their average production time (often 2–5 business days). Fast-shipping niches need faster providers, even at higher base cost.
- Geography. Routing orders to the provider closest to the customer cuts shipping cost and time. SwiftPOD for West Coast, Monster Digital for East Coast.
Most experienced sellers pick a primary provider and a backup, then let Printify auto-route to the closer one based on the shipping address. The dashboard surfaces this option on each SKU.
For a deeper look at every Printify cost line, see our full Printify costs breakdown or the more concise Printify cost overview.
Worked Example: $24.99 Tee on Etsy
Numbers in tables only get you so far. Here's exactly what happens when an Etsy buyer clicks "buy" on your $24.99 tee.
Setup: Bella+Canvas 3001, white, size L, front print, US customer, Monster Digital provider, Etsy storefront, Free Printify plan.
| Line Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Etsy retail price | +$24.99 |
| Etsy buyer-paid shipping | +$4.99 |
| Total customer paid | $29.98 |
| Printify base product cost | −$9.50 |
| Printify shipping (first US item) | −$4.79 |
| Etsy transaction fee (6.5%) | −$1.95 |
| Etsy payment processing (3% + $0.25) | −$1.15 |
| Etsy listing fee (amortized) | −$0.20 |
| Net profit per shirt | $12.39 |
That's $12.39 in your pocket on a single-tee, single-color, US-customer order — before any ad spend or test-order amortization.
The same order on Premium drops the base cost from $9.50 to $7.60. Net profit becomes $14.29. The $1.90 Premium discount flows straight to your margin.
If the buyer adds a second tee to the cart, the marginal numbers get better fast. Second tee shipping is $2.69 instead of $4.79, and the second base cost is still $9.50 — but Etsy fees apply to a larger total. Net profit on a 2-tee order at $49.98 retail lands around $24.50 on Free, ~$28 on Premium.
Free vs Premium Per-Shirt Savings
Premium's pitch is simple: pay $39/month, get up to 20% off every product base cost. Shipping and sales-channel fees stay the same.
The exact savings per shirt depend on the garment. Here's what 20% off looks like in absolute dollars.
| Garment | Free Plan Base | Premium Saves |
|---|---|---|
| Gildan 5000 | $8.80 | $1.76 |
| Bella+Canvas 3001 | $9.50 | $1.90 |
| Next Level 3600 | $11.20 | $2.24 |
| Comfort Colors 1717 | $13.50 | $2.70 |
| Bella+Canvas 8800 | $12.40 | $2.48 |
The math for break-even is straightforward.
- Premium monthly ($39): Pays back at ~20 shirts/month if you're selling Bella+Canvas 3001, ~14 shirts/month on Comfort Colors.
- Premium annual ($299, ~$24.92/mo): Pays back at ~13 shirts/month on Bella+Canvas, ~9 on Comfort Colors.
If you're selling higher-base garments like Comfort Colors or sublimated polos, Premium pays back faster because each unit saves more. If you're selling cheap Gildan tees at high volume, monthly Premium needs ~22 shirts to clear $39.
For the discount mechanics in more detail, our Printify sample coupon breakdown covers how the Premium discount stacks with sample-order coupons.
The Hidden Costs Most Sellers Forget
The three-line cost formula misses several real expenses that show up on every shirt over time. Bake these into your retail price up front or they'll eat your margin slowly.
Test orders
Every serious POD seller buys one of every design they sell to QA the print quality, mockup accuracy, and shipping experience. At $14 cost per test order, if you launch 20 designs a month, that's $280/month in pure overhead. Amortize across expected unit sales per design — typically 30¢–80¢ per shirt sold.
Reprints and refunds
Printify reprints defective items for free under their reprint policy, but you eat the cost of customer-fault returns (wrong size, buyer remorse, "didn't like the color"). Industry-typical refund rate for POD is 2–4% of orders. At a $14 cost per refunded shirt, that's $0.28–$0.56 in true cost per shirt sold across your whole catalog.
Etsy / Shopify ads
Most POD sellers spend 10–25% of revenue on Etsy Ads or Meta/Google ads. On a $24.99 sale, that's $2.50–$6.25 per shirt. Highly variable by niche.
Mockup creation
If you outsource mockups or buy mockup templates ($5–$15 each, reused across designs), there's a small per-shirt amortization here. Usually negligible — 5¢–15¢ per shirt sold — but worth tracking.
Software stack
Most POD sellers run a small monthly stack: design tools ($20/mo), SEO research ($15/mo), bookkeeping ($30/mo). Call it $65/month overhead. At 100 shirts/month, that's $0.65 per shirt.
Total realistic "hidden" per-shirt overhead across all of these: $1.50–$3 per shirt sold for most operators. Build it into your retail price up front.
How to Set Retail for a 40% Margin
The industry-standard target margin for POD shirts is 40% — meaning, after all costs (Printify + shipping + sales-channel fees + a hidden-cost allowance), your net profit is 40% of the retail price.
The retail-price formula is:
Retail price = Total true cost ÷ (1 − target margin)
Worked example for a Bella+Canvas 3001 on Etsy, Free plan, US customer.
- Printify base: $9.50
- Printify shipping (charged to buyer, but it's still your obligation): $4.79
- Etsy fees on a $24.99 sale: ~$3.30
- Hidden-cost allowance: $2.00
- Total true cost: $19.59
For a 40% margin: $19.59 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $32.65 retail.
That's well above the $24.99 most beginner Etsy sellers default to. Which is the unspoken truth of POD on Etsy: most listings under $26 are running closer to a 25–30% net margin once hidden costs are honest.
If you can defend a $32.65 retail with strong design, niche positioning, and brand story, you're at 40%. If your category caps at $24.99 (cheap Gildan basics, oversaturated niches), you'll need to either run Premium for the 20% discount or accept the lower margin.
For sales-channel-specific setup that affects total fees, see our guides on Printify on Etsy and the broader Shopify, Etsy, and WooCommerce integration walkthrough.
You can also browse the Costs and Charges cluster for related fee deep-dives, or the Printify topic hub for everything we cover.
FAQs
What is the cheapest shirt on Printify?
The Gildan 5000 from budget US providers runs around $7.50–$8.80 base. With Premium, that drops to ~$6.00. It's a heavyweight cotton tee, blocky cut, fine for graphic-tee designs but not flattering on every body.
What is the average cost per shirt on Printify?
$9–$13 in base cost plus $4.29–$4.99 US shipping. Total delivered cost is typically $14–$18 per shirt before any sales-channel fees.
Does Printify charge a per-sale commission?
No. Printify charges only the base product cost and shipping when an order is fulfilled. No transaction fees, no listing fees, no commission on sales. Sales-channel fees (Etsy, Shopify, eBay) are separate.
How much does shipping add per shirt?
$4.29–$4.99 for the first US item. Each additional item in the same order ships at roughly $2.69. International shipping ranges $8–$18 for the first item.
Is Printify Premium worth it for shirts?
If you sell over 13–20 shirts/month consistently, yes. The 20% base-cost discount pays back the $24.92–$39/month subscription. Below that, stay on Free.
Why does the same shirt cost different amounts on different providers?
Each provider sets their own base price for the same blank. Premium providers (faster turnaround, higher print quality, US coastal locations) charge $1–$2 more than budget providers. Pick by total cost including shipping, not just base.
Does Printify add a markup on shipping?
Shipping rates are set by the print provider and reflect their actual cost plus a small handling fee. Printify doesn't add a separate shipping markup on top.
What sizes cost extra?
2XL, 3XL, 4XL, and 5XL usually carry a $1.50–$3.00 size uplift depending on the garment. Standard XS–XL sizes are all the same base price.
Do dark colors cost extra?
On many products, yes. Dark colorways typically carry a $0.75–$1.00 uplift because DTG printing on dark fabric requires a white underbase. Light colors are usually the listed base price.
How do I see the production cost breakdown inside Printify?
Open any product in the Printify dashboard, pick a print provider, and the cost-per-size breakdown shows in the right panel. You'll see base, color uplift if any, and shipping by destination before you publish.
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