Your numbers
Pieces you are pricing
Needle hours are time actually tattooing. Drawing hours cover design, reference and client messages. Setup, supplies and touch-up time come from the fields above and are added to every piece. Tips are not counted.
Fill in your numbers and pieces, then click Calculate.
Result
By piece
| Piece | Needle hrs | All your hrs | Your price | Lowest price | Profit over target | Effective hourly | Vs lowest price |
|---|
Single-session ladder at your needle rate
| Needle hours | Price at your rate | Lowest price | Effective hourly | Needle rate needed | Reaches your target |
|---|
How it is calculated
All your hours: needle hours + drawing hours + free touch-up hours (needle hours × touch-up %) + sessions × setup minutes ÷ 60. Booth rent per needle hour: monthly rent ÷ hours per month you tattoo, charged on needle hours only. Cost of a piece: all your hours × your hourly take-home + rent + sessions × supplies. Lowest price: cost ÷ (1 − shop commission − payment fee). Effective hourly: (price − shop commission − payment fee − supplies − rent) ÷ all your hours. Shop minimum: the lowest price of a one-session, half-hour piece with no drawing time. Ladder: a single-session piece of each size, priced at your needle rate, with drawing time at the ratio you entered.
Not modelled: tips, taxes, deposits and no-show losses, refunds, aftercare sales, licence and health-department costs, and the terms of your shop contract. Unverified: tested on hand-calculated examples, not on a real tattoo business's books. It computes arithmetic; it does not tell you what clients will pay.
Common questions
How much should a tattoo artist charge per piece?
Enough that the price covers every hour you spend on the piece (needle time, drawing, consult, setup and breakdown, and free touch-ups) at the take-home you want, plus supplies, plus your booth rent, then grossed up for the shop's share and payment fees. The tool shows that lowest price for each piece so you can see how far a quote sits above or below it. It does not know what your market or your clients will pay.
Why does my effective hourly rate come out so much lower than my needle rate?
Because the client is billed for needle time but you also work unpaid hours around it: drawing a custom design, answering consult messages, setting up and breaking down your station, and touching up healed work for free. Divide what you keep by all of those hours and a $180 an hour needle rate can land near half that on a small piece.
Is a small piece worth taking?
Often not at the price people ask for it. A half-hour flash piece carries the same setup, supplies and share to the shop as a longer session. The tool shows a shop minimum: the lowest price of a one-session, half-hour piece with no drawing time. Below that number you lose money on every small walk-in.
Is it better to pay the shop a commission or rent a booth?
Enter the commission percentage to see the take-home per piece under a split, or enter the monthly booth rent and the hours you actually tattoo to see it under rent. Run the same pieces both ways. Rent turns into a cost per needle hour, so it hurts most when your hours are low; a commission costs most on big, high-priced pieces.
How do I count drawing time?
Estimate the hours you spend drawing, reference-hunting and answering messages for each piece, and put them in the drawing column. For the ladder, the tool uses the drawing hours per needle hour that you set, because custom work often takes a fixed share of the session length.
What does this leave out?
Tips, taxes, deposits and no-show losses, refunds, aftercare products you sell, licence and health-department costs, and what your shop contract actually says. It is arithmetic on figures you type, not legal, tax or licensing advice.
Is my information uploaded?
No. The calculation runs in your browser from figures you type, nothing is sent to a server, there are no accounts, and it works offline after the page loads.