Stop copying competitor prices and start pricing from your real costs. Enter your materials, labor, and margin — get your retail, wholesale, and Etsy price instantly.
Jewelry maker? Craftybase automatically costs every design and shows you your true profit per piece across Etsy, Shopify, and wholesale.
Try free for 14 daysAdd your total materials cost (beads, findings, wire, chain, gemstones) plus labor (hours × your hourly rate) plus overhead, then apply a profit margin. The standard formula is: Price = (Materials + Labor + Overhead) ÷ (1 − Profit Margin %). For most jewelry makers, a 35–50% profit margin on retail and a keystone wholesale price (50% of retail) are healthy starting points.
Recommended Retail Price
$40.68
$14.24 profit per piece • 35.0% margin
Healthy for jewelryWhat's a good margin? →
50% of retail — standard keystone pricing
This calculator works out your retail, wholesale, and Etsy prices from your actual costs. Here is what each input means and how to fill it in accurately.
Enter each component as a separate line item. For a wire-wrapped gemstone pendant, that might be: the focal stone, 20ga sterling silver wire, a lobster clasp, and jump rings. For a beaded bracelet: the beads (cost the strand or gross by the piece you used), elastic or wire, and any clasps or crimps. Buy wire by the foot? Calculate your cost per inch and multiply by what you used.
Adding items individually is more accurate than guessing a lump total, because it helps you spot which component is eating your margin. Many jewelry designers discover their clasp cost is higher than expected — especially when using quality findings.
Not sure of your cost per component? Craftybase tracks component costs automatically from your purchase receipts and updates your recipe costs in real time when supplier prices change.
Enter how many identical pieces this production run produces. Materials and labor divide across the quantity, so a batch of 10 identical earring pairs is priced more accurately than pricing one-at-a-time. For one-of-a-kind pieces, leave this at 1.
This is where most jewelry makers undercharge — and by a significant amount. Enter your total time per piece: sourcing and sorting components, assembly, finishing (polishing, patina, tumbling), quality check, and packaging. Wire wrappers in particular tend to forget the 15 minutes it takes to coil, cut, and tumble-finish wire for a pendant.
Your hourly rate should reflect your skill level. Beaders starting out might use $15–$18/hr; experienced metalsmiths, bench jewelers, and stone setters routinely charge $25–$40/hr for their time. If your work sells at premium prices and you have a strong brand, a higher labor rate is justified and correct. As Amy Friend of Amy Friend Jewelry put it: "I am so much more organized & at ease with Craftybase. I can finally spend more time at the design table than at the computer!"
Overhead covers the costs that don't show up per-piece: packaging bags, price tags, display cards, display stands at craft fairs, jeweler's tools amortised over time, soldering setup, Etsy listing fees ($0.20 per listing), your website, and any studio or bench space costs. A common starting point is 15–20% of materials + labor. If you sell primarily at in-person markets with higher booth fees, bump this toward 25%.
Your profit margin is the percentage of your selling price that becomes actual business profit after all costs. A 35% margin means for every $10 you charge, $3.50 is profit. Most jewelry makers target 35–50% margins at retail. Higher-end custom work with rare gemstones or specialist skills can justify 50%+. The calculator uses: Price = Total Cost ÷ (1 − Profit Margin %).
Tired of recalculating every time you buy new wire or your bead supplier changes prices?Craftybase tracks your purchase prices, updates recipe costs automatically, and shows you your true margin per design in real time.
See how it works →The formula this calculator uses is cost-plus pricing, the standard approach for handmade product businesses:
Total Cost = (Materials + Labor) × (1 + Overhead %)
Retail Price = Total Cost ÷ (1 − Profit Margin %)
Wholesale Price = Retail Price × 0.50
Let's walk through a real example. You're making a sterling silver wire-wrapped labradorite pendant:
A $69 wire-wrapped labradorite pendant is well within normal handmade jewelry price ranges — and it pays you $20/hr for your time. That's the calculation most jewelry makers never make, which is why so many talented makers are busy but not actually earning a living wage from their work.
These are the typical retail price ranges for handmade jewelry sold by independent makers in the US. Use them as a sanity check — not as a ceiling. If your calculated price exceeds these ranges, it doesn't mean you're overcharging; it often means you're making something worth more.
| Product Type | Typical Retail Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Simple beaded bracelet | $15 – $35 | Higher for semi-precious stones or gold-fill findings |
| Beaded necklace / strand | $25 – $80 | Gemstone quality and clasp type drive range |
| Wire-wrapped pendant | $40 – $120 | Sterling silver and semi-precious stones at upper end |
| Simple earrings (studs/hoops) | $15 – $45 | Gold-fill or sterling hooks command premium |
| Statement earrings | $30 – $85 | Complex assembly or rare materials justify upper range |
| Metalsmith / bench-made ring | $80 – $300+ | Fabricated metal, setting work; premium for precious stones |
| Resin / polymer clay jewelry | $12 – $55 | Variable by complexity; inclusion work at upper end |
| Wholesale to boutiques | 50% of retail | Standard keystone; confirm your retail covers both |
Etsy charges a 6.5% transaction fee on the item price plus shipping. That means if you want to receive $50 after fees, you need to list at $53.48 ($50 ÷ 0.935). This calculator handles that math for you with the "Show Etsy price" toggle.
Other Etsy costs to factor into your overhead percentage:
The common mistake is setting your Etsy price to match your calculated retail price and then discovering fees eat your margin. Check what Etsy actually deposits after a few orders — if it's consistently lower than expected, your listed price needs to go up.
Keystone pricing (wholesale = 50% of retail) is the standard in the boutique and gift shop world. If your retail price is $60, your wholesale price is $30. This sounds simple but has a critical implication: your retail price must cover all your costs at the wholesale rate, or selling wholesale will lose you money on every order.
This means your wholesale minimum isn't just "what feels fair" — it's your true cost per piece. If it costs you $18 to make a pair of earrings, your wholesale minimum is $18 (break-even), your retail should be at least $36 (2x), and your Etsy price should account for fees on top of that.
The calculator above defaults to 50% keystone for wholesale. If you're selling to boutiques that require 40% margin instead of keystone, you can adjust your retail price up or run the numbers manually. Our wholesale price calculator can model those scenarios separately.
These are the mistakes we see from jewelry makers at every stage — and the reason so many talented designers end up working for less than minimum wage.
Searching "beaded bracelets Etsy" and pricing at the midpoint of what you find is backwards. You don't know their costs. They might be subsidising their own time, sourcing from a cheaper supplier, or losing money on every sale. Your price needs to cover your costs. As one maker told us: "A lot of people in my industry just don't pay attention to that stuff and they just kind of go, oh well, this is what other people are charging."
A 10-foot spool of 20ga sterling wire at $14 sounds cheap until you realise you use 3 feet on a single pendant. That's $4.20 in wire alone — per piece. Clasps, jump rings, ear wires, crimps: individually they're pennies, collectively they're a meaningful line item. The "add item" button in the calculator exists precisely because these components add up.
The "materials x 2" shortcut is widely repeated in craft communities and consistently wrong for handmade jewelry. It ignores labor entirely. If your materials cost $8 and assembly takes 2 hours, a 2x formula gives you $16 — which pays you $4/hr for your time. The full formula in this calculator is the correct approach.
Sterling silver and gold-fill fluctuate with spot prices. A ring priced in January when silver was $22/oz may be significantly underpriced by June when it's $26/oz. Repricing is uncomfortable but necessary. Craftybase updates your recipe costs automatically when you record a new purchase price, so you can see immediately which designs have become unprofitable.
This calculator is useful for working out the price of a single design. But once you're running a real jewelry business — multiple designs, recurring wholesale accounts, tracking sterling prices as they change, managing a beading inventory with hundreds of SKUs — recalculating every design manually becomes unsustainable.
That's where Craftybase jewelry inventory software takes over. It tracks your component stock (wire gauges, bead sizes, finding types), stores your design recipes with all costs attached, and updates your cost-per-piece automatically when you record a new purchase. As Kelly Arias of Kelly Arias Jewelry said: "This report makes tax time almost enjoyable. No more lists and spreadsheets — I just run the report for the time I need, and it's done!"
The free jewelry inventory spreadsheet is a good middle step if you want to track multiple designs before committing to software. And our jewelry pricing formula guide goes deeper on the strategy behind the numbers.
See how Craftybase works for jewelry makers →This tool is built for any jewelry maker who creates and sells handmade pieces and needs to price them correctly. Specifically, it's useful for:
For ongoing cost tracking across all your designs, stock management, and COGS reporting, Craftybase automates everything this calculator does manually.