Steps
- Add up the yearly fixed costs of the machine and the space it takes
- Divide them by the hours you can bill in a year, not the hours the shop is open
- Add the running cost per hour: power, gas, consumables and the operator
- Add your margin, and keep separate rates for nitrogen work and for thick plate
What goes into the rate
| Item | How to work it out | A sourced starting point |
|---|---|---|
| Depreciation | price paid ÷ years of use ÷ billable hours a year | Lapas's example: $200,000 ÷ 5 years ÷ 2,000 h = $20 an hour |
| Electricity | kW drawn × price per kWh | a 3 kW Raycus source draws up to 10 kW, a Teyu CWFL-3000 chiller up to 6.5–7.9 kW; €0.18/kWh EU average for businesses using 500–2,000 MWh a year (H1 2026); 9.64 ¢/kWh US industrial (August 2026) |
| Assist gas | m³ an hour × price per m³ | nitrogen: 20–31 m³ an hour on 4 mm stainless at 3 kW (MM Science Journal, 2018); an on-site generator uses 0.72–0.78 kWh per kg of nitrogen at 300 bar |
| Consumables, maintenance | nozzles, windows, lenses and service from your invoices ÷ hours | Lapas's example: $0.75 + $0.50 an hour |
| Operator | loaded wage: pay plus taxes and benefits | Lapas's example: $34 an hour, wage × 1.35 |
| Space and overhead | rent, insurance, software and office ÷ billable hours | Lapas's example: $6 + $9 an hour |
Lapas — a nesting-software vendor, so read it as an example, not a survey — adds these up to $81.75 an hour of internal cost for a 6 kW fiber in the US: labour 42 %, depreciation 24 %, electricity 4 %. It puts US shop rates at $80–180 an hour, most mid-size shops at $100–125. We found no survey of fiber-laser hourly rates; the one real shop table we could read, Aston Precision's in Australia, runs from AUD 200 an hour for thin mild steel to AUD 585 at 25 mm.
A worked example
- A 3 kW fiber laser bought and installed for €80,000, written off over 7 years, with 1,600 billable hours a year (all three are examples): €7.14 an hour.
- Electricity: source and chiller at their maximum, 10 + 7.9 kW = 17.9 kW × €0.18 = €3.23 an hour. That is an upper bound for those two; the motion system, extraction and compressor come on top, and a meter on the supply tells you the real figure.
- Nitrogen from an on-site generator: 25 m³ an hour is about 31 kg (Oxywise counts 0.8 m³ per kg) × 0.78 kWh/kg × €0.18 = €4.39 per beam-on hour in electricity alone, before the generator's own price. For oxygen we found no published price: use your supplier's invoice. See assist gas.
- Consumables and maintenance €1.25 (Lapas's figure as a placeholder), an operator at €28 an hour loaded (example), and €12,000 a year of space, insurance and software (example) ÷ 1,600 h = €7.50.
- Total: about €47 an hour of cost on oxygen work and €52 on nitrogen. Your margin goes on top; Zorocut's default rate of €90 an hour is our estimate, not a market figure.
Billable hours decide the rate
| Billable hours a year | Fixed cost per hour (€23,429 a year) | Total cost per hour, oxygen work |
|---|---|---|
| 800 | €29.29 | €61.77 |
| 1,600 | €14.64 | €47.12 |
| 3,200 (two shifts) | €7.32 | €39.80 |
Bands, not one rate
- Thickness: Aston's rate for mild steel rises from AUD 200 an hour at 1 mm to 280 at 3 mm, 403 at 10 mm and 481 at 20 mm, as the cut slows and the pierces get longer.
- Gas: Lapas warns that running heavy stainless or thick aluminium on nitrogen at a blended rate undercharges by $5–15 an hour. Give nitrogen work its own rate.
- Zorocut uses one machine rate per quote: enter the rate of the band the job falls in. Its per-metre and per-pierce prices follow from that rate — see pricing units.
Sources
- Lapas, How to price a laser cutting job (2026-06-01)
- Aston Precision, Laser Cutting Cost Estimator (feed, pierce and rate tables)
- Raycus, RFL-C3000S CW fiber laser user manual (distributor copy; max. power consumption)
- Teyu, CWFL-3000 chiller for 3 kW fiber lasers (max. power consumption)
- Eurostat, Electricity price statistics (non-household consumers, H1 2026)
- US EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A (August 2026)
- Musil et al., Cutting parameters, surface quality and nitrogen consumption in laser cutting, MM Science Journal 2018
- Oxywise, LaserGas nitrogen generator range 2025
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