How to price machine embroidery by stitch count, and check it pays

A new embroiderer on r/MachineEmbroidery asked the question most of them ask: what to charge for custom orders, and how to calculate it, with one machine already running all day. The standard answer, price by stitch count, is right as far as it goes. What it leaves out is time.

How does stitch-count pricing work?

Your digitizing or editing software shows every design's stitch count. The quote is built from it:

1. Stitches ÷ 1,000 × your rate gives the embroidery price per piece. Add every location: a left chest and a sleeve is one piece with both counts.
2. A minimum per piece covers small designs, because hooping a 2,000-stitch logo takes as long as hooping a 10,000-stitch one.
3. Digitizing is charged once per design, not per piece. Setup, if you charge it, is once per order.
4. Quantity breaks take a percentage off the stitch price from a quantity you set.
5. Blanks, if you supply the garments, are charged at cost plus your markup.

This post does not give you a rate per 1,000. Rates differ by country, machine and customer, and copying a stranger's price list is how you end up busy and broke. The next section gives you a way to find your own.

How many hours does an order take?

Two parts: the machine running, and you handling each piece.

• Running time for one run is stitches ÷ the speed you actually sew at. A 9,000-stitch design at 600 stitches a minute is 15 minutes. Use your real average speed over a design, not the maximum on the box: dense fills and colour changes slow every machine.
• Runs are pieces ÷ heads, rounded up. Twenty-four hats on a single head is 24 runs; on a four-head it is 6.
• Handling is per piece: hooping, trimming jump stitches, colour changes by hand, folding. Three minutes a piece is an hour and twelve minutes on 24 hats.

Worked example: 24 hats, 9,000 stitches, 600 spm, one head, 3 minutes handling. Running time is 24 × 15 = 360 minutes, plus 72 minutes of handling: 7.2 hours for the order.

What should my price per 1,000 stitches be?

Decide what an hour of machine time has to earn after blanks, backing and thread — the figure that pays for the machine, your time and the business. Then solve for the rate. In the example, if an hour must earn 45 after 0.60 of backing and thread per hat and a 25 digitizing fee, the order needs 7.2 × 45 = 324 plus 14.40 of materials, less the 25 digitizing: 313.40 from the embroidery, which is 13.06 a hat, or about 1.45 per 1,000 stitches.

Put the same order on a four-head and the running time falls to 90 minutes, the order takes 2.7 hours, and the rate that pays falls with it. That is why a flat price list works out so differently for a single-head shop and for a shop with a multi-head machine.

The calculator does this solve for you and shows it next to your quoted rate, so an order that fills the machine without paying for it is flagged before you accept it.

What else belongs in the quote?

• Digitizing your own designs is work. Charge for it once, and keep the file for repeat orders.
• Customer-supplied garments carry risk: a ruined hoodie you did not sell is a hoodie you replace. Some shops charge more per 1,000 on customer goods for exactly that reason.
• Proofs and changes. A written proof with thread colours stops the argument about which blue the email meant.

Sources

• r/MachineEmbroidery threads read 21 September 2026, including “What is your pricing for custom orders, and how do you calculate it?” and “Jobsheets/client proofs?”.
• The worked example is reproduced by the embroidery pricing calculator, whose tests include the same round trip.

Everything linked here is free to use, runs in your browser, and needs no account. If something in this post is wrong or out of date, it is worth telling us — the date at the top is the last time it was checked.