What a weld actually costs
The price of a weld is mostly labor, with filler and gas along for the ride. This calculator pulls all three together: it sizes the weld metal from leg and length, works out arc and job time from travel speed and operator factor, then adds wire and shielding gas to give a cost you can quote with confidence.
How the cost breaks down
Total cost = labor + filler wire + shielding gas. Labor is job time times your shop rate, where job time is arc time divided by the operator factor. Filler is the deposited weld metal divided by deposition efficiency, times wire price. Gas is arc time times flow rate times gas price. On most hand-welded work, labor dwarfs the consumables — which is why travel speed and operator factor move the number far more than wire price does.
The whole welding toolkit
This calculator rolls up four others, and each one lets you dig into a single piece: fillet weld for weld size and metal, welding wire for filler, welding gas for shielding gas, and weld time for arc and job time.
Worked example
A 1/4 in fillet, 120 in long, single pass at 12 IPM, 40 percent operator factor, 65 dollars an hour: about 25 minutes of job time is roughly 27 dollars of labor, plus around 3 dollars of wire and under 2 dollars of gas — near 32 dollars total, with labor over 80 percent of it.
FAQ
Why is labor such a big share?
Because welders are skilled and welding is slow relative to material cost. Speeding the job up — higher travel speed, fewer passes, better fit-up, a higher operator factor — saves far more than shopping for cheaper wire.
Does this include power and overhead?
No — it covers labor, wire, and gas, the three that scale with the weld. Electricity is usually a few cents, and shop overhead is better applied as a markup on the total than buried per weld.