How much does custom plastic injection molding cost?
"How much will my part cost?" is the first question every buyer asks and the hardest one to answer with a single number, because two identically sized parts can differ 10x in price. The honest answer requires understanding how tooling amortizes, what drives cycle time, and where the hidden add-ons hide. This guide gives you the 2026 benchmarks and the levers that move them.
Where the money actually goes
Aluminum prototype molds ($1,500-$3,000, 1,000-5,000 shots) suit validation runs. P20 steel single-cavity molds ($3,000-$8,000) handle 100,000-300,000 shots. Hardened H13/S136 multi-cavity molds ($15,000-$40,000+) run past a million cycles. Every undercut needs a slider or lifter that adds $1,000-$3,000 to the tool and lengthens the cycle.
Commodity resins are cheap: PP $1.00-$1.80/kg, HDPE $1.10-$1.60/kg, ABS $1.80-$2.50/kg. Engineering grades climb fast: PC $3.00-$4.50/kg, PA66 $3.50-$5.00/kg, glass-filled nylon $3.50-$5.50/kg, and PEEK runs $80-$120/kg. A 50 g ABS part carries roughly $0.10-$0.15 of resin (including a 5% sprue/runner allowance).
Machines bill by the hour by tonnage (80-120T machines in China run $60-$120/hour versus $200-$400 in the US/EU). Cycle time spans 15 seconds for thin-wall parts to 90+ seconds for thick structural sections - and cooling dominates it, which is why uniform 1.5-3 mm walls and good draft angles save real money.
Painting or pad printing adds $0.10-$0.50 per part; ultrasonic welding or assembly $0.05-$0.30; custom packaging $0.10-$1.00. A quote that omits these is not comparable to one that includes them - always request a line-item breakdown.
Amortization is arithmetic: a $15,000 mold adds $15.00 per part at 1,000 units, $1.50 at 10,000, and $0.15 at 100,000. The price break typically lands between 5,000 and 25,000 units, where tooling stops dominating the cost structure.
Case study: a 48% unit-cost reduction from one DFM review
A consumer-goods company approached FromRubber with injection-molded ABS housings quoted elsewhere at $3.50-$5.00 per unit for a 25,000-piece launch. The tooling quotes were similarly inflated because the part as drawn demanded three side actions for a snap-fit arrangement that had never been reviewed for manufacturability.
Our free DFM review proposed three changes: reduce the main wall from 3.0 mm to 2.2 mm with added ribs for equivalent stiffness (shortening cooling time by roughly a fifth), reorient one snap feature to eliminate a slider entirely, and move from a single-cavity to a 2-cavity mold. The revised program came in at $1.80 per unit - a 48% saving - and the mold investment paid itself back within the first production run. Over the product's projected 100,000-unit life, the total saving exceeds $140,000.
The data: 2026 cost benchmarks
Industry data echoes the pattern: tooling represents 30-60% of total project cost at low volumes but only 5-15% at high volumes, and average cycle times have fallen about 18% over the past decade thanks to conformal cooling and flow simulation. When you request a quote, include your 2D/3D drawing, resin preference (or let us suggest one), annual volume, and tolerance and finish requirements - that is everything needed to return a firm, line-itemized price.
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