Cake pricing calculator
Ingredients are the smallest part of a custom cake. This calculator prices the whole thing — including the hours you actually spend.
- True cost of this cake
- $97.50
- Cost per serving
- $6.09
- A price to start from
- $121.88
of which labour $77.00
cost + 25% — a floor to negotiate up from, not a rule
The commonest mistake in cake pricing is an hourly rate of zero. Your hours are real cost — if the price cannot carry them, the order is a gift, which is fine as long as it is a decision and not an accident.
The floor is not the price
The calculator gives you a cost floor and a starting point above it. Your actual price also carries your skill, your lead times and what your local market bears — those are yours to judge. What no judgment can survive is a floor that was wrong to begin with, which is why the hours field refuses to be an afterthought here. For the ingredient side built properly from pack prices, use the recipe cost calculator.
Common questions
- How much should I charge for a homemade cake?
- Start from cost, not from what the supermarket charges: ingredients plus your hours at an honest hourly rate plus overheads like power, boxes and boards. That total is your floor. What you charge above it depends on your market and your skill — but a price below the floor means you are paying to work.
- Why do custom cakes cost so much more than shop cakes?
- Labour. A decorated custom cake is commonly three to eight hours of skilled work, and a shop amortises decorating across hundreds of identical units. When a customer compares your quote to a $25 supermarket cake, they are comparing your hours to a factory's seconds.
- Should I charge for my time if baking is my hobby?
- The moment someone orders, it stopped being only a hobby. Price the hours anyway; if you then choose to discount for family or practice, that is a decision you can see the size of, rather than an accident hidden inside a low price.
- What about ingredients I already had in the cupboard?
- They still cost money — you will buy flour again. Cost every ingredient at what replacing it costs. The ingredient part of this calculator works from your real amounts; if you want to build it from pack prices properly, the recipe cost calculator does exactly that.