How Much Do Custom T-Shirts Cost?
Short answer, somewhere between eight and twenty-six dollars a shirt. That range is uselessly wide, so here is what actually moves it.
Real numbers from our own pricing, broken out by quantity, garment, print method and number of print locations.
The Short Answer
A single custom tee lands around twenty dollars. A dozen brings it to about seventeen. Four dozen puts it near twelve or thirteen. A few hundred gets you under nine.
That is a mid-range garment with a full-colour front print. A budget blank knocks several dollars off every one of those and a heavyweight premium blank adds several.
Four things set the price, and only one of them is the printing. The blank, the print, the setup and the quantity you spread it all across.
What You Are Actually Paying For
The blank is the shirt itself before anybody touches it. It ranges from a couple of dollars for a basic cotton tee at wholesale to well over ten for a heavyweight garment-dyed one, and it is the single biggest lever you control.
The printing is ink on fabric. On screen printing it is priced per color per location. On digital printing it is priced by how much area your art covers, and colors are free.
Setup is the one-off work. Burning screens, coating them, registering the press. It is real money, and it is why one shirt costs so much more per shirt than fifty.
Quantity is not a cost at all. It is the divisor. Everything above gets spread across however many pieces you order, which is why the curve is so steep at the start.
Watch for quotes that separate the setup fee from the per-shirt price. A four dollar shirt with a two hundred dollar setup is a six dollar shirt at a hundred pieces and a twenty-four dollar shirt at ten. Always compare the total divided by the count, never the headline number.
Cost by Quantity
This is the same garment and the same artwork at every count. Nothing changes except how many you order.
The drop from one to forty-eight is worth about eight dollars a shirt. The drop from forty-eight to five hundred is worth about four and a half. Most of the money is in the first stretch.
Bella+Canvas 3001, dark garment, one full-colour front print. Live studio pricing.
Cost by Garment
The blank is where you have the most control and the least regret. Nobody has ever complained that their shirts were too nice.
We stock three tees on purpose, one at each end and one in the middle, because that covers almost every real decision.
| Garment | What it is | 24 pieces | 144 pieces | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gildan 5000 | 5.3 oz 100% cotton, the budget workhorse | $11.65 | $6.76 | Giveaways, big counts, anything where price leads |
| Bella+Canvas 3001 | Airlume combed ring-spun cotton, retail feel | $15.05 | $9.48 | Staff shirts, merch you are selling, most orders |
| Comfort Colors 1717 | 6.1 oz garment-dyed, heavy and broken in | $19.81 | $13.29 | Merch that has to feel expensive, retail tables |
All three with the same full-colour front print, dark colorway. The spread between the cheapest and dearest blank is roughly double, and it stays roughly double at every quantity.
Cost by Print Method
You mostly do not need to choose this. The studio prices your job as both screen printing and DTF and quietly gives you whichever is cheaper.
It is still worth understanding, because it explains why your price behaves the way it does when you change the design.
| Method | Priced by | Setup | Cheapest at | Colors cost extra? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital (DTF) | Area the artwork covers | None | Under about two dozen | No |
| Screen printing | Colors, and print locations | Per color, per location | Two dozen and up | Yes |
| Embroidery | Stitch count | One-time digitizing | A dozen and up | No, but stitch count does |
This is why a six-color design and a one-color design cost the same on a small order and very different amounts on a large one.
Cost by Print Location
A second print location is roughly a second print. It adds to the printing portion of the cost, not to the blank, so it hurts less on an expensive garment than you would expect.
On a mid-size run, adding a back print to a front print typically adds three to six dollars a shirt.
| Setup | 24 pieces | 72 pieces | 288 pieces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front only | $15.05 | $11.05 | $8.68 |
| Front and back | $24.03 | $15.04 | $10.92 |
Bella+Canvas 3001, dark, full-colour art in both locations. Notice the gap narrows sharply with volume, because the extra setup is spreading across more pieces.
Five Ways to Cut the Cost
Order to the next price break if you are close to one. Sitting at 130 pieces and pricing 144 is often nearly the same total for fourteen more shirts.
Drop to a lighter blank if the shirt is a giveaway rather than merch. That alone is worth several dollars a piece and nobody remembers what a free shirt weighed.
Simplify the artwork if you are ordering a screen-printed run. Every color is another screen. Going from five colors to two is real money at volume, and usually a better-looking design.
Print one location instead of two. And print on a light garment if the design allows, because dark garments need a white underbase laid down first.
Price Your Actual Shirt
Everything above is a worked example. Your real number depends on your artwork, your garment and your count, and the studio will tell you exactly what it is in a couple of minutes.
No form, no waiting on a quote email.
Three Worked Examples
Twenty-four staff tees, one colour left chest, mid-range blank. Around thirteen dollars a shirt, roughly three hundred and twenty dollars in total. This is the most common order we run.
Seventy-two event tees, full-colour front, budget blank. Around eight dollars a shirt, roughly five hundred and ninety in total. The classic giveaway job.
One hundred and forty-four merch tees, front and back, heavyweight garment-dyed blank. Around eighteen dollars a shirt. Sounds steep next to the example above, and it is, but this is a shirt you sell for forty at a merch table rather than one you give away.
Custom T-Shirt Pricing Questions
What is the average cost of a custom t-shirt?
For a printed tee in a normal quantity, most orders land between eight and twenty dollars a shirt. One-off shirts sit near the top of that, orders of a hundred or more sit near the bottom, and the garment you choose moves it by several dollars either way.
Why do quotes vary so much between shops?
Because most quotes bundle four separate things into one number. The blank, the printing, the setup and the shipping. A shop with a cheap-looking per-shirt price and a large setup fee can easily cost more than one with a higher per-shirt price and no setup at all.
Is there a setup fee?
On small orders, no, because we print those digitally and there is nothing to set up. On screen-printed runs there is a real setup cost per color per print location, and it is already spread into the per-shirt price you see rather than being added at the end.
How much does a second print location add?
Roughly it doubles the printing portion of the cost, not the whole shirt. A front and back print on a mid-size run typically adds somewhere between three and six dollars a shirt over front only.
Does a dark shirt cost more to print?
Yes, a little. Printing light ink on a dark garment needs a white underbase laid down first, which is effectively an extra color. On screen-printed runs that is one more screen and one more pass.
How much do custom hoodies cost compared to shirts?
The printing costs the same. The blank does not. A hoodie blank is roughly two to three times a tee blank, so expect a printed hoodie to land somewhere around seventeen to thirty-five dollars depending on quantity.
Is embroidery more expensive than printing?
Per piece, usually yes, and it also carries a one-time digitizing charge to convert your logo into a stitch file. Embroidery makes much more sense at a dozen pieces and up than it does on a one-off.
Olive Branch Apparel
Custom screen printing, embroidery, DTF and DTG. We source blanks from suppliers across the country and ship nationwide.
Start an order
Build it yourself in the studio and check out when it looks right.
Open the design studioSee What Yours Costs
Your artwork, your garment, your quantity. A real number in about a minute.