“What should I actually charge for this?”

If you’ve stood at the kiln with a finished mug in your hands and asked yourself that exact question, this page is for you.

Nobody starts making pots because they love spreadsheets. You start because of the clay. Then at some point you have to put a price on the thing you made, and that’s where it gets uncomfortable. Your hours add up to a number that feels like too much. Other potters’ prices make yours feel like too little. So you pick something safe and quietly worry about it.

You’re not bad at business. Pricing handmade work is genuinely hard, because half the costs are invisible: the kiln electricity, the glaze tests, the trimming, the pieces that crack.

I know this feeling from both sides. I’m a working potter with a studio, and before that I worked in accounting. Numbers don’t scare me, and pricing my own work still took me years to get right. If it took me that long with an accounting background, no wonder it feels overwhelming when your brain is wired for making, not bookkeeping.

So I built the tool I wished existed. A calculator made for a pottery studio: your clay, your glazes, your firing costs, your hours, your market. You put your numbers in, and it tells you what to charge. This is the calculator I use to price every piece I make.