Custom Embroidery & Apparel Decoration Pricing Guide

The Factors That Actually Drive Cost

• Quantity. Larger runs spread setup costs (screens, digitizing) across more pieces, which lowers the per-unit price. Our minimum is 6 pieces per design placement.
• Decoration method. Embroidery is priced by stitch count; screen printing is priced by number of ink colors and print locations; heat press/DTF transfers are priced per transfer.
• Logo complexity. A simple one-color logo costs less to produce than a dense, multi-color, highly detailed design — this affects both setup and per-piece cost.
• New vs. repeat logo. New embroidery artwork requires a one-time digitizing fee to convert it into a stitch file. Once it's on file, every reorder skips that fee.
• Garment cost. The blank itself (a basic tee vs. a performance softshell jacket) is a separate line item from the decoration cost.
• Customer-supplied blanks. If you provide your own garments for embroidery, that's $20 per placement (6-piece minimum) rather than a garment + decoration bundle.
• Number of placements. A left-chest logo plus a full-back design is priced as two separate placements, not one.

Embroidery Pricing Specifically

Embroidery cost scales with stitch count, not just "how big" a logo looks. A small but dense, highly detailed design can have a higher stitch count — and cost more — than a larger but simpler one. This is one of the most common surprises for first-time buyers: complexity, not size, is the bigger cost driver. If budget is a concern, simplifying a logo for embroidery (fewer small text elements, cleaner shapes) is often the most effective lever, and we'll flag this during the digitizing step if it applies to your design.

Screen Printing Pricing Specifically

Screen printing cost scales primarily with the number of ink colors and print locations, since each color requires its own screen. A one-color design at a large quantity is usually the most cost-effective option in the entire lineup of decoration methods; a four-color design at low quantity is one of the more expensive combinations, since you're paying for four screens without the volume to spread that cost thin. This is why screen printing tends to make the most economic sense for larger, simpler-color-count orders.

Heat Press / DTF Pricing Specifically

Heat press transfers are priced per transfer rather than per color or per stitch, which makes them the most predictable cost structure of the three methods and often the most economical choice for small quantities or designs that need to vary piece-to-piece (like individual names and numbers on a team roster).

A Practical Budgeting Example

To illustrate how these factors interact (not as a specific quote — every project is different): a company ordering 24 embroidered polos with a simple one-color logo that's already digitized will typically see a lower per-piece cost than a company ordering the same 24 polos with a brand-new, highly detailed multi-color logo, purely because of the one-time digitizing fee and higher stitch count on the second order. The gap narrows significantly on any future reorder, since the second company's logo is now also on file. This is the core reason we always recommend thinking about apparel as a program, not a one-time purchase — the second and third orders are consistently more cost-efficient than the first.

How to Get an Accurate Number

Because of all these variables, the most accurate way to get a real number is a quote — tell us the garment, quantity, and logo and we'll give you a straight answer, not a range designed to be adjusted upward later. See what to include in a quote request.

Related Guides

• Embroidery vs. Screen Printing vs. DTF
• Embroidery Services
• Building an Employee Apparel Program

Frequently Asked Questions