How a service quotes tells you how it runs. The three models, what each costs you in time, and what to check before you upload anywhere — including here.
Email RFQ: you send a file into an inbox and a person replies with a number — typically in one to three business days, because a person costs money and quoting is triage. Fine for exotic work; painful when you just need a bracket priced.
Account-gated instant quote: the calculator is instant, but only after you've registered, confirmed an email, and joined a mailing list. The gate exists because your contact details are the product being collected alongside the quote.
Open instant quote: upload, see the number, decide. No account, nothing collected until you actually order. This is what we run — the price appears in under a minute and it's the same price whether or not we know your name.
Most instant calculators are black boxes: a number appears and you can't tell if the next upload will price consistently, or what you'd save by changing material or quantity. Instant opacity beats slow opacity, but it's still opacity.
The stronger standard is a price you can check. Our quote opens into the working — material grams × the published rate, machine hours × $2.64, setup and handling — and the same formula is on the pricing page with worked examples. If you can weigh the part, you can audit the invoice. We publish it because software-computed pricing has nothing to hide and hand-waved pricing does.
Wherever you quote — here included — check these before you upload:
A quote gate filters out exactly the customer a small shop needs most: someone with a file, ten minutes, and a deadline. Answering the price question instantly, publicly and checkably is the cheapest trust we can offer a first-time buyer we've never met — cheaper than ads, and more durable.
So the flow stays: drop a file, see the exact GST-inclusive price and dispatch date in under a minute, and pay only if the number works. No account until checkout needs an email to send tracking to. If your part needs a human (no CAD file, odd requirements), that path is one click away and a person answers within a business day.
Test any instant-quote service with a file you know: re-upload the same part twice. If the price moves, it wasn't a formula.
Drop an STL, STEP or 3MF and the quote applies every rule in this guide — mesh check included, GST included.