Price a machined part as material, plus setup divided by the batch, plus cycle time times the machine-hour rate, plus outside processes and inspection, plus margin. In our worked Portuguese example, a 3-axis machining centre costs about €48 an hour and an aluminium housing comes to €20.40 a piece at 50 pieces and €17.30 at 200.
The price of a machined part is material, plus setup spread over the batch, plus cycle time multiplied by the machine-hour rate, plus outside processes and inspection, plus margin. The number that decides whether you make or lose money is the machine-hour rate: the full cost of one productive hour of the machine and the person running it. In Portugal the labour part is low by European standards (manufacturing labour cost €16.5 an hour in 2025, against €35.0 in the EU [1]; across the whole economy the EU average was €34.9 [13]), so the machine, energy and overhead weigh more. In GETMILK's worked example below, a 3-axis machining centre comes out at about €48 an hour, and an aluminium housing at €20.40 a piece for 50 pieces and €17.30 for 200.
Key facts
- Manufacturing labour cost €16.5 an hour in Portugal in 2025, against €17.1 in Poland, €28.2 in Spain, €49.5 in Germany and €35.0 in the EU [1].
- Employers in Portugal pay 23.75% social security on top of gross pay [2], and salaries are paid 14 times a year [3].
- The minimum wage in mainland Portugal is €920 a month in 2026 [4].
- Industrial electricity for a consumer using 20 to 499 MWh a year cost €0.171 per kWh in Portugal in the second half of 2025, excluding VAT and recoverable taxes, against €0.218 in the EU [5]. Portugal's energy directorate puts the same band at €0.134 before all taxes and €0.209 with every tax included [12].
- Portuguese tax rules let a metalworking shop depreciate specific-use machines at up to 14.28% a year [6].
What goes into the price of a machined part?
Write the price as a sum you can check line by line:
Unit price = (material + setup ÷ batch size + cycle time × machine-hour rate + outside processes + inspection and packaging) × (1 + margin)
Material is what you buy. Setup is the time the machine is not cutting because you are preparing it: loading the program, mounting the fixture, touching off tools, measuring the first piece. Cycle time is cutting time plus loading and unloading. Outside processes are what you send out: anodising, plating, heat treatment. Inspection covers the measuring and any report the customer asks for.
In Portuguese shops these are the «custo hora-máquina», the «preparação» and the «margem». Most answers online in Portuguese are Brazilian, with Brazilian vocabulary and costs. The method is the same; the inputs must be Portuguese.
How do you calculate the machine-hour rate?
Add up everything the machine costs in a year and divide by the hours it actually produces. The German guideline VDI 3258 formalised this machine-hour rate method in the 1960s; it has since been withdrawn [7], but German costing handbooks still build the rate from the same parts: depreciation, imputed interest, space, energy and maintenance [8].
- Depreciation. Purchase price including installation, divided by useful life. For tax, Portugal's Decreto Regulamentar 25/2009 allows 14.28% a year for specific-use machines in metalworking, about seven years [6]; for pricing, use the life you really expect.
- Interest on capital. The money tied up in the machine, usually calculated on half the purchase price [8].
- Space. Floor area times the cost per square metre, including the aisle around the machine.
- Maintenance. Service contracts, spare parts, spindle rebuilds, as a yearly budget.
- Energy. Average power drawn while producing, times hours, times your electricity price [5].
- Tooling and consumables. Cutting tools, coolant, filters, per hour of cutting.
Then add the operator and the overhead. The operator's hourly cost is monthly gross pay times 14, plus 23.75% employer social security [2] [3], divided by the hours actually worked. As a reference, INE puts average gross monthly earnings in manufacturing at €1,640 in the second quarter of 2026 [11]. Overhead is everything the part does not see but pays for: office, quality, programming, sales, management. Most shops apply it as a percentage.
The divisor matters as much as the costs. Productive hours are not paid hours. With a 40-hour week, 22 working days of annual leave and 13 public holidays [3], one shift gives about 1,800 working hours a year (our arithmetic); after setups, breakdowns and idle time, a machine may cut for far fewer. A rate calculated on 2,000 hours when the machine produces 1,200 recovers only 60% of the machine's fixed costs on every job.
How do you spread setup across the batch?
Divide the setup cost by the number of good parts. It sounds trivial, and it is where most small-batch quotes go wrong. A two-and-a-half-hour setup at €48 an hour costs €120. On 10 parts that is €12 each; on 1,000 parts it is 12 cents. That is why buyers ask for price breaks, and why you should quote at least three quantities. Programming and fixtures are one-off costs too: show them as a separate line, or spread them only over the first order, never silently over a volume the customer has not committed to.
GETMILK's worked example: what does one machine hour cost?
This is our own worked example, built the way we build the rate sheet for an RFQ and quoting automation client. The figures are GETMILK's assumptions for a typical Portuguese job shop, except where a source is cited. Replace them with your own.
- Machine: 3-axis vertical machining centre, €90,000 installed with options and tooling. For scale, Haas lists its VF-2 in Europe from €61,995 before freight, installation and accessories [9]. Eight-year life: €11,250 a year.
- Interest: 5% on half the price, €2,250 a year. Space: 20 m² at €5 per m² a month, €1,200 a year. Maintenance: 3% of the price, €2,700 a year.
- Productive hours: 1,200 a year, one shift.
- Fixed machine cost: €17,400 ÷ 1,200 h = €14.50 an hour.
- Energy: 10 kW average (the VF-2 spindle is rated at 22.4 kW peak [9]) at €0.17 per kWh, the Eurostat and DGEG figure for a 20 to 500 MWh consumer excluding VAT [5] [12] = €1.70 an hour.
- Tooling and consumables: €3.00 an hour.
- Operator: €18.00 an hour fully loaded, above the €16.5 manufacturing average [1] because CNC operation is skilled work.
- Overhead: 30% on machine and operator.
- Machine-hour rate: (€14.50 + €1.70 + €3.00 + €18.00) × 1.30 = €48.36, rounded to €48.
The part: an aluminium housing in EN AW-6082-T6, anodised. Setup 2.5 hours at the machine rate (€120) plus 1.5 hours of CAM programming at €40 (€60): €180 of one-off cost. Cycle time 9 minutes. Material: a 0.6 kg blank at €7 per kg plus 10% for sawing and handling. Bar stock costs well above the metal price: the LME aluminium cash price was $3,254 a tonne on 25 September 2026 [10], about €2.85 a kilo, before alloying, extrusion and distribution. Anodising bought in at €1.50 a piece. Inspection and packaging €0.80. Margin 15% on cost.
| Cost line, per part | 50 pieces | 200 pieces |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and programming (€180 ÷ batch) | €3.60 | €0.90 |
| Machining (0.15 h × €48) | €7.20 | €7.20 |
| Material (0.6 kg × €7 + 10%) | €4.62 | €4.62 |
| Anodising (bought in) | €1.50 | €1.50 |
| Inspection and packaging | €0.80 | €0.80 |
| Cost | €17.72 | €15.02 |
| Margin 15% | €2.66 | €2.25 |
| Unit price | €20.38, quoted €20.40 | €17.27, quoted €17.30 |
Two things jump out. Machining is the biggest single line, so an error in the machine-hour rate moves every quote. And quantity changes the price more than any negotiation: going from 50 to 200 pieces cuts the unit price by about 15% without touching the margin.
How much margin should you add?
There is no reliable published benchmark for job-shop margins in Portugal, and we will not invent one. Set margin by risk rather than habit: higher for new customers, tight tolerances, difficult materials and one-off parts; lower for repeat work with a proven program. Add a material clause when metal prices move, and state how long the quote is valid. Never hide missing costs inside the margin: if the drawing asks for a first article report, price it as a line.
How do you make pricing repeatable?
Put the rate calculation in one sheet everyone uses, review it every year and whenever energy or wages change, and record every quote with the result: won, lost, and why. After a few months, that log tells you where you are too expensive and where you leave money on the table.
That sheet is also what makes automation possible: a quoting agent can only draft a price from rules that are written down. For the steps before the price, see how to respond to an RFQ in 24 hours.
Whether to buy quoting software or build an agent on top of the sheet depends on what arrives in your inbox; we compare both in quoting software or an AI quoting agent.
What to do next
- Rebuild your machine-hour rate this month. Put your own figures into the six cost lines above, divide by the hours the machine really produced last year, and compare the result with the rate in your current quotes. Any gap is repeated in every quote you send.
- Start a quote log. For the next three months record every quote, the price, the quantities and the outcome. It costs nothing and it is the data any later automation needs.
- If quoting still queues behind one estimator, GETMILK's RFQ and quoting automation reads the drawing, checks it against your capabilities and drafts the price from your own rate sheet, for the estimator to approve: setup from €4,900 and €290 a month per plant, excluding VAT, fixed in writing. If you quote a few dozen parts a month, a well-kept spreadsheet is enough and you do not need us.
References
- Eurostat. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev), manufacturing, 2023 to 2025 (updated 23 April 2026)
- Diário da República. Código dos Regimes Contributivos do Sistema Previdencial de Segurança Social (Lei n.º 110/2009), artigo 53.º (consolidated version, accessed 27 September 2026)
- Diário da República. Código do Trabalho (Lei n.º 7/2009), artigos 203.º, 234.º, 238.º, 263.º e 264.º (consolidated version, accessed 27 September 2026)
- Diário da República. Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025, retribuição mínima mensal garantida para 2026 (29 December 2025)
- Eurostat. Electricity prices for non-household consumers, bi-annual data (nrg_pc_205), excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes (updated 24 September 2026)
- Diário da República. Decreto Regulamentar n.º 25/2009, Tabela I, grupo 11 (indústrias metalúrgicas e metalomecânicas), código 1060 (14 September 2009)
- DIN Media / VDI. VDI 3258 Blatt 1: Kostenrechnung mit Maschinenstundensätzen (withdrawn) (October 1962)
- Haufe (Walter Schanz). Maschinenstundensatzrechnung: Kostenermittlung (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Haas Automation. VF-2 vertical machining centre (accessed 27 September 2026)
- London Metal Exchange. LME Aluminium: official prices (25 September 2026)
- INE. Remuneração bruta mensal média por trabalhador, 2.º trimestre de 2026 (14 August 2026)
- DGEG, Direção-Geral de Energia e Geologia. Preços de eletricidade na indústria, em Portugal e na União Europeia (DGEG PEI 1985–2025 S2) (updated 13 April 2026)
- Eurostat. EU hourly labour costs ranged from €12 to €57 in 2025 (31 March 2026)
Questions people ask
- How do you quote a machined part?
- Add material, setup divided by the batch size, cycle time multiplied by the machine-hour rate, outside processes such as anodising, and inspection and packaging, then apply your margin. Quote at least three quantities, show one-off costs such as programming and fixtures on their own line, and state validity and delivery terms.
- How do you calculate the machine-hour rate for a CNC machine?
- Add the machine's yearly depreciation, interest on capital, floor space, maintenance, energy and tooling, divide by the hours it actually produces, then add the operator's hourly cost and your overhead percentage. In our worked example for a Portuguese shop, a 3-axis machining centre comes to about €48 an hour.
- How much does CNC machining cost per hour in Portugal?
- No official statistic publishes shop rates, so calculate your own. Labour is the cheap part: manufacturing labour cost €16.5 an hour in Portugal in 2025 against €35.0 in the EU (Eurostat). In our worked example, with a €90,000 machine, 1,200 productive hours a year and 30% overhead, the rate is about €48 an hour.
- How do you include setup cost in a quote?
- Divide the setup and programming cost by the number of good parts in the batch. A €120 setup adds €12 a part on 10 parts and 12 cents on 1,000, which is why unit prices fall with quantity. Never spread one-off costs over a volume the customer has not ordered.
- What margin should a machine shop add?
- There is no reliable published benchmark for Portugal. Set it by risk: higher for new customers, tight tolerances, difficult materials and one-off parts, lower for repeat work with a proven program. Price extras such as first article reports as separate lines instead of hiding them in the margin.