How much do custom t-shirts cost in 2026

Most quotes you get for custom shirts are hard to compare because shops bundle things differently. One includes setup and one does not. One charges per colour. One has a minimum that changes the per-shirt price you were quoted without anybody saying so. So here are ours, in full.

What a printed shirt costs

Printed, per piece, no other conditions:

• Tultex Fine Jersey at $8.20
• Gildan Ultra Cotton at $11.20
• Gildan Softstyle at $12.50
• American Apparel heavyweight at $14.50, from 6 pieces
• Next Level 3600 cotton at $15.00
• Bella+Canvas 3001 jersey at $15.50
• Comfort Colors garment-dyed heavyweight at $17.00, from 6 pieces

Beyond tees: a tote bag is $12.50, a Gildan crewneck sweatshirt $21.00, a Hanes Ultimate heavyweight hoodie $29.00, an embroidered classic cap $11.80, an 11oz mug $9.90.

The blank is doing the work in that spread. A Tultex and a Comfort Colors are both cotton tees and they are not the same garment — weight, hand, how the shoulders sit after a wash. The printing cost barely varies between them.

What we do not charge for

No setup fee. We print direct to garment, so there are no screens to make and nothing to amortise.

No charge per colour. A photograph costs what a single word costs. This surprises people coming from screen printing quotes where a fourth colour is a real line item.

No minimum on the core blanks, so their price above is the actual price of ordering one piece rather than a theoretical unit rate. Items that do have a minimum show it in the catalogue.

No charge for artwork. If your file is not print-ready, our design team prepares it. That is genuinely free and not a loss leader with conditions attached.

Volume

Discounts apply to the order, not per design:

• 20 pieces takes 10% off
• 50 pieces takes 17%
• 100 pieces takes 25%

So a hundred Next Level tees come to $11.25 each instead of $15.00. Thirty shirts with eight different back prints still counts as thirty pieces, which is the part people assume cannot be true.

Shipping

Pickup is free from either shop — Long Island City in New York, Compton in Los Angeles.

Standard UPS across the continental US is two to five business days. Overnight is available on anything. Within New York, New Jersey and Connecticut a courier runs $44.

We do not ship internationally at the moment. Worth stating plainly, because our own FAQ page is out of date on this and we would rather you heard it here than discovered it at checkout.

What actually pushes a quote up

Garment choice, overwhelmingly. Moving a 100-shirt order from Gildan Ultra to Comfort Colors adds roughly $580 before discount. That may be the right call — it is a nicer shirt — but it is the decision that moves the number, not anything about the printing.

Front and back printing counts as two prints. Hoodies and sweatshirts cost more than tees because the blanks cost more. Sizes above 2XL we do not stock in unisex cuts, so ask first.

Comparing quotes

When you are weighing us against a screen shop, check three things in their number: the setup fee, the colour count charge, and the minimum. A $6 per-shirt quote at 72 pieces minimum with $35 of screens is $7 a shirt if you wanted 72, and meaningless if you wanted 15.

For a large simple job a screen shop will genuinely beat us, and the comparison piece says where the crossover sits. Under fifty shirts it is not close.

Prices here are current as of today and live on the catalogue, which is the authoritative version if these ever drift.