The question of which print method to use is almost always framed as a quality debate or a capability debate. Can you print full colour? Does it wash well? Is the hand feel soft enough? These are real considerations, but they are secondary to the one that actually determines whether your business survives: which method makes you the most money per shirt sold?
The honest answer is that it depends on your order volume, your sales channel, and how your business is structured. There is no single winner. But there is a right answer for each situation, and most sellers get it wrong because they compare costs without comparing the full picture.
This article breaks down the real economics of DTF, screen printing, and DTG across three different business scenarios — the low-volume custom seller, the growing Etsy brand, and the high-volume branded apparel operation — so you can see exactly where each method wins and where it starts to cost you.
Before comparing methods, it helps to understand how their costs are structured, because the structure matters as much as the number.
DTF printing transfers a printed film onto the garment using heat. The cost structure is almost entirely variable — meaning it scales linearly with quantity. There is no meaningful setup cost per design, which makes it highly suited to low-volume and one-off orders. A single DTF print in Europe currently costs approximately €3.50 to €6.00 for a standard A4-sized front chest graphic, depending on your supplier and whether you are printing in-house or outsourcing.
The key advantages for margin are: no minimum order, no setup fees, full colour at no extra charge, and the ability to print across different garment types without reprinting. A gang sheet approach — where you nest multiple designs onto a single film sheet — can reduce per-unit cost to €2.00 or below at sufficient volume.
Screen printing applies ink directly through a mesh stencil onto the garment. The economics are almost the opposite of DTF. There is a significant fixed cost per design — screen setup typically runs €15 to €35 per colour in Europe — but the variable cost per unit drops steeply with volume. At 50 pieces a single-colour print might cost €4.00 per unit including screen amortisation. At 500 pieces that same print can fall to €1.20 to €1.80 per unit.
The problem for small sellers is that the fixed setup cost makes short runs expensive per unit. Printing 12 shirts in a single colour with a €25 screen setup costs you €2.08 per unit in setup alone before ink or labour. The more colours in your design, the steeper the entry cost.
DTG prints directly onto the fabric using specialised inkjet technology. Like DTF, it has no setup cost and handles full colour well. Unlike DTF, it requires pretreating dark garments, which adds cost and time. DTG also tends to have a higher per-unit cost than DTF at most production scales — typically €4.50 to €8.00 for a standard print depending on garment colour, coverage, and whether pretreatment is required.
DTG performs best on light-coloured, high-cotton-content garments. On dark shirts the pretreatment and white base layer add cost and can affect the softness of the print. For sellers targeting premium light-coloured basics, DTG remains a strong option. For dark garments and high-coverage designs, DTF has largely taken over.
You are making custom shirts for events, small teams, local businesses, or your own brand launch. You rarely need more than 50 of any single design at a time.
At this volume, screen printing is almost always the wrong choice. A two-colour design with €30 screen setup costs spread across 20 units adds €3.00 per shirt before a single drop of ink is applied. Your total print cost per unit is likely €5.50 to €7.50 — and you have no flexibility on reorders without paying the setup fee again.
DTF and DTG are both viable here, but DTF has a consistent edge in most cases. No pretreatment requirement, works well on dark garments, handles complex full-colour artwork without price premium, and per-unit costs are predictable regardless of design complexity. On a 20-unit order of standard front chest prints, DTF typically comes in at €4.00 to €5.50 per unit from a good supplier, with no minimum order surcharge.
Winner at low volume: DTF — consistent costs, no setup fees, full flexibility.
You have a catalogue of designs and you are producing consistent runs for your online store. You might produce 50 to 150 units of your bestsellers and 20 to 30 of newer designs to test demand.
At this scale DTF remains competitive and screen printing starts to become interesting for your proven bestsellers. On a 100-unit single-colour run, screen printing can bring your print cost down to €2.00 to €2.50 per unit — significantly lower than DTF at the same quantity.
The margin calculation, however, needs to account for more than just print cost. Screen printing requires committing to a minimum quantity upfront, which ties up cash in inventory. It also locks you into a fixed design — any artwork change means new screens and new setup fees. For an Etsy seller where designs evolve with trends and customer feedback, that inflexibility carries a hidden cost.
A hybrid approach works well at this scale: use DTF for new designs and lower-volume items to minimise inventory risk, and move proven bestsellers to screen printing once you know the demand is consistent.
Winner at mid-volume: DTF for flexibility, screen print for proven high-volume designs.
You have consistent demand for core designs, you pre-produce inventory, and you are optimising for cost per unit. Margins are under pressure because you are competing on quality and brand rather than uniqueness.
At 500 units a single-colour screen print can cost as little as €1.00 to €1.50 per unit in production markets. Even in Western Europe at that volume you can reach €1.50 to €2.50. The setup cost is now amortised across enough units that it contributes only €0.05 to €0.10 per piece. If your designs are relatively simple and production predictable, screen printing delivers the lowest cost per unit at scale.
For multi-colour or photographic designs, screen printing becomes complex and expensive — each additional colour adds another screen fee and production step. DTF remains competitive on complex artwork at all volumes and increasingly attractive as gang sheet printing allows cost optimisation that approaches screen print economics without the setup investment.
Winner at high volume: screen print for simple designs, DTF for complex artwork.
To make this concrete, here is a margin comparison for a €28 selling price across all three methods on a 50-unit run, using European pricing, Shopify as the sales channel, and standard overhead assumptions.
With DTF at €5.00 print cost, €8.00 blank, €0.60 packaging, €4.50 shipping, €1.11 gateway fee, €3.75 CAC, and €2.50 overhead: total cost €25.46. Margin: approximately 9.1%. Thin but in profit.
With screen print (two colours) at €6.00 print cost including amortised setup, same other costs: total cost €26.46. Margin: approximately 5.5%. Barely breaking even after any returns or discounts.
With DTG at €6.50 print cost on a dark garment with pretreatment: total cost €26.96. Margin: approximately 3.7%. One bad month of ad performance and this is loss-making.
Raise the selling price to €35.00 and all three become viable. At €35.00 with DTF the margin reaches approximately 25.5% — workable. At €35.00 with screen print on a 200-unit proven design where print cost has dropped to €2.50 the margin reaches approximately 33%. That is where screen printing genuinely earns its complexity.
The method you choose determines your cost floor, which determines the minimum price at which you can be profitable. Most sellers set their price first and then choose a method — which is backwards. The correct sequence is:
First, calculate your full cost stack for each method at your expected volume. Second, determine the minimum selling price that achieves your target margin (40% is a reasonable target for a healthy business). Third, ask whether the market will support that price for your product. If it will not, the method is wrong for your business model — or the business model itself needs to change.
Use the T-Shirt Profit Margin Calculator to run these scenarios with your real numbers. The print method selector covers DTF, DTG, screen print, POD, and embroidery, and lets you see instantly how a change in print cost flows through to your margin.
If you are based in Cyprus or the wider EU and want to discuss DTF printing costs for your specific project, the team at TshirtJunkies.co prints using DTF and DTG and can give you accurate current pricing for your design and quantity.
The calculator lets you switch between DTF, DTG, screen print, POD, and embroidery instantly — so you can see the margin impact of each method at your selling price and volume.