Embroidery Pricing Guide
If you are excited about your new embroidery project, but don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed, we are here to help. Let’s say you did your research and checked various embroidery providers. You stumbled at a REQUEST QUOTE button. Now what?
At Kate Elkind, we simplified the process so that you can determine your project’s potential price yourself without asking for a quote.
Here is how it works. A price for a custom embroidery has two components – digitizing and embroidery itself. Embroidery digitizing is a process where an experienced professional converts your design into an embroidery file. Unfortunately, the conversion doesn’t happen at a click of a button. It involves a process of tracing each detail of your design manually and making sure that a sequence, thread angles, and types of stitches are set at their finest. The good news is that digitizing is done only once, and if your embroidery is a company logo, you don’t need to go through this process again. Once digitized, your design can be embroidered infinite number of times.
When it comes to pricing digitizing of embroidery, there is no a cookie cutter method. Often companies ask to see the design first in order to give an objective estimate. Some companies determine price based on a number of stitches that will be going into the design. This method surely over simplifies pricing as it doesn’t capture the complexity. A square box can have the same stitch count as a complex design and surely cannot be priced the same.
Our Approach to Digitizing
At Kate Elkind, we developed a comprehensive way to price digitizing. We split projects into six levels based on complexity and number of colors. We give you a visual representation of 6 difficulty levels from easy to elaborate. Also, we specify number of colors that can be used at each level.
A step number one is to count how many colors your design has. A step number two is to match your design to one of the six levels. Some designs may have many shades of the same color. In this instance, you can simplify all the shades to one or to maximum three colors. We will limit number of colors that goes to your design according to the level selected. Finally, the level of difficulty you determined will determine your price for digitizing at a checkout.
Digitizing Levels of Difficulty
Level 1 – It’s very easy design and is priced at $6 regardless of stitch count. It includes lettering and numbers and up to 2 colors designs. There are some exceptions applies to colors as in the case with the Lego logo design that includes 3 colors.

Level 2 – It includes easy designs, but with slightly more details that the level 1. It’s priced at $12 regardless of stitch count and allows up to 5 colors.

Level 3 – This level is for a moderate level of difficulty designs that are more elaborate than level 2 and include up to 8 colors. It’s priced up to $20, depending on stitch count. The exact price will be determined upon the review.

Level 4 – This level represents complex designs with a high-level of details. It can include up to 12 colors and is priced at $30.

Level 5 – This level represents seriously complicated designs that include even higher level of detail than level 4 and allow up to 15 colors. The designs of this difficulty level will be priced up to $48, depending on stitch count and will be determined upon the final review.

Level 6 – This level represents an extreme difficulty designs that are the most elaborate and include up to 20 colors. This is priced at up to $75, depending on stitch count. The final price is determined upon the review.

♦ Please note that all of the above demonstrated designs were created by our skilled digitizing experts.
Summary of Digitizing Embroidery Prices
Level 1
Very Easy, $6
Level 2
Easy – $12
Level 3
Moderate – Up to $20
Level 4
Complex – Up to $30
Level 5
Complicated – Up to $48
Level 6
Extreme – Up to $75
What Happens if You Determined Level Incorrectly?
No worries, we will be reaching out to you whether you successfully determined the level of difficulty or not. If you determined the level correctly, we will confirm it. Otherwise, we will reach out with proposed adjustments. In a case your estimate was far below, and a proposed price adjustment is above your budget, we will be issuing refund, no questions asked.
If you feel like figuring this step out yourself is too complicated and you rather get it determined by our professionals, feel free to contact us for a quote.
Embroidery Pricing
The other part of the embroidery design includes an actual embroidery on the selected merchandise. Our pricing is determined based on the size of the design. We offer you the tools for creating the mockup picture for your custom embroidery design. Each garment will have a predefined area for your design. The size of this area will determine the price for your embroidery. We will embroider your project to fill the predefined area to the maximum. That means if the design placed in the predefined area was zoomed out, it will be increased to fill up maximum allowed space.