How much does a tattoo cost?

Why there's no single price

Most of the price is time. Size, detail and placement decide how long a piece takes, and so does how fast your artist works. A palm-sized line drawing and a palm-sized realistic portrait can be hours apart.

Minimums and hourly rates

Most shops have a minimum charge. Needles, ink, setup and cleanup cost the same for a tiny tattoo as for a bigger one, so even a small piece has a floor. Past that, a lot of artists charge by the hour.

Rates swing a lot from city to city and artist to artist. Someone with a two-year waitlist charges more than someone just starting out, and some artists quote per piece instead of per hour.

What adds time

A few things push the price up faster than people expect.

• Fine detail and small lettering, which have to go slowly
• Solid color over a large area
• Ribs, hands, feet and necks, where the skin is harder to work
• Cover-ups, because the old ink has to be planned around

Why quotes vary so much

One artist might finish your design in three hours and another in five. One might be booked out for a year and price for it. Choose based on their portfolio first. If the cheaper artist's healed work doesn't look like what you want, you could end up paying someone else to fix it.

Getting a useful quote

Send the size in inches or centimeters, the placement, a couple of reference images and whether you want color. That gets you a far better answer than asking how much a small rose costs. For anything over a few hours, expect a range rather than one fixed number.

The deposit usually comes off the total, but check with your artist. On top of the tattoo itself, plan for a tip if that's the norm where you live, and aftercare products. The calculator below can give you a rough starting number before you message anyone.

Try the tattoo price calculator