Is Soap Making Worth It?

If you’re thinking about starting your soap making journey, you might be wondering whether soap making is worth it. After all, some of the equipment might look a little pricey. Let’s take a look at the costs associated with homemade soap, along with the price of retail soap and the benefits of each.

How much does soap cost?

When you buy soap at the grocery store, the price varies widely based on what you’re buying. Soap, from bars to body wash, can cost from close to $3 to more than $15. If you look closely at the label on the soap you’re buying, you’re likely to see it labeled as body wash or a body bar, rather than soap. The ingredients list may feature a lot of surfactants, too.

What’s important to know about this is that, while we call these bars and liquids soap, they’re not actually soap. These bars aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re not a great way to evaluate whether making your own soap is worth it, because they’re not the same product.

Dr. Bronner’s soap is probably the most widely available and well known commercially produced soap, so let’s take a look at that. On the Dr. Bronner’s website, a bar of their 5 oz bar of their castile soap costs $4.99. That’s around a dollar an ounce, so let’s use that as our grocery store baseline price.

How much does making cold process soap cost?

There are two things to consider when you’re talking about making your own soap at home: ingredients and equipment. Let’s look at them separately.

Ingredients for homemade soap

• Oils: The bulk of your soap is going to be made up of oils. You can get as fancy as you want or as plain, and that does impact the price. You likely don’t want to use just one oil for your soap, because different oils provide different qualities to the finished bar; hardness, lather, cleansing, etc. For the sake of simplicity, let’s use one of our Quick Mixes in this example. Quick Mixes are pre-blended mixes of different oils that we’ve formulated to make great bars of soap. For a 33 oz package of our Lots of Lather Quick Mix, you’ll pay $16.99.
• Lye: For bar soap, you’ll need sodium hydroxide lye. This is the alkaline substance that reacts with your oils to make your soap. For a 32 oz jar of sodium hydroxide, you’ll pay $14.99.
• Water: Some locations can use tap water for soap, but to avoid unexpected reactions, we recommend using distilled water. A gallon of distilled water costs in between $1.00 and $2.00, depending on your location, so we’ll split the difference and use $1.50 for this calculation.
• Fragrance: We could perform this calculation based solely on these three ingredients, because that’s really all you need. But honestly, adding fragrance is part of the fun, and we want you to get creative and have fun! One of our most popular essential oils is our Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil, and the amount you use may vary but an ounce should be enough for most soaps. A 1.75 oz bottle of this essential oil costs $11.99. If you want to use a fragrance oil, we have those too. One of our most popular fragrance oils is our Oatmeal Milk and Honey Fragrance Oil, and a 2 oz bottle costs $5.84.

The total of these costs is $45.47 for the essential oil soap, and $39.32 for the fragrance oil soap. An unscented batch of soap would be $33.48.

This will make around 50 ounces of soap, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. So that works out to around $0.99 per ounce for the essential oil soap, and around $0.79 per ounce for the fragrance oils soap. The unscented soap would cost about $0.67 per ounce.

Sounding pretty good so far, huh? But wait. Let’s look at the equipment.

Equipment for cold process soap making

• Molds: You need something to pour your soap into to let it harden and to give it shape. You can definitely use DIY molds, but let’s say you want a dedicated soap mold that you can use over and over. The batch of soap mentioned above will fit in our 10 inch Silicone Loaf Mold, which is a great sturdy starter mold perfect for your very first batch of soap. This mold costs $22.99.
• Glass and plastic containers: You need containers that won’t react with lye or with your soap batter. We recommend glass or heat resistant plastic as non-reactive containers, but stainless steel works too. You may already have a few bowls that are appropriate for soap making at home, but if you don’t, we offer a 2 quart glass mixing bowl that even has a pour spout. With a 2 quart capacity, it’ll easily accommodate our simple batch of soap. This container costs $19.99. We have a smaller container that’s plastic and also has a pour spout; our Easy Pour Mixing and Measuring Container. It’s great for mixing your lye solution. This container costs $5.99.
• A stick blender: This is, in our opinion, an absolute must, and you might already have one at home. If you don’t, or if you want a separate one for soap making, we have a White Stick Blender for $33.99.
• A scale: You absolutely have to weigh your ingredients for soap making. We recommend a digital scale that weighs in both ounces and grams. Bramble Berry's Perfect Scale is great for beginners and costs $35.99.

So, the total of this equipment is $82.99. This is really starting to add up, huh? But, these pieces of equipment can be used for many batches of soap. Dozens, even. So how can we reasonably include these costs in the value of your soap?

With the unscented soap at $33.48 per 50 ounce batch, in order for your homemade soap to meet the Dr. Bronner’s baseline price, you’d need to make just 5 batches of soap to break even and start seeing that cost per batch decline. For the fragrance oil soap, that figure is around 8 batches. For our essential oil soap, the most expensive batch, that figure is around 18 batches of soap. So we can see that over time, these equipment costs get smaller and smaller as they’re spread out over more batches of soap. So whether or not soap making makes financial sense depends a little on what you’re making, and a little on how committed you are to making soap.

Is there a more beginner level option? Absolutely.

How much does making melt and pour soap cost?

Melt and pour soap is probably the easiest way to get into soap making. Basically you melt down a soap base and then customize it. It’s also not terribly expensive to make, so it’s a good place for soap making beginners to start.

Let’s take a look at melt and pour soap. 16 oz of melt and pour soap base will cost you around $6.99 depending on what base you choose. For this quantity of soap, you’ll only need around 0.3 oz of fragrance, so we can use the trial size pricing for this calculation. Our trial size Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil costs $3.99, and our trial size of the Oatmeal Milk and Honey Fragrance Oil costs the same.

You’ll also need a mold. The 10 inch loaf mold will be way too big for a 16 oz soap batch, so we’ll use a smaller one. Our 6 Cavity Silicone Rectangle Mold can accommodate the 16 ounces of soap just fine. This mold costs $16.99. Since no lye is involved, you can use whatever heat safe or microwave safe container you already have to melt the soap base.

So, the cost in ingredients is $10.98 per 16 oz batch, for a total of $0.69 per ounce of soap.

The equipment cost is $16.99. To make the investment in equipment worthwhile in comparison to store bought soap, you’ll need to make about 4 16 oz batches of soap.

But are there other benefits to making your own soap?

The benefits of handmade soap

When you’re looking at the value of soap making, you have to take into account that it’s an artisan product. It’s handmade, it’s customized, and you know what’s in it, because you made it.

When you look at pricing for small batch, handmade soap, the pricing is going to be very different. Small batches are more expensive to make, and usually have better quality control. So looking at some small batch artisan soap makers, we’re seeing prices from $8.00 to $15.00 and more per 4 oz bar. This is double our Dr. Bronner’s cost per ounce and up.

This is actually a much more realistic price comparison than our Dr. Bronner’s baseline, because the quality of your small batch handmade soap is usually higher. Handmade soap is superfatted, which means that there are unsaponified oils in the soap that help to moisturize your skin. 

Many handmade soaps also include extra specialty ingredients, like activated charcoal, exfoliants, colors, specialty oils, and more. These add additional costs to your soap, but they also add value to your soap.

But there’s more to it than that.

When you do creative hobbies like soap making, you’re getting a host of benefits from just the act of creating something. You get stress relief, a mood boost, and even some physiological benefits. Check out more about the benefits of crafting in this article.

You’re also making something with your own hands and creating something special for you, your family, your friends, and maybe your customers. That’s worth something, right?

So, the costs of handmade soap are comparable to real soap that you buy at the store, and much less than the cost of handmade soap sold at retail. There are also a host of intangible benefits for both you and the folks who use the soap. So the question of whether soap making is worth it comes down to the individual; are you able to invest the time and care into soap making? Do you want to create something unique and beautiful? Do you want special handmade gifts to give or products to sell? Then soap making is for you. Check out some of these great soap kits and get started!