About Material Price Book
Material Price Book tracks distributor pricing for the metals small machine shops buy most: steel, aluminum, stainless steel, brass, copper, and bronze. Prices update daily, and the site estimates the range a shop is likely to pay based on material, size, and order quantity.
Why I built it
Large manufacturers have purchasing teams, contract pricing, and paid indexes. A small shop often has one quote and a choice: accept it or spend an afternoon calling around.
I could not find a public reference built for that decision, so I started building one.
Where the numbers come from
Distributor list prices are public, but almost nobody pays list.
Material Price Book collects distributor pricing every day and organizes it by material, alloy, shape, and size. I use real quotes shared by shop owners to calibrate the benchmark ranges.
Those quotes stay private. They influence the ranges, but the documents and individual prices never appear on the site.
The methodology page explains the process, assumptions, and limitations in more detail.
What's on the site
- Price benchmarks for six material families, broken down by alloy and shape
- Quote Check, where you can compare a material quote with the benchmark for that order size
- Price Movers, which shows the largest published price changes over the last 14 and 30 days
- A Metal Calculator and Drawing Cost Estimator for quick estimating work
- Beat My Quote, where you can send me a quote and ask me to look for comparable offers from other suppliers
For Beat My Quote, I remove information that identifies you and your current supplier before contacting anyone. The service is free for shops. A supplier pays me a flat introduction fee only if you choose to buy from them. The full process is on how I handle your quote.
The Material Report
Every two weeks, I publish The Material Report, a short newsletter for machinists and shop owners about what has been moving in metal pricing and why.
You can subscribe here.
Who's behind it
I'm Eric Na, a software engineer in Berkeley, California.
I'm not a machinist or a metals trader. Material Price Book is a one-person project. I build the tools, maintain the data, read the submitted quotes, and answer the email myself.
I'm not affiliated with a mill or distributor, and no supplier can pay to change the benchmarks.
You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Questions, corrections, or a material you think I should track: eric@materialpricebook.com