How Many Business Cards Should I Order?

The simple formula

Estimate how many cards you actually hand out, not how many you hope to. Take the cards you give away in a typical week, multiply by the number of weeks you want the box to last, then add about 20 percent for cards left on counters, tucked into orders or lost in a bag. Someone who hands out 5 cards a week and wants them to last a year needs roughly 300, so 500 is the smart buy. Someone who gives out 2 a week needs about 125 for the year, so 250 covers it with room to spare. Plan for changes too: if your phone number, title or address might change in the next six months, order less now and reorder later. Our How Many calculator runs this math for you and matches it to the right price tier.

Rules of thumb by role

Real business card prices (all-in)

Why 500 is usually the best value

Look at the jump between tiers: going from 100 to 250 cards adds just $5, and going from 250 to 500 adds about $10. That's because press setup costs about the same no matter how many cards print, so the per-card price falls fast — from about 40 cents at 100 to about 11 cents at 500. If you'll hand out more than a couple hundred cards before anything on them changes, 500 is almost always the better buy. The exception is uncertainty. If you're about to move, change roles, rebrand or test a new design, a 100-card run at $39.95 lets you see the cards in hand and fix anything before committing. Every order includes a free pro file check and a free digital proof, nothing is charged until you approve it, and if we get it wrong, we reprint it.

Ordering for a team

For a team, multiply by person but adjust by role: sales staff and owners burn through cards; back-office staff barely touch them. Ordering everyone 500 can leave half your boxes unopened, while ordering the sales team 100 means constant reorders. A good pattern is 500 for customer-facing roles and 100–250 for everyone else. Keep one shared design and swap only the name, title, phone and email, so every reorder is quick and consistent. Standard production is 2–4 business days, and if someone runs out right before an event, rush is a flat $9 for 2-day press or $19 for next-day. Need a design? A custom card design is a flat $79, and a matching 3-piece set — cards plus two other pieces — is $189.

When to reorder (and what to change)

Set a simple reorder trigger: when you're down to the last box or the last 50 cards, reorder, so you're never at a networking event with an empty wallet. Standard production is 2–4 business days with shipping included, so a week's lead time is usually plenty. Use each reorder as a chance to tighten the card. Check that the phone number, email and website are current, that your title still fits, and that the QR code, if you have one, still points somewhere useful. If people keep asking the same question when you hand over a card — “What exactly do you do?” — add one short line that answers it. Small changes like this cost nothing extra on a reorder, and every order still gets a free file check and a free proof, so nothing prints until you've signed off.

Frequently asked questions