Digital vs rotary vs flatbed printing: cost, MOQ and quality

The short comparison

	Digital (inkjet)	Rotary screen	Flatbed screen
Upfront cost	None for screens	One engraved cylinder per colour	One flat screen per colour
Cost per metre	Same at 50 m or 5,000 m	Lowest of the three on long runs	Between digital and rotary
Colours	Unlimited, photo shading fine	Commonly 12 to 24 screens	Often 6 to 8 in practice; automatic machines up to about 20 to 25
Repeat	Any size, or no repeat at all	Fixed by the screen circumference, for example 640 mm	Fixed by the screen frame, roughly 500 to 3,000 mm on automatic machines
Set-up time	Minutes to hours	Weeks for engraving, colour matching and strike-off	Screens must be made first; ask the printer
Typical minimum	1 m on some machines; print houses set their own	Often 500 to 3,000 m per design	Ask the printer
File you send	Flattened TIFF or PNG at print size	Separated file, one spot channel per screen	Separated file, one channel per screen
Best for	Samples, short runs, many colourways	Long runs of one design	Wide fabrics, big repeats, bedsheets, sarees

Speeds differ a lot. One industry comparison gives rotary 80 to 100 metres a minute, single-pass digital 35 to 75, and scanning digital machines 15 to 30. Flatbed is the slowest of the screen methods, about a third of rotary output.

How each method works

Digital

An inkjet head sprays the design straight onto pre-treated fabric, much like an office printer. There are no screens, so a 2-colour and a 200-colour design cost the same to set up. The RIP software turns your file into ink dots.

Rotary screen

Each colour gets its own nickel cylinder with the design engraved as tiny holes. The fabric runs under all the cylinders without stopping, which is why rotary is fast and cheap per metre once it is running.

Flatbed screen

Flat screens are lowered onto the fabric one after another, then the fabric moves forward by one repeat. It is a start-stop process. In the table version, workers move the screens along a long printing table by hand.

Where the money goes

Every method has two kinds of cost: a fixed cost you pay once per design, and a cost for each metre printed.

• Digital: almost no fixed cost. You pay per metre, and the rate stays flat whatever the quantity.
• Rotary: a large fixed cost for engraved screens and the strike-off, then a low per-metre rate.
• Flatbed: a fixed cost for flat screens (smaller than rotary in the example below), and a per-metre rate between the other two.

Published rupee prices are rare and vary a lot. Here is what public listings showed in October 2026.

Item (listed rates, October 2026)	Range found	Source
Digital printing, Surat	₹20 to ₹90 per metre (some include fabric)	IndiaMART Surat listings
Rotary printing job work, India	₹10 to ₹140 per metre, most ₹25 to ₹45	IndiaMART listings
Rotary screen, Indian comparison (2018)	About ₹3,500 per screen	Textile Professional

Warning: These are listed rates, not quotes. Fabric, colour count, width and order size all change the price, so ask your printer for a quote at your real meterage.

Worked example by meterage

This example is illustrative. The numbers are assumptions chosen from inside the ranges above, to show how the arithmetic works.

Assumptions: one design, 6 colours, one colourway, job-work printing only (fabric cost left out).

• Digital: ₹45 per metre, no fixed cost.
• Rotary: 6 screens × ₹4,000 engraved = ₹24,000, plus ₹6,000 for the strike-off = ₹30,000 fixed, then ₹25 per metre.
• Flatbed: 6 screens × ₹2,000 = ₹12,000, plus ₹6,000 strike-off = ₹18,000 fixed, then ₹30 per metre.

Metres	Digital (₹45 × m)	Rotary (₹30,000 + ₹25 × m)	Flatbed (₹18,000 + ₹30 × m)	Cheapest
500	₹22,500	₹42,500	₹33,000	Digital
1,000	₹45,000	₹55,000	₹48,000	Digital
2,000	₹90,000	₹80,000	₹78,000	Flatbed
5,000	₹2,25,000	₹1,55,000	₹1,68,000	Rotary
10,000	₹4,50,000	₹2,80,000	₹3,18,000	Rotary

Example: Digital and rotary cost the same where ₹45 × m = ₹30,000 + ₹25 × m. That gives ₹20 × m = ₹30,000, so m = 1,500 metres. On the same logic, digital and flatbed meet at 1,200 m, and flatbed and rotary meet at 2,400 m.

Per metre, rotary falls from ₹85 at 500 m to ₹28 at 10,000 m, because the ₹30,000 is spread over more fabric. Digital stays at ₹45.

Two things move the break-even a lot:

• More colours. At 10 colours the rotary fixed cost becomes ₹46,000 (10 × ₹4,000 + ₹6,000), and the break-even with digital moves to 2,300 m.
• More colourways. The same screens can print a second colourway with different inks, so rotary gets cheaper per colourway. Digital gains nothing from repeats of the same file.

These results sit inside published estimates. A Gherzi study quoted by SPGPrints puts digital ahead below about 1,200 m and rotary ahead above 3,000 m. A 2018 Indian comparison said digital was cost effective up to about 2,500 m for a design with 3 to 4 colourways.

Colours, set-up and minimums

Colour limits

Digital prints any number of colours, including soft gradients and photo textures, because the inks mix as tiny dots. Screen methods print flat spot colours, one ink per screen.

Rotary machines are commonly built with 12 to 24 screens. Cotton Works notes that 24 screens allow 25 colours once you count the fabric's own colour. Flatbed is usually lower in practice, though some automatic Indian machines are rated for up to 25 colours.

Tip: Overlapping two screen colours (a fall-on) gives a third shade without a third screen. Ask the mill whether they plan fall-ons before you cut colours.

Set-up time and MOQ

Digital set-up is quick: load the file, run it through the RIP, check the colours. One 2026 comparison puts the whole digital cycle at 4 to 8 hours.

Rotary needs engraving, ink mixing and a strike-off for approval. One 2026 comparison puts the whole cycle at 3 to 6 weeks.

Minimums follow the fixed cost. The same comparison gives 1 m for digital and 500 to 3,000 m for rotary. Indian print houses quote their own minimums, so treat these as starting points for the conversation.

What file each method needs

	Digital	Rotary	Flatbed
Format	Flattened TIFF (LZW) or PNG	Layered or multichannel PSD, or TIFF with spot channels	Same as rotary
Colour	RGB or CMYK, as the printer asks	One black-and-white channel per ink	One channel per ink
Repeat	Any size; a placement print is fine	Vertical repeat must divide the screen circumference, for example 320 mm on a 640 mm screen	Must fit inside the screen frame
Resolution	150 to 300 DPI at print size	Clean, hard edges matter more than DPI	Same as rotary
Gradients	Fine	Must become halftone dots or flat steps	Same as rotary

A design made for digital usually needs work before it can go on screens. You have to reduce the colours, clean stray pixels, fix the repeat to the screen size and split each ink into its own channel. Our guide to textile colour separation walks through those steps.

Note: Our Channel Separation tool is coming soon. It splits a design into spot colour channels for screen printing, and you can join the waitlist now.

Which one to choose

Choose digital if

• You need fewer than about 1,000 metres of one design.
• The design has photo shading, gradients or more than 12 colours.
• You want samples fast, or many colourways in small lots.
• The design is a one-off placement print, such as a kurti panel or a saree with a different pallu.

Choose rotary if

• One design will sell in thousands of metres.
• The design works in flat colours, ideally under 12.
• You can wait a few weeks for screens and a strike-off.
• You will print the same screens again in several colourways.

Choose flatbed if

• The repeat is too large for a rotary screen, as with a bedsheet or a large saree layout.
• The run is medium, roughly between the digital and rotary zones in your quotes.
• The fabric is wide, or a pile fabric such as a towel that needs the paste pushed in deep.

Common mistakes

• Comparing only the per-metre rate. Rotary at ₹25 looks cheaper than digital at ₹45 until you add the screens.
• Sending a digital file with gradients to a rotary mill and expecting the same look.
• Forgetting the repeat. A 300 mm design on a 640 mm screen does not repeat cleanly; 320 mm does.
• Planning ten colourways of 200 m each on rotary. Many printers set a minimum for each colourway.

What to do next

Get two quotes for your real meterage, one digital and one screen, and put them into the arithmetic above. If the design is moving from digital to screen, it needs a clean separation first; join the waitlist for our Channel Separation tool.

If the file is too small for the print size on either method, enlarge it with the AI image upscaler before it goes to the printer.