Metal Weight Calculator
Work out how much a piece of steel, stainless, aluminum, copper, or brass stock weighs from its dimensions — before you buy it, or to plan lifting and shipping.
Material
Shape
Sheet
Before you order
- Real rolled stock has mill tolerance — the actual size can differ slightly from the nominal size on the spec sheet, so the actual weight can differ slightly too.
- Angle and channel here use a simplified cross-section that ignores the rounded corners ("fillets") real rolled profiles have — a real, widely-used approximation, typically within about 1-5% of the catalog weight, not an invented exact figure.
- For a commercial-quantity order, check the weight against the mill certificate or supplier's published table rather than relying on this estimate alone.
- Tube and pipe are always sized by OUTER diameter plus wall thickness here — the way real suppliers list them — not by inner diameter.
How this is calculated
For every shape except sheet, the tool multiplies the cross-section area (worked out from your shape's dimensions) by the length of stock, then by the chosen material's typical density — this is exact for round bar/tube and rectangular tube, and a documented ~1-5% simplification for angle and channel, which ignore rolled-corner fillets. Sheet is different: it isn't linear stock, so its weight is a direct product of length × width × thickness × density instead.
Common questions
Why isn't I-beam included?
Because a real I-beam's flange thickness isn't constant across every size in a given standard — there's no single simple formula that stays within a small, honest margin of error the way the other six shapes here do, without pulling in a full standard-profile table (GOST/DIN) this calculator doesn't yet have. Rather than fake a precise-looking number, it's left out for now.
Why do angle and channel carry a bigger error margin than the other shapes?
Round bar, round tube, rectangular tube, and sheet all use exact geometry. Angle and channel use a simplified cross-section formula that treats the corners as perfectly square — real rolled angle and channel have rounded corners (a "fillet radius", typically a few millimetres), which this simplified formula doesn't subtract. That typically puts the estimate within about 1-5% of the catalog weight, close enough for planning, but not a substitute for a supplier's exact published weight on a commercial order.
Should I enter the outer or inner diameter for a tube?
Outer diameter, plus the wall thickness — that's how tube and pipe are actually sized and sold by suppliers. The calculator works out the inner diameter itself (outer diameter minus twice the wall thickness) to get the hollow cross-section.
Part of Home Improvement Calculators