How many candles can you make from a 10 lb bag of wax? (The math, worked out)

The short answer: from a 10 lb (4,536 g) bag of soy wax, you get roughly 24 eight-ounce candles, 16 twelve-ounce candles, or 48 four-ounce candles — before accounting for fragrance oil, which adds volume on top. The exact number depends on your vessel's true capacity and your wax's density.

The mistake almost everyone makes: an '8 oz candle' doesn't need 8 ounces of wax by weight. Vessel sizes are fluid ounces — a measure of volume, not weight. Water weighs about 29.6 grams per fluid ounce, so an 8 fl oz vessel holds about 237 grams of water. Soy wax is only about 0.86 times as dense as water, so that same vessel needs roughly 203 grams of melted wax to fill.

The worked math for 8 oz candles: 203 g of wax per candle, plus fragrance at a 9% load (18 g of oil, which displaces a little wax — call it 188 g of wax per candle for a true fill). 4,536 g ÷ 188 g = about 24 candles per bag. At a 6% load you'll squeeze out 25; at 12%, about 23.

For 12 oz candles: the vessel holds about 355 g of water, so roughly 305 g of wax, or about 281 g after a 9% fragrance load. 4,536 ÷ 281 = about 16 candles. For 4 oz tins: about 102 g of wax, about 94 g after fragrance — about 48 candles per bag.

What this means for your costs: if the bag cost $25, your wax cost per 8 oz candle is about $1.04 at 24 candles per bag. That number feeds straight into your true cost per candle, so getting the count wrong by two or three candles quietly skews every price you set.

If you'd rather not do density math on scratch paper, our free candle calculator works out exact wax and fragrance weights for any vessel size, vessel count, wax type, and fragrance load — including a custom density for blended waxes. And if you want to understand what the load percentage itself is doing, read fragrance load, explained.