SS 202, 304 and 316 — what actually changes in your quotation
Three numbers cover almost everything a kitchen or general fabrication shop quotes: 202, 304 and 316. Customers ask for them by name without always knowing what they are asking for, and quotations routinely treat the grade as a label rather than as the thing that moves the price most.
What actually differs
All three are stainless because they carry enough chromium — around 16 to 18 per cent — to form the passive oxide layer that stops rust. What separates them is what else is in there.
304 is the general-purpose austenitic grade: roughly 18 per cent chromium, 8 per cent nickel. It is what most commercial kitchen work should be made of. It takes food acids, hot water and daily cleaning without complaint, welds well, and polishes to a finish a customer recognises as “stainless”.
202 substitutes manganese and nitrogen for most of the nickel. Nickel is the expensive part, so 202 is materially cheaper — and it is genuinely less corrosion resistant, particularly against chlorides. It is fine on a dry-store rack, a leg frame, a cupboard body. It is a bad idea on a wet bench or anywhere near a dishwash area, and it is a very bad idea on anything coastal.
316 adds around 2 per cent molybdenum, which is specifically good against chlorides — salt, hard cleaning chemicals, seawater air. It is the right answer for a coastal site, a heavy chemical wash area or a pharma-adjacent job, and it is overkill and an unnecessary expense almost everywhere else.
A useful shorthand: 202 for structure, 304 for food, 316 for salt and chemicals.
What it does to the price
The interesting thing is not that 316 costs more. It is how much more, on a job where the geometry has not changed at all.
Here is one work table — 72 by 30 by 34 inches, plain top, undershelf, tube frame — priced through the same formulas with only the steel swapped underneath:
| Grade | Sheet, 16 SWG | Same table |
|---|---|---|
| SS 202 | ₹168/kg | ₹12,622 |
| SS 304 | ₹286/kg | ₹18,070 |
| SS 316 | ₹449/kg | ₹23,977 |
A 90 per cent spread between the cheapest and dearest version of an identical table. Nothing was redesigned. Nobody changed a dimension.
Two consequences follow, and both are commercial rather than metallurgical.
A quotation that does not reprice on grade is wrong by that much. If your process is to price the job in 304 and then apply a mental adjustment for a 202 enquiry, you are estimating the largest single variable by feel. And it will not be a flat percentage, because the frame’s tube and the top’s sheet do not move by the same ratio.
A customer asking “can you do it in 202?” is asking a ₹5,000-a-table question, not a specification detail. It deserves a repriced quotation, and it is an easy conversation to have when you can produce one in a minute.
Gauge is the other half, and it is not the same question
Grade sets the rate per kilogram. Gauge sets how many kilograms. They multiply, and confusing them is common.
At 16 SWG (1.6 mm) a square inch of sheet weighs about 0.008155 kg. At 18 SWG (1.2 mm) it is 0.006116 — 25 per cent less metal. So an 18 SWG top in 304 costs about the same in sheet as a 16 SWG top in a cheaper grade.
That gives you two levers where most shops use one. A customer who baulks at a 304 price is often better served by 304 at 18 SWG on the parts that do not take a beating than by 202 throughout, because they keep the corrosion resistance where it matters. That is a good conversation to be able to have with numbers in front of you.
Worth being explicit on the quotation about which gauge is where. “SS 304” on a line tells the customer nothing about whether the top is 1.6 or 1.2 mm, and it is exactly the ambiguity that produces an argument at delivery.
Where the money actually leaks
Not in choosing the wrong grade. In these:
A rate that has moved. Nickel is volatile, so 304 and 316 move more than 202 does — sometimes sharply. A quotation built on last quarter’s sheet rate is out by whatever nickel did, and material is about nine tenths of a table’s cost. The fix is not discipline; it is having one rate list rather than a rate copied into eleven spreadsheets.
Mixed grades quoted at one rate. Real jobs are mixed — a 304 top on a 202 frame is a sensible piece of engineering and a common one. If the quotation prices the whole line at one grade, one of those two parts is wrong.
“Stainless” on the line. If the quotation does not name the grade and the gauge, then either you absorb the difference or you have an argument. Both are expensive, and the second one costs the customer too.
The practical version
- Put all three grades in your rate list with today’s real prices, and put the gauges under them.
- Let the grade drive the material actually used in the calculation, rather than sitting on the line as a note.
- State grade and gauge per line on the quotation, every time.
- When a customer pushes on price, reprice properly rather than adjusting by feel — and consider gauge as well as grade before you drop them to 202 near water.
The metallurgy here is settled and not very interesting. What is interesting is that the largest number on the quotation is the one most likely to be handled by habit.