In this study, the experiment was conducted to investigate the advantage of dry machining over wet machining during turning of AISI 1020 steel using cemented carbide tool on a CNC lathe machine. Surface roughness and cutting temperature were measured by VOGEL surface roughness tester and infrared thermometer respectively. The experiments were conducted based on Taguchi L9 orthogonal array design. Surface roughness, cutting temperature, tool life, and machining cost were analyzed graphically. The average surface roughness and cutting temperature achieved with wet machining was 2.01 µm and 26.540C, which was 17.41% and 44.86% respectively, lower than dry machining. The high cutting temperature in dry turning result in short tool life, which was 41.15% shorter than wet turning. The machining cost of wet turning was about 56% greater than the cost of dry turning. The cost of coolant in wet turning is 42.88% greater than that of the cutting tools. The highest cost was shared by tool cost, which was 81.33% of the total cost for dry turning, while 70.00% of the total cost was shared by coolant cost for wet turning. Results revealed that dry turning is more economical than wet turning.