3D Filament Profiles is a genuinely impressive thing: a huge, free, community-built filament catalogue, self-branded the world's largest, plus a personal spool inventory, HueForge-focused colour tooling and a deep hardware reference. If you want the biggest browsable list of filaments to look things up in, and you're happy to keep your own inventory by hand, it's a great free resource.
But it doesn't touch your printer. To keep a spool accurate you weigh it or log each print yourself, every time. SimplyPrint's filament manager works the other way around: it's connected to your printers, reads the G-code of every print, and deducts filament from the assigned spool on its own, with no weighing and no manual subtracting. Here's a fair, side-by-side look, first purely as a filament manager, then as the whole platform.
Automatic usage tracking, NFC across every standard, Bambu & Creality AMS auto-import, direct Dymo & Zebra label printing, drying, storage locations, a mobile app and the Open Filament Database. See it all, with screenshots, on one page.
Explore the filament manager
Compare 3D Filament Profiles vs SimplyPrint for:
3D Filament Profiles is a free, community-driven filament catalogue and a manual personal inventory, with strong HueForge colour tooling and a broad hardware reference. It's a fine fit if you mainly want a place to browse filaments and keep your own spool list by hand, and you don't need your tool to talk to the printer.
SimplyPrint is a connected filament manager: it reads the G-code of every print and deducts filament automatically, so there's nothing to weigh or subtract, across any printer brand. It adds native NFC read and write, Bambu and Creality AMS auto-import, native iOS and Android apps, direct Dymo and Zebra label printing, and the open, MIT-licensed Open Filament Database (143 brands), which you can download, embed and edit in the browser. And the filament manager is free on every plan. If you want the biggest catalogue to browse and don't mind logging usage yourself, that's 3D Filament Profiles; if you want tracking that just happens off your printer, that's SimplyPrint.
Comparing purely as a filament manager, the deep, head-to-head view.
This is the heart of it. 3D Filament Profiles doesn't connect to your printers, so keeping a spool accurate means weighing it or logging each print yourself. SimplyPrint is connected to them, so your inventory stays right on its own.
Credit where it's due: 3D Filament Profiles has a far larger filament catalogue than we do, and it grows daily. Our database is a different proposition: smaller, but genuinely open, downloadable and wired into tracking.
It's a well-made, genuinely useful resource, and for some people it's the right call. Credit where it's due:
3D Filament Profiles does two jobs, a filament catalogue and a manual inventory, and does the catalogue part very well. SimplyPrint includes a connected filament manager and surrounds it with the rest of a print operation: a print queue, a full cloud slicer, AI failure and bed detection, a maintenance system, teams and permissions, native mobile apps and more, in one hosted platform that's free to start. In the table below, their column is the catalogue and manual inventory; ours is the whole platform.
The same filament comparison, plus everything else SimplyPrint does that a catalogue and manual log doesn't.
This is the heart of it. 3D Filament Profiles doesn't connect to your printers, so keeping a spool accurate means weighing it or logging each print yourself. SimplyPrint is connected to them, so your inventory stays right on its own.
Credit where it's due: 3D Filament Profiles has a far larger filament catalogue than we do, and it grows daily. Our database is a different proposition: smaller, but genuinely open, downloadable and wired into tracking.
It's a well-made, genuinely useful resource, and for some people it's the right call. Credit where it's due:
Nothing is black-and-white, and there are always pros and cons to consider when choosing a 3D printing cloud solution!
And we're not here to simply tell you, that SimplyPrint is the best - we want you to make an informed decision, and of course there are pros of using 3D Filament Profiles as well!
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| Filament management | ||
| Free to use | ||
| Open-source / self-hostable ? | ||
| Filament database ? | ~29,000 filaments, 960+ brands (self-branded 'world's largest') | Open Filament Database |
| Open, community-built database ? | ||
| Add filament without code or GitHub ? | ||
| Connects directly to your printer ? | ||
| Automatic usage tracking (no manual subtracting) ? | Manual (weigh or log each print) | |
| AMS auto-import (Bambu / Creality / Anycubic) ? | Bambu, Creality, Anycubic + more | |
| Read filament NFC tags | ||
| Write filament NFC tags | ||
| Label printing (direct to Dymo / Zebra) | Dymo & Zebra | |
| Barcode / QR scanning | ||
| Drying tracking | ||
| Storage locations | Flat 'My Locations' + QR (nesting not documented) | |
| Cost & spend tracking | ||
| Custom fields | Fixed-schema settings + notes | |
| Mobile app (iOS & Android) | ||
| Multi-user / team access | ||
| Import your existing spools ? | ||
| Developer API for filament data ? | ||
| Compare | Learn more | Learn more |
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|---|---|---|
| Filament management | ||
| Free to use | ||
| Open-source / self-hostable ? | ||
| Filament database ? | ~29,000 filaments, 960+ brands (self-branded 'world's largest') | Open Filament Database |
| Open, community-built database ? | ||
| Add filament without code or GitHub ? | ||
| Connects directly to your printer ? | ||
| Automatic usage tracking (no manual subtracting) ? | Manual (weigh or log each print) | |
| AMS auto-import (Bambu / Creality / Anycubic) ? | Bambu, Creality, Anycubic + more | |
| Read filament NFC tags | ||
| Write filament NFC tags | ||
| Label printing (direct to Dymo / Zebra) | Dymo & Zebra | |
| Barcode / QR scanning | ||
| Drying tracking | ||
| Storage locations | Flat 'My Locations' + QR (nesting not documented) | |
| Cost & spend tracking | ||
| Custom fields | Fixed-schema settings + notes | |
| Mobile app (iOS & Android) | ||
| Multi-user / team access | ||
| Import your existing spools ? | ||
| Developer API for filament data ? | ||
| General | ||
| Has free plan | ||
| Free printers | 2 | |
| Max cost | Free | Free, or from $4/printer/mo |
| Free cloud storage | 1GB | |
| Usage based cost | ||
| Unlimited printing | ||
| Supports all printers | ||
| Features | ||
| Remote access | ||
| Knows your printer | ||
| Cloud files | ||
| Print queue | ||
| Livestream | ||
| Gcode analysis | ||
| A.I failure detection | ||
| AI Bed Check (is the bed clear?) | ||
| AutoPrint / continuous printing | ||
| Maintenance & servicing system | ||
| Custom fields | ||
| Staggered Start (for power draw) | ||
| Print job history | ||
| Print remotely | ||
| Built-in slicer | ||
| Multi-printer friendly | ||
| Multi-print | ||
| Multi-stream | ||
| Statistics | ||
| API | ||
| Slicer smart-rotation | ||
| Smart filament change | ||
| Bed level helper | ||
| Organization | ||
| Multiple users | ||
| User groups / ranks | ||
| User permissions | ||
| School plan | ||
| Shared files & folders | ||
| Shared slicer profiles | ||
| Hub | ||
| Custom domains | ||
| SSO (single sign-on) | ||
| Notifications | ||
| Email notifications | ||
| Push (mobile / app) notifications | ||
| SMS / text message notifications | ||
| Apps | ||
| Android app | ||
| iOS app | ||
| "PWA" (installable web-application) | ||
| Security & privacy | ||
| Account 2-factor authentication | ||
| Privacy-minded analytics & data-gathering ? | ||
| Support | ||
| Live-chat support | ||
| Phone support | ||
| Email support | ||
| Firmware & gateway support | ||
| OctoPrint install | ||
| Native Moonraker support | ||
| Mainsail install | ||
| Fluidd install | ||
| Klipper support | ||
| Duet3D integration | ||
| Direct Prusa support (MK4, XL and up / new main boards) | ||
| Direct Bambu Lab printer integration | ||
| Support for custom integrations | ||
| Enterprise & partners | ||
| OEM | ||
| Partner program (reseller / distributor) | ||
| Affiliate program | ||
| On-prem / self-hosting ? | Contact us | |
| Compare | Learn more | Learn more |
Contact us if you think we made a mistake in our comparison!
We made SimplyPrint due to the fact, that nothing else on the market quite fit our needs. We wanted a platform that was easy to use, but still had all the features we needed. We wanted a feature-rich platform, intuitive and easy to use, with a great user experience and actual innovation within the 3D print management software space.
In summary, we - humble and unbiased as we are 😉 - believe that the SimplyPrint platform is a great 3D Filament Profiles alternative!
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