Bambu Farm Manager is Bambu Lab's own free tool for managing a fleet of Bambu printers. It's a pair of Windows programs (a Server and a Client) that run on your local network, and it's a genuinely useful, free way to watch your Bambu printers and batch-control them, especially if everything lives on one site and you never need to reach it from outside.
But "manage your printers on the LAN" and "run a print farm" aren't the same job. A farm has to keep printing when you're not standing next to it, catch failures, route work automatically, and grow. That's where a free, local, single-brand tool runs into a ceiling, and it's why plenty of all-Bambu farms still pay for SimplyPrint. Here's a fair, side-by-side look.
Bambu Farm Manager is free, runs entirely on your local network, and is made by Bambu for Bambu printers. If your farm is all-Bambu, everything sits on one LAN, you never need to manage it remotely, and free is the priority, it's a solid choice, and a particularly good one for schools or businesses whose IT policy forbids the cloud.
SimplyPrint is a paid cloud platform that runs your Bambu farm from any device, anywhere, with the parts a farm actually leans on: automated job dispatch, AI failure detection and bed-check, continuous (lights-out) printing, filament inventory, a maintenance system, multi-user roles and SSO, native iOS/Android apps, and nothing to host on-prem. It also runs every other printer brand, the day you add one. "Free" isn't the same as "runs your farm", which is why many all-Bambu operators choose SimplyPrint even though Bambu's tool costs nothing.
The first thing a growing farm hits with Bambu Farm Manager is the leash: it lives on one Windows PC, on one local network. SimplyPrint is a cloud platform, so the farm is wherever you are.
Both tools monitor a fleet and batch-control it. The difference is everything that happens when no one is clicking: dispatching jobs, catching failures, and tracking filament and upkeep.
Credit where it's due. For the right setup, Bambu's own free tool is genuinely the right answer, and SimplyPrint can't match it on these:
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 Bambu Farm Manager as well!
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|---|---|---|
| General | ||
| Has free plan | ||
| Free printers | Unlimited | 2 |
| Max cost | Free | Free, or from $4/printer/mo |
| Free cloud storage | 1GB | |
| Usage based cost | ||
| Unlimited printing | ||
| Supports all printers | Bambu Lab only | |
| Features | ||
| Remote access | LAN only (no native remote) | |
| Filament management | ||
| Filament NFC tags (read & write) | ||
| Filament label printing (Dymo / Zebra) | ||
| Knows your printer | ||
| Cloud files | ||
| Print queue | ||
| Livestream | LAN only | |
| 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 | Live status only | |
| Print remotely | ||
| Built-in slicer | ||
| Multi-printer friendly | ||
| Multi-print | ||
| Multi-stream | LAN only | |
| Statistics | ||
| API | ||
| Slicer smart-rotation | ||
| Smart filament change | ||
| Bed level helper | ||
| Organization | ||
| Multiple users | ||
| User groups / ranks | Admin / common users | |
| 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 ? | Yes, local Windows server | Contact us |
| Compare | See pricing | See pricing |
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 Bambu Farm Manager alternative!
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