OctoFarm was the open-source way to run a print farm built on OctoPrint: one dashboard pulling many OctoPrint instances into a single view, with filament tracking, job history and multi-camera monitoring. It was a genuinely useful, much-loved community tool, and if you self-host it on an all-OctoPrint fleet, it still works.
The catch is that it has wound down. Its last stable release was October 2022, and in 2023 the lead maintainer opened an issue asking for new maintainers. SimplyPrint has been running print farms since 2020 and is the maintained, cloud-native platform farms move to: every major printer brand connects directly (no OctoPrint required), with a print queue, AutoPrint, AI failure detection, a full cloud slicer, filament and maintenance tools, native apps and SSO. Here's a fair, side-by-side look.
OctoFarm was the go-to open-source dashboard for stitching many OctoPrint instances into one print-farm view. It's free, self-hosted and was genuinely useful, but development has stalled: its last stable release was October 2022, the project publicly asked for new maintainers in 2023, and the original website no longer resolves to the project. If you're running a farm on it today, you're running it on unmaintained software, and that's the honest reason most farms eventually move on.
SimplyPrint is a maintained, cloud-native farm platform that has been running print farms since 2020. It manages OctoPrint just like OctoFarm did, and also talks to Bambu, Klipper/Moonraker, Prusa, Marlin (incl. USB) and Duet directly, with no OctoPrint required. On top of monitoring it ships a print queue with staggered start, AutoPrint for continuous lights-out printing, AI failure detection and AI bed-check, a full interactive cloud slicer, filament inventory with NFC and label printing, a maintenance system, native iOS and Android apps, SSO and 2FA, all actively developed and supported. If OctoFarm got your farm started, SimplyPrint is the maintained successor it can grow into.
A print farm runs on its software the way a workshop runs on its machines: it has to keep working, get patched, and have someone home when something breaks. OctoFarm's last stable release was in October 2022, and the project has openly asked for new maintainers. We say this respectfully, it was a beloved community tool, but it's the fact that matters most when you're choosing what to run a business on. SimplyPrint ships updates continuously and has supported real farms since 2020.
OctoFarm is a layer on top of OctoPrint: it has no printer connection of its own, so every machine in your farm must already be running its own OctoPrint instance (typically a Raspberry Pi per printer). SimplyPrint connects to most printers directly, OctoPrint included, so there's no per-printer middleware to build and babysit.
OctoFarm is monitoring and management: dashboards, history and webcam feeds. That's useful, but a busy farm also needs to keep printers fed, catch failures and be reachable from anywhere. This is the breadth OctoFarm never set out to cover.
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 OctoFarm as well!
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| General | ||
| Has free plan | ||
| Free printers | Unlimited | 2 |
| Max cost | Cost of self-hosting | Free, or from $4/printer/mo |
| Free cloud storage | Local storage | 1GB |
| Usage based cost | ||
| Unlimited printing | ||
| Active development | ||
| Supports all printers | OctoPrint instances only | |
| Features | ||
| Remote access | VPN / port forward | |
| Filament management | ||
| Filament NFC tags (read & write) | ||
| Filament label printing (Dymo / Zebra) | ||
| 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 | VPN / port forward | |
| 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 | Only via OctoPrint | |
| Duet3D integration | ||
| Direct Prusa support (MK4, XL and up / new main boards) | ||
| Direct Creality integration (modern printers) ? | ||
| Direct Anycubic integration (modern printers) | ||
| 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 | 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 OctoFarm alternative!
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