Comparison

Spool Shelf vs Spool

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Spool Shelf

Features
Read full description

Spool Shelf is a hobbyist’s ultimate 3D printing filament inventory management tool. Track inventory, orders, historical data, and more — all with just a tap! Spool Shelf makes the task of keeping inventory records up to date an absolute breeze! All of the most important information regarding your filament can be stored within Spool Shelf and is made easily accessible, so you can quickly find the exact filament you’re looking for — both in the app and in your workshop. Here are some of Spool Shelf’s key features: DASHBOARD • Get quick stats on the number of filaments in stock, out of stock, running low, and more. • View your total on-hand inventory value. • View inventory history ranging from the last 7 days to all time. • Product breakdown by material and manufacturer. • Get the total number of products, on-hand units, received orders, and more. INVENTORY • Track filament by the spool. • Assign a bin # to quickly locate a filament spool in your workshop. • Assign material and manufacturer to each filament for easier sorting. • Assign barcode and SKU. • View inventory history, including adjustment history per item. • Sort inventory by in stock, low stock, no stock, and more. ORDERS • Bulk-receive inventory items quickly and easily. • Assign supplier, shipping courier, tracking number, and order number for easier sorting. • Quickly duplicate an order for frequently purchased filaments. • Sort orders by pending, partially received, fully received, and cancelled. MORE • Powerful search allows you to quickly locate inventory items and orders by combining multiple queries into a single search. • Choose to be reminded when orders are expected to arrive, as well as when they are past due. • Sync inventory data automatically with iCloud, so it is accessible on multiple devices. FROM THE DEVELOPER Hey there! I designed Spool Shelf to make filament inventory management fun and intuitive, so 3D printing hobbyists (like me!) can easily manage their ever-growing filament stockpile. As a 3D printing hobbyist myself, I took great care when building Spool Shelf so that it works exactly as a hobbyist would expect. I am incredibly proud to share Spool Shelf with you, and I truly hope you enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed building it. If you love Spool Shelf, I’d love to hear about it! If you find a bug, have a feature request, or if something else is on your mind, I’d love to hear about that too! My goal is to make Spool Shelf the best it can be, and feedback like yours makes all the difference. You can reach out to me at hello@spoolshelf.app Happy printing!

About

Spool

Manage your 3D printing filament inventory with detailed tracking of materials, costs, and stock levels. Log print details, monitor printer maintenance, and gain insights into your printing habits. Integrates with Bambu Lab printers for automatic data logging.

Highlights
  • Filament spool tracking
  • Cost and weight logging
  • Low-stock warnings
  • Print logging and analysis
  • Bambu Lab printer integration
  • Printer maintenance schedules
  • NFC/QR code spool tagging
Read full description

You have 40 spools. You're about to start a 12-hour print. How much PETG do you actually have? Spool is precision filament inventory for 3D printing. Know what you have, what it costs, and what's running low. Built by a maker tired of guessing. Now on Mac too. TRACK YOUR COLLECTION Fast spool entry with auto-fill from screenshots and product links. Material, brand, colour, weight, cost, storage. Remaining weight tracked to the gram, with low-stock warnings at the levels you set. THE HUB Tap the centre tab and a glass command centre opens over any screen. Add a spool, log a print, scan a tag, open analytics or your printers, all from one place. IMPORT FROM YOUR SLICER Send a sliced .gcode or .3mf to Spool and the print writes itself up from what the file carries: name, print time, filament weight, material and colour. Spool suggests the matching spool and finds the printer in your Workshop. Not every slicer's files can be read yet. THE PRINT TRAY Imported files wait in the tray with Bambu Cloud prints you have not logged yet. Nothing is recorded until you review it. With iCloud on, logging or discarding on one device clears it on the others. PRINT LOG & PRINT STORY Every print holds its full process settings, filled in for you when the print comes from Bambu Cloud. Rate each one and record why it failed. Tap any print and its story opens full screen: costs, telemetry and spool gauges, with previous attempts on Pro. YOUR INVENTORY AS A SPREADSHEET Choose your columns, sort and resize them, group your spools and total up their count and weight. Save the arrangement as a named view: free, with no limit. Exports to CSV. BAMBU LAB INTEGRATION Connect your Bambu Cloud account and your prints fill the tray ready to log. Free for everyone. AMS multi-material prints split per slot, and Spool remembers your last match. CATEGORIES Built-in categories, plus as many of your own as you like. Spool suggests one per print and learns your overrides. Colour, emoji, auto-tagging and per-category insights are Pro. PRINTER MAINTENANCE Schedules drawn from manufacturer documentation for popular Bambu Lab, Prusa, Creality, Anycubic and Elegoo models, with a standard task set for the rest. A live health score per printer: overdue tasks turn red, completing one lifts it. SPOOLTAG Tap your iPhone to an NFC-tagged spool and everything opens instantly. Every label carries a QR code that scans from the camera. Spool reads and writes filament tags. Label Studio designs labels for thermal rolls, sticker sheets or A4, or exports vector PDF. AR Inventory overlays live data above every tagged spool. ANALYTICS & INTELLIGENCE Dashboards for Pulse, Economics, Energy, Material and Hardware. Add your electricity rate once and prints show material and energy cost together. WORKSHOP MANAGEMENT Shelves, dryers, AMS units and boxes, with humidity and seal date tracking. Shopping list and batch management for multi-packs. START FREE 20 spools, 2 printers, 4 storage locations, 30 days of analytics. Bambu Cloud sync, slicer import, the Print Tray, Saved Views, CSV import, SpoolTag, AR Inventory, widgets and Print Story included. GO PRO Unlimited spools, printers and storage. Lifetime analytics, category insights and print lineage. Label Studio with thermal, sticker sheet and vector PDF exports. Batch printing, category customisation, inventory value totals, maintenance notifications and Live Activities. SUBSCRIPTION & PURCHASE INFO Spool offers a one-time Spool Pack, which permanently adds 10 slots to a free account, and two auto-renewing subscriptions, Spool Pro Monthly and Yearly. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation and renews unless cancelled 24 hours before the period ends. Manage in Account Settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://lance-studio.com/privacy.html

Screenshots

Spool Shelf4 screens
Spool4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Spool at Free against Spool Shelf's $6.99. Spool Shelf's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.1). On ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Spool is free to download; Spool Shelf costs $6.99 up front. Spool sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Spool Shelf asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Spool Shelf versus Spool: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpool ShelfSpool
Price$6.99Free — better
Rating—5.0 (5 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—5 — better
Update frequency—Every 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Freemium
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS17.0 — better26.1
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB77 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDaniel De CiantisLucas Melo

In-app purchases

None

Spool Shelf

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

Spool

Subscriptions2
  • Spool Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Spool Pro Yearly$49.991 Year
One-time1
  • +10 Spool Capacity$0.99

Questions

Is Spool Shelf free?
Spool Shelf costs $6.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Spool free?
Spool is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Spool Shelf or Spool have ads?
Neither Spool Shelf nor Spool shows ads.

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