Comparison

Make3D vs Spool

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

Head to head
About

Make3D

Features
Read full description

Make3D is your personal 3D printing manager. Manage printers, filaments and print jobs clearly in one place – developed for makers and 3D printing enthusiasts. Manage 3D printers • Create and organise multiple printers • Assign printers per job • Overview of all devices used Organise print jobs • Create, edit and archive print jobs • Filter printed & open jobs • Record materials and consumption per job Filaments & inventory • Manage filaments by type, colour and weight • Automatic inventory calculation • Multiple filaments per print job QR & barcode support • Scan filaments via QR or barcode (Pro) • Create your own QR codes for filaments (Pro) • Generate and print labels as PDF (Pro) iCloud synchronisation • All data securely stored in your iCloud • Automatic synchronisation between iPhone & iPad • No registration required Make3D Pro With Make3D Pro, you can unlock additional features: • QR & barcode scanning • Create QR codes & labels • Future Pro features included (One-time purchase – no subscription) Data protection • No tracking • No advertising • No analysis • Data remains exclusively in your iCloud Make3D can be downloaded free of charge. Some advanced features require a one-time purchase of the Pro version. Make3D was developed by a maker for makers. Feedback and feature requests are always welcome.

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

Make3D4 screens
Spool4 screens

Verdict

The call

Make3D and Spool are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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

Both are free to download. Make3D sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Spool sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Make3D ships an update every 11 days, Spool every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Make3D versus Spool: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMake3DSpool
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (5 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—5 — better
Update frequencyEvery 11 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
Monetization—Freemium
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS26.0 — better26.1
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB77 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMichael HoffmannLucas Melo

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Make3D

One-time1
  • Make3D Pro$3.99
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 Make3D free?
Make3D is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Spool free?
Spool is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Make3D or Spool have ads?
Neither Make3D nor Spool shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Make3D or Spool?
Make3D ships an update every 11 days, and Spool every 2 weeks. Most recently, Make3D was updated on October 1, 2026 and Spool on October 10, 2026.

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