Spool vs SpoolManager
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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
SpoolManager
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SpoolManager - Your Filament. Smartly Organized. Keep track of your filament spools, remaining amounts and printing data at all times. SpoolManager makes managing your 3D printing filament simple, fast and digital - with NFC/RFID tags, QR codes, an automatic shopping list and much more. -------------------- NFC/RFID & QR CODES -------------------- - Read and write NFC/RFID tags - Create and scan QR codes - Store filament data directly with your spool - Optimized for NFC tags, e.g. Anycubic ACE Pro - Quickly access material, color and other filament data -------------------- SPOOLS & INVENTORY -------------------- - Manufacturer, material and color - Remaining amount and spool weight - Printing temperatures and print parameters - Storage location and inventory - Price and purchase date - Edit, share and update your spools -------------------- AUTOMATIC SHOPPING LIST -------------------- - Automatically detect spools running low - Automatically add low-stock filament to your shopping list - Set your own remaining-filament threshold - Add items manually at any time -------------------- FILAMENT PROFILES -------------------- - Create custom material profiles - Save frequently used settings - Import and export profiles - Quickly switch between commonly used filaments -------------------- HISTORY, ARCHIVE & SEARCH -------------------- - Keep track of read and write history - Archive spools and reuse them later - Quickly search through your saved data -------------------- ICLOUD, APPLE WATCH & WIDGETS -------------------- - Optional iCloud sync across your devices - Quick access from your Apple Watch - Important information available in widgets -------------------- TRY FREE FOR 7 DAYS -------------------- Try SpoolManager free for 7 days and explore all its features. After your trial, unlock SpoolManager permanently with a one-time Lifetime purchase for $1.99 - no subscription. SpoolManager is made for everyone who wants to organize filament, keep track of remaining amounts and simplify their 3D printing workflow. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://www.pixel-project.de/spm/datenschutz_en.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Spool at every 2 weeks against SpoolManager's every 2 months. SpoolManager's advantage is iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.1). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Spool sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and SpoolManager sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Spool ships an update every 2 weeks, SpoolManager every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Spool | SpoolManager |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 26.1 | 18.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 77 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lucas Melo | Norman Hennige |
In-app purchases
Spool
- Spool Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
- Spool Pro Yearly$49.991 Year
- +10 Spool Capacity$0.99
SpoolManager
- Monatsabo$0.991 Month
- Jahresabo$8.991 Year







