Comparison

Spool vs Filament Box

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

Head to head
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

About

Filament Box

Features
Read full description

Filament Box helps you keep 3D printing spools organized. Save material, brand, color, remaining weight, print temperatures, and notes in a practical inventory built for repeated use. The app stores inventory data on device and gives you a clear overview of available material, low spools, and the materials you use most. After each print, log the grams used to keep remaining weight accurate. The free version supports up to 10 saved spools. Filament Box Premium is a one-time purchase that unlocks unlimited spools, camera label scanning, and iCloud backup/sync.

Screenshots

Spool4 screens
Filament Box4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Filament Box at weekly against Spool's every 2 weeks. Filament Box also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.1). Spool's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Spool ships an update every 2 weeks, Filament Box weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Spool versus Filament Box: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpoolFilament Box
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (5 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings5 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone
Requires iOS26.117.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size77 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLucas MeloAndrea Spotorno

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
1 purchases

Filament Box

One-time1
  • Filament Box premium$3.99

Questions

Is Spool free?
Spool is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Filament Box free?
Filament Box is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Spool or Filament Box have ads?
Neither Spool nor Filament Box shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Spool or Filament Box?
Spool ships an update every 2 weeks, and Filament Box weekly. Most recently, Spool was updated on October 10, 2026 and Filament Box on October 25, 2026.

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