Best 3D Printer 2026: Which One to Buy, by Budget and Use

Picking the best 3D printer in 2026 is harder than it should be. There are dozens of good machines, prices change every week, and most "best 3D printer" lists are written once and left to age. This 3D printer buying guide works differently: the picks below are ranked when you open the page, from what our printer catalog knows today. That means the prices in your region's stores, independent reviews, how many people run each printer with SimplyPrint, and how open each brand leaves you.

Our picks: the best 3D printer 2026#

These printers come out on top today, overall and for each budget. Looking for the best budget 3D printer? It is the pick for the lowest price band. Every reason under a printer is read from its data, and the score is out of 100. Prices are the lowest we found in your region, and the buttons take you to the store.

現在、このガイドの条件を満たすプリンターはカタログにありません。代わりに、SimplyPrintに対応するすべてのプリンターを参照してください。 3Dプリンターを選択

The best 3D printer for what you do#

If you are asking "what 3D printer should I buy?", start with what you will use it for. The best printer for a classroom is not the best printer for a farm of forty machines. Each of these guides weighs what that buyer cares about most:

• Schools weigh safety and running without fuss: an enclosure, a reliable first print, and a way to let a whole class print without a teacher standing at every machine.
• Beginners and home users weigh price, ease and fun: multi-colour, a printer that levels its own bed, and a big community when something goes wrong.
• Print farms weigh uptime for the money: identical machines that run unattended, plate swapping, remote control and spare parts.
• Businesses weigh materials, reliability and data: engineering filaments, support, and whether the printer has to talk to its maker's cloud.

The ranking#

The top ten for most people. Open a printer for its specs, reviews and setup guide, or compare the top four side by side on our printer comparison.

What to look for in a 3D printer#

Enclosed or open frame#

An enclosed printer keeps heat in and hands out. That matters for ABS, ASA and nylon, which warp in a draft, and in any room with children in it. An open-frame printer, where the bed moves back and forth, costs less and is easier to work on. It is fine for PLA and PETG at home.

Multi-colour#

Multi-material units feed several spools into one printer, so a print can change colour or material by itself. Bambu Lab's AMS, Creality's CFS, Anycubic's ACE Pro and Prusa's MMU all work this way. They add cost and waste a little filament on every change. Toolchangers and printers with two independent extruders do the same with less waste, for more money.

Size and speed#

Most people never fill a 256 mm cube. A bigger bed costs more, takes more room and heats up slower. The top speed on a spec sheet is rarely what you print at, so reliability and quality at sensible speeds matter more than the headline number.

Materials#

Almost any printer prints PLA. PETG wants a hotter bed, TPU a direct-drive extruder, ABS and ASA an enclosure, and carbon-fibre filled filaments a hardened nozzle. Every printer in our compatibility list shows what it prints well, and why.

Software, and the printer's future#

The printer you buy comes with a slicer, a phone app, a cloud and a firmware update schedule. Check that it works with the slicer you want, that you can print without the maker's cloud if you need to, and that the maker sells spare parts. SimplyPrint runs printers from more than 130 brands in one place, with slicing in the browser, so the brand you buy today doesn't decide the software you use tomorrow.

Open or walled garden: how free does a brand leave you?#

Some 3D printer makers work like Apple. One company makes the printer, the slicer, the cloud, the multi-colour system and the spare parts, and it all works together from the first day, on that company's terms. Others work more like Android, or a Linux PC: the firmware is open source, the printer runs without the maker's cloud, any filament and slicer works, and you can buy or print the parts to repair it.

Neither is wrong. A closed system is often the easiest start, and a school or company may like one vendor answering for everything. But the maker decides what the printer can do later. In January 2025, Bambu Lab announced firmware that requires its own authorization for operations such as starting a print, and stops unauthorized third-party software from doing them. It later added an optional Developer Mode that leaves local control open, without support. An open source 3D printer sits at the other end: Prusa publishes its firmware source code, and many printers run Klipper, an open-source firmware anyone can change.

So we rate every brand in this guide in six areas, each from public sources: firmware, local control without the maker's cloud, third-party filament and slicers, repairs and spare parts, data and privacy, and community. We also keep a dated track record of recalls, layoffs, policy changes and closures. Only what happened, with its source, and never a guess about what might.

Where they come from, and staying compliant#

Most of the best 3D printers today come from Chinese companies, and this ranking reflects that: right now they give you the most printer for the money. That's no judgement of the people who make them. But for some buyers, where a printer comes from matters: schools, public bodies and companies often have rules about where their devices are made and where their data goes.

Any printer, on your terms, with SimplyPrint#

Whoever makes your printer, SimplyPrint decides what it talks to:

• Off its maker's cloud. Most printers connect through the SimplyPrint Client on your own network, or in their local-network mode (Bambu Lab's LAN-only mode, with Developer Mode on its newer printers), so they never need their maker's cloud. You can block them from the internet entirely and let only the SimplyPrint Client connect out.
• Your data stored in Europe. SimplyPrint's cloud is hosted in Frankfurt, Germany, under the GDPR. See how we keep it secure and who processes data for us.
• One place for access. Users, permissions, single sign-on and an audit log, for every printer, whatever its brand.
• On your own servers, if you need it. See cloud vs. on-premise.

How we choose#

No brand pays for its place in this guide. The ranking is a formula over our catalog, the same for every printer, and it runs again each time the page loads. This is what it weighs for this guide, out of 100 points:

対象となるプリンターは、SimplyPrintで動作し（動作確認済み、互換性あり、または接続方法から動作が見込まれる）、メーカー独自のモデルで、現在も販売されているものです。販売中とは、メーカーが販売を続けている、店舗に現在の価格がある、または過去3年以内に発売された場合を指します。

このガイドでは、最安の販売店でUS$800以下のプリンターを評価しています。それより高価なプリンターは、編集者が選んだ場合を除き対象外です。

ブランドのオープン性は数点分の評価に反映されますが、それによって性能の劣るプリンターが最上位になることはありません。ブランドのこれまでの実績は各おすすめ製品に表示されますが、スコアには影響しません。企業に関するニュースは、プリンターの評価とは無関係です。

プリンターはスコアに基づいて選びます。ただし、実際の使用経験とスコアが一致しない場合は、編集者が別の機種を選ぶことがあり、その旨を明記します。

プリンターの新しいバージョンがガイドに掲載され、SimplyPrintでの動作が確認されている場合、古いバージョンは掲載されません。そうでない場合、古いバージョンは掲載されたままとなり、新しさに対する加点はなく、新しいバージョンがあることが記載されます。

一部のメーカーからはプリンターの提供や直接の協力を受けています。その場合は、ガイド内の該当プリンターの横に明記しています。

誤りを見つけた場合はお知らせください。修正します。 問い合わせる

オープン性の尺度

各ブランドを6つの分野で1（閉鎖的）から5（オープン）まで評価します。評価にはそれぞれ公開情報の出典を記載しています。総合評価は加重平均で、ブランドが閉鎖的な環境からオープンな環境までのどこに位置するかを示します。

開く 4.25から · ほぼオープン 3.50から · 混在 2.75から · ほぼクローズド 2.00から · 閉鎖的なエコシステム その下

Some buying links earn us a commission at no cost to you; they never change the ranking. We make SimplyPrint, which runs printers from every brand here, so "works with SimplyPrint" is one factor. It is a fair sign of how many people trust a printer, and it is the software you would manage the printer with if you chose to.

本日カタログから作成：販売中のSimplyPrint対応プリンター0機種から0機種をランキング。 記述式の評価は順次追加しています。それまでは事実のみを基に順位を付けます。