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.
Ingen printere i katalogen vår oppfyller reglene i denne veiledningen akkurat nå. Se alle printere som fungerer med SimplyPrint i stedet. Velg 3D-printeren din
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.
Ingen er rangert i denne guiden ennå.
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:
| Hva vi vektlegger | Poeng | Slik måles det |
|---|---|---|
| Vår vurdering for dette bruksområdet | 16 | Vår skriftlige vurdering av printeren for denne typen kjøper: svært god, god, OK eller dårlig. En printer vi vurderer som dårlig for dette, utelates. Ikke alle printere er vurdert ennå. For disse utelates denne faktoren, og de andre teller mer. |
| Hvor mange som er i bruk | 12 | Hvor mange printere av modellen som kjører på SimplyPrint, på en logaritmisk skala: et tegn på hvor mange som stoler på SimplyPrint. En nyere versjon regnes som brukt av minst halvparten så mange som den mest brukte printeren den etterfølger, så den ikke får lavere score fordi den er ny. |
| Pris | 12 | Den laveste nåværende prisen i regionen din, sammenlignet med de andre i guiden på en logaritmisk skala. Ingen nåværende pris regnes som lav. |
| Fungerer med SimplyPrint | 10 | Verifisert av SimplyPrint, kompatibel eller forventes å fungere basert på tilkoblingsmåten. |
| Uavhengige anmeldelser | 10 | Hvor mange anerkjente anmeldere (presse og YouTube) som har anmeldt den, opptil fire. |
| Kabinett | 8 | Helt lukket teller mest, delvis lukket halvparten. |
| Flerfarge og multimateriale | 8 | Om den leveres med eller fungerer med en multimaterialenhet, en verktøyveksler eller to ekstrudere. |
| Hvor ny den er | 8 | Lansert i år eller i fjor teller fullt, og mindre for hvert år etter det. En printer med en nyere versjon får ingenting her. |
| Innebygd kamera | 6 | Et innebygd kamera for å se utskrifter og oppdage feil. |
| Materialer den skriver godt ut | 4 | Hvor mange typer filament den skriver ut godt med, ut fra temperaturene, kabinettet og produsentens liste. |
| Vurdering fra SimplyPrint-brukere | 3 | Hva SimplyPrint-brukere vurderer den til, når de har vurdert den. |
| Merkets åpenhet | 3 | Merkets plass på skalaen vår fra åpen til lukket nedenfor. Ikke vurdert ennå regnes som midten. |
En printer er med i utvalget når den fungerer med SimplyPrint (verifisert, kompatibel eller forventet ut fra hvordan den kobles til), er produsentens egen modell og fortsatt er i salg: produsenten selger den fortsatt, en butikk har en aktuell pris, eller den ble lansert de siste 3 årene.
Denne guiden rangerer printere som koster opptil US$800 i den billigste butikken. Dyrere modeller tas ikke med, med mindre redaktøren vår velger dem.
Hvor åpent et merke er, gir noen få poeng, men aldri nok til å gjøre en svakere printer best. Historikken vises for hvert valg, men endrer ikke poengsummen: nyheter om et selskap sier ingenting om printeren deres.
Poengsummen velger printerne, med ett unntak: Hvis vår egen praktiske erfaring med en printer er i strid med poengsummen, kan redaktøren vår velge en annen anbefaling, og den anbefalingen opplyser om det.
Når en nyere versjon av en printer er i guiden og er kjent for å fungere med SimplyPrint, utelates den eldre. Når den nyere ikke er det, beholdes den eldre, får ingen poeng for hvor ny den er, og opplyser om at den har en nyere versjon.
Noen produsenter sender oss printere eller samarbeider direkte med oss. Når de gjør det, står det i veiledningen ved printerne deres.
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Åpenhetsskalaen
Hvert merke vurderes fra 1 (lukket) til 5 (åpent) på seks områder, basert på offentlige kilder som vi oppgir ved hver vurdering. Totalvurderingen er det vektede gjennomsnittet og plasserer merket på en skala fra lukket økosystem til åpent:
| Område | Vekt |
|---|---|
| Fastvare og tilpasset fastvare | 30% |
| Lokal styring og integrasjoner | 30% |
| Filament, slicere og deler fra tredjeparter | 15% |
| Reparasjoner og reservedeler | 10% |
| Data og personvern | 10% |
| Fellesskap og dokumentasjon | 5% |
Åpne fra 4.25 · For det meste åpen fra 3.50 · Blandet fra 2.75 · For det meste lukket fra 2.00 · Lukket økosystem under det
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.
Basert på katalogen vår i dag: 0 printere rangert av 0 printere som er i salg og fungerer med SimplyPrint. De skriftlige vurderingene våre legges fortsatt til. Frem til da bygger rangeringen kun på fakta.