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.
当前目录中没有打印机符合本指南的规则。请改为浏览所有兼容SimplyPrint的打印机。 选择您的3D打印机
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.
尚无机型入选本指南。
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:
| 我们考量的因素 | 评分 | 衡量方式 |
|---|---|---|
| 我们对此用途的评估 | 16 | 我们针对这类买家的书面评估：优秀、良好、一般或较差。对于我们评为较差的打印机，不会列入其中。尚非所有打印机都已评估，对于这些打印机，将不计入此因素，其他因素权重会更高。 |
| 使用数量 | 12 | 该型号有多少台打印机在SimplyPrint上运行，以对数刻度显示，反映有多少人信赖它。较新版本的使用量至少按其所替代的最常用打印机的一半计算，因此不会因较新而被降低评分。 |
| 价格 | 12 | 您所在地区的当前最低价格，按对数刻度与指南中的其他打印机比较。没有当前价格按低价计算。 |
| 与SimplyPrint兼容 | 10 | 已由SimplyPrint验证、兼容，或根据其连接方式预计可用。 |
| 独立评测 | 10 | 有多少知名评测者（媒体和YouTube）评测过它，最多四位。 |
| 封闭式机箱 | 8 | 全封闭计满分，部分封闭计半分。 |
| 多色和多材料 | 8 | 是否随附或兼容多材料单元、换刀器或双挤出机。 |
| 新旧程度 | 8 | 今年或去年发布的机型计满分，之后每年递减。已有较新版本的打印机在此项不得分。 |
| 内置摄像头 | 6 | 内置摄像头，可查看打印情况并进行故障检测。 |
| 擅长打印的材料 | 4 | 根据温度、封闭式机箱及制造商列表，判断其能良好打印的耗材种类数量。 |
| SimplyPrint用户评分 | 3 | SimplyPrint用户的评分（如有） |
| 品牌开放度 | 3 | 该品牌在下方开放度至封闭生态系统量表中的位置。尚未评分按中等计算。 |
当打印机可与SimplyPrint配合使用（已验证、兼容，或根据其连接方式预计可用）、是制造商自有型号且仍在售时，便会纳入评选：制造商仍在销售、商店有当前价格，或在过去3年内发布。
本指南按最低售价不超过US$800的打印机进行排名，除非由我们的编辑推荐，否则价格更高的型号不会列入。
品牌的开放程度只占少量分数，绝不会让较弱的打印机成为最佳选择。每个推荐都会显示其过往记录，但不会改变评分：公司的新闻与其打印机无关。
评分决定入选的打印机，但有一个例外：如果我们亲自使用某台打印机的体验与其评分不符，编辑可以选择另一款，并会注明。
如果指南中已有某款较新版本的打印机，且已知可与SimplyPrint配合使用，则不会收录旧款。如果没有较新版本，旧款会保留，但不会因新旧程度获得分数，并会注明它有较新版本。
一些制造商会向我们寄送打印机或直接与我们合作，如有此类情况，指南会在其打印机旁注明。
发现问题？请告诉我们，我们会修正。 联系我们
开放性等级
每个品牌在六个方面按1分（封闭）至5分（开放）评分，评分依据为每项评分列出的公开来源。总体评分为加权平均值，将品牌置于从封闭生态到开放的范围内：
| 方面 | 重量 |
|---|---|
| 固件和自定义固件 | 30% |
| 本地控制与集成 | 30% |
| 第三方耗材、切片软件和零件 | 15% |
| 维修和备件 | 10% |
| 数据与隐私 | 10% |
| 社区和文档 | 5% |
打开 自4.25起 · 大多开放 自3.50起 · 混合 自2.75起 · 大多封闭 自2.00起 · 封闭生态系统 低于此值
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.
今日基于我们的目录：在与SimplyPrint兼容的在售打印机中，共评选0台，其中0台已排名。 我们的书面评估仍在补充中；在此之前，排名仅依据事实。