You might have encountered several 3D printing services like OctoEverywhere, Obico, Simply Print, and Astro Print. These services offer game-changing features, such as remote access, AI failure detection, cloud slicing, print notifications, live streaming, and more. Which service is best for you? What’s the cost of each? Which is the best remote 3d printing software to fit your needs? Let’s explore them to find out!
Our Top Pick – OctoEverywhere
At A Glance:
- Free, unlimited, & private remote access to your printer from anywhere.
- Free & unlimited advanced AI print failure detection.
- Free real-time print notifications to Discord, Telegram, SMS, and more.
- Free print live streaming shareable on all social platforms.
- Remote access sharing for friends and family.
- 3rd party app support.
- Full OctoPrint and Klipper support.
- 5 printers connected for free.
- $2.99/month for advanced features.
OctoEverywhere is a free, private, and secure service that cloud empowers your printing – taking it to the next level. By focusing on working with the maker community to build the best tool possible, OctoEverywhere has achieved a 4.9/5 star rating and is the #1 rated remote access plugin on OctoPrint. Along with OctoPrint support, OctoEverywhere fully supports the Klipper printer ecosystem, including Moonraker, Fluidd, Mainsail, Mobileraker, and more.
The core of OctoEverywhere is free and unlimited remote access to your printer control web portal, be it OctoPrint, Fluidd, Mainsaild, or any other software. The remote access includes full webcam streaming and plugin support. It’s insanely fast, sometimes even faster than your local network, thanks to OctoEverywhere’s advanced worldwide mesh of high-performance servers and next-generation caching systems.
As if that wasn’t enough, OctoEverywhere offers users free and unlimited AI print failure detection, a system they call Gadget. Gadget continuously monitors your prints in real time and can detect many common print failures. Print spaghetti, layer issues, adhesion issues, and more can be detected by Gadget, which will then automatically pause the print. Gadget is one of the best AI detection systems, with over a 96% detection success rate. It’s a killer free feature that saves you time and money.
OctoEverywhere continuously adds new features for the maker community based on their feedback and needs. Recent features include beautifully crafted and information-rich notifications that can be sent via email, SMS, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Pushover, and more. Print live streaming, including real-time print information and a live webcam stream that can be shared on any social platform. An information-dense “quick glance” dashboard where you can quickly see the status of all your printers. Remote access sharing and many more features we can’t fit in our review.
OctoEverywhere has an optional supporter subscription that helps pay for the service operation cost and development. Users who opt-in to being a project supporter get Supporter Perks, which makes OctoEverywhere even more powerful. The optional supporter subscription starts at $2.99/month, the lowest cost among all these remote access options we reviewed.
OctoEverywhere has a growing and welcoming community surrounding the project. The community contributes feature ideas, helps develop new features, reports service issues, provides printing help, and more. Most of the community engages on OctoEveywhere’s Discord server and some on Twitter.
Why It’s Our Top Pick
OctoEverywhere offers the most features from any 3d printing cloud services we reviewed. On top of that, all of its powerful features are free and unlimited for the entire community. OctoEverywhere’s mission is to empower the worldwide maker community to print better with free and secure cloud-based features. OctoEverywhere keeps its promise by offering tons of free features and only costs $2.99/month for even more advanced access and project support. $2.99/month is the lowest-cost option among all the services we reviewed and includes the most unlimited limits.
#2 – Obico (Formally The Spaghetti Detective)
At A Glance:
- Free but data-limited remote access.
- Free but time-limited AI failure detection.
- Free real-time notifications to email, Slack, and more.
- Live streaming of prints to anyone in the world.
- Full OctoPrint support and partial Klipper support.
- 3rd party app support.
- Open source software.
- 1 printer connected for free.
- $4.00/month for 1 printer with advanced features.
Obico has been part of the 3d printing community for a long time. It originally started as The Spaghetti Detective, featuring AI failure detection of spaghetti print failures. The project has grown to include more significant features like remote access, live streaming, and partial Kipper support.
Over the years, Obico has added many useful features to its service. Obico supports 3rd party OctoPrint apps, real-time notifications, live streaming of prints, and more.
The biggest downside of Obico is the limits on free accounts and cost. Compared to OctoEverywhere, Obico offers the same features, but Obico’s offering is much more limited. Obico’s free version only allows 300MB of remote data per month, limits webcam streams to 1 frame per second, limits AI failure detection to 10 hours per month, and only allows 1 connected printer.
The paid version of Obico starts at $4.00/month for one printer and includes 50 AI failure detection hours a month, unlimited tunneling data, and premium webcam streaming. Additional printers cost $2.00/printer/month. It’s a hard sell against OctoEverywhere’s free accounts, which include unlimited remote data, unlimited webcam FPS, and unlimited AI failure detection hours for up to 5 printers.
Obico’s extensive and vibrant community surrounding the project contributes to its open-source core and helps support the project. The community is a great place to hang out, get support, and get your printing questions answered. One advantage Obico has over OctoEverywhere is that it can be self-hosted, a nice option for users with advanced server management and networking skills.
#3 – Prusa Connect
At A Glance:
- Developed by Prusa for Prusa printers.
- In closed beta, not available to all users.
- Remote printer control and access.
- Multi-printer file management.
- Mulit-printer status overview.
- The price is unknown at this time.
Prusa is one of the beloved 3d printing manufacturers that make many commonly used printers such as the Prusa Mini+, Prusa i3 MK3S+, Prusa XL, and more. Prusa connect is their in-house remote printer control system that’s currently being developed.
From the beta website, Prusa advertises that Prua Connect can give a status overview of multiple printers, enable remote printing for multiple printers, and do file management of multiple printers. These are great features for large-scale print farms but less useful for individual makers.
Much about Prusa Connect is unknown since the product isn’t publicly available. Many speculate it will only be available for Prusa printers. The other big unknown is pricing, which Prusa hasn’t announced yet.
Check out Prusa Connect.
#4 – Astro Print
At A Glance:
- Powerful multi-printer management.
- Cloud slicer.
- Basic remote access and live monitoring.
- Multi-user access support.
- 2 printers connected for free.
- $9.90/month for advanced features.
Astro print is a great solution for multi-user and multi-printer setups. Astro print is geared towards managing big printer fleets, including features like material control and management, cloud slicing, one-model to-many printer queuing, job queuing, and more.
Casual makers can use Astro Print to manage one to ten printers, but the user experience isn’t as ideal as OctoEverywhere or Obico for most setups. Astro Print also lacks many consumer-level features like AI failure detection, 3rd party support, live streaming notifications, and Klipper support.
Astro Print free accounts allow for 2 connected printers, 1 user account, and 1GB of cloud storage for models. Advance features start at $9.90/month with 5 printers included and $5/printer/month after the first 5.
#5 – Simply Print
At A Glance:
- Powerful multi-printer management.
- Cloud slicer.
- Remote printer control.
- Multi-user access support.
- 2 printers connected for free.
- $5.99/month for advanced features.
Like Astro Print, Simply Print is more for medium to large print farm users. The UI and feature set work well when managing many printers simultaneously, as in a more enterprise setup.
Simply Print provides a robust cloud slicer, essential when printing from mobile. Lacks many consumer-level features, such as full remote access, AI failure detection, Klipper support, and 3rd party app support.
The free account level allows for 2 connected printers, 1 GB of cloud storage, and a 1 frame per 6 seconds webcam live stream.
More advanced features can be unlocked for $5.99/month, which includes 3 printers, 2GB of storage, and 1 frame per 4 seconds webcam live streaming.
#6 – Repetier
At A Glance
- Tried and true.
- Free and paid pro options are available.
- Can only be self-hosted; no cloud service is available.
- Requires custom firmware on your printer.
Repetier is the classic and one of the first 3d printing control software systems. The repeater system requires custom firmware to be flashed on your printer and a dedicated host device running the server software.
Since Repetier has been around for a long time, it has many great features like multi-extruder support, multi-slicer support, multi-part printing, and more. Repetier-Host is a powerful local interface that lets you track your print.
Since Repeiter-Server is the self-hosted cloud option, which can be used to set up remote access to your printer from anywhere. The server should only be exposed to the public internet by a networking professional to ensure it doesn’t become a way for attackers to enter your home network.
Conclusion
There are many outstanding services to cloud empower your printer. Based on the information we compiled above, which is best for you?
Let us know; we would love to hear your feedback!
Happy Printing!