LayerFlow3D vs Craftybase (now Stocksmith)
First, the thing that trips everybody up: Craftybase is now Stocksmith. Same team, same software, new name. It is a very good inventory and costing product for small-batch makers, and it has never claimed to know anything about printers - which is the whole of the difference.
Checked September 24, 2026
Choose Craftybase if
- You make more than prints. If the same business also pours candles, mixes cosmetics or assembles kits, their multi-level recipes and sub-assemblies handle all of it in one place and we handle none of it.
- Your costing problem is upstream, in materials and suppliers. COGS that recalculates itself the moment a supplier price changes is genuinely better than what we do, and it is what they have spent ten years on.
- You sell on Shopify, Amazon or Faire and want stock to stay straight across them without anybody typing. That sync is live on their homepage and we have none of it.
- You need an accountant to be happy. They publish a 4.6 on Capterra and count 10,000+ businesses; we are far newer and smaller, and for a book-keeping tool that difference is a real one.
Choose LayerFlow3D if
- Your biggest cost after plastic is the machine, and their model has no idea a machine exists. No print time, no hourly rate, no electricity.
- You do not want to type print time and filament weight for every job. We read them out of the slicer file you already made.
- You want to know what the printers are doing without walking over to them. Live telemetry is on our free plan.
- You want somewhere to sell that is yours, not a marketplace listing. A public shop page comes with every plan.
- Their entry plan is $49 a month before you have costed a single print. Ours starts free.
Side by side
| Feature | LayerFlow3D | Craftybase |
|---|---|---|
| Built for 3D printing | Only that. Printers, filament, print time and the shop that sells the output. | No. Their own words: "cosmetics brands, food producers, bakeries, and small-batch manufacturers". 3D printing is not mentioned on the homepage or the pricing page. 1 |
| Machine time in the cost | Yes. Hourly rate per printer, power draw and labour, against print time from the slicer file. | Materials, labour and overhead by recipe. No machine, no print time, no hourly rate. 1 |
| Reading the printers | Live telemetry from Bambu Lab, Klipper, OctoPrint, Voron, Creality and Anycubic, on every plan. | Nothing connects to a machine. 1 |
| Where print time and filament weight come from | The slicer file. Drop in a 3mf or gcode and the figures fill themselves in. | Typed in, like any other recipe line. 1 |
| Material depth | Filament, spool by spool, each carrying what it cost. | Deeper than ours: multi-level recipes, sub-assemblies and components, deducted "down to the gram" when a batch is run. 1 |
| When a supplier changes a price | The next spool you book in carries the new price; older spools keep what you paid for them. | COGS recalculates automatically "the moment a supplier price changes". 1 |
| Selling to customers | A public shop page of your own, included on every plan, that a buyer can order from without an account. | Stock sync with Shopify, Amazon and Faire. No shop of their own. 1 |
| Shipping labels | Carrier integrations, from the order. | Not among the features their site lists. 1 |
| Cheapest paid plan | Base: $8 a month billed yearly or $10 monthly, for 5 printers and 500 orders a month. | $49 a month, or $41 billed annually. 2 |
What it costs
LayerFlow3D
Every plan counts printers, orders a month and seats. Free: 2 printers, 50 orders a month, no card. Base: $10 a month ($8 billed yearly), 5 printers, 500 orders a month. Pro: $25 a month ($20 billed yearly), 20 printers, 3,000 orders a month. Ultimate: $99 a month ($79 billed yearly), 50 printers, unlimited orders. US dollars; every limit is on the pricing section.
Craftybase
Four tiers in US dollars, the second figure billed annually: Studio $49 / $41 a month, Indie $99 / $83 (1,000 order lines a month, unlimited users), Business $199 / $166 (5,000 order lines, automatic stock sync, production scheduling), Growth $349 / $291 (QuickBooks sync, priority support). Free 14-day trial, no card; annual saves about 17%. 2
Questions people ask
Is Craftybase the same thing as Stocksmith?
Yes. craftybase.com now redirects to stocksmith.io, and the banner on their homepage says it plainly: "Craftybase → Stocksmith · Same team, same software - just a new name." If you were sent to Craftybase by a search or an assistant, Stocksmith is where you land. We use both names on this page because both are still in use.
Can Craftybase cost a 3D print?
It can cost the filament, the same way it costs beeswax or shea butter: as a material in a recipe, at whatever you paid for it. What it cannot do is cost the twelve hours the printer ran, because nothing in the product knows what a printer is. For a shop where machine time is most of the bill, that is the number that decides whether a job was worth taking.
Could I run both?
You could, and if you sell several kinds of product it may be the right answer: Stocksmith across the whole business, us for the printing side. It is two subscriptions and two places to type, so it is worth doing only if the non-printing half is genuinely large.
They have been around far longer than you. Why would I pick you?
For one reason, and it is worth being narrow about it: they are an inventory product that a print shop can use, and we are a print shop product. If your question is "what did this order actually make, once the machine and my own time are in it", ours answers it and theirs was not built to.
Sources
Every claim about Craftybase on this page came off their own public site, read on September 24, 2026. Prices move. If one of these is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
See it against your own numbers
Your spool prices, your printers, your rates. The free plan needs no card.