LayerFlow3D vs Inventora
Inventora sells to seven trades - candles, soap, jewelry, laser, skincare, textiles and 3D printing - and the printing page is a real one. The difference is what goes into a cost: theirs is the material, ours is the material and the machine and your own time.
Checked September 24, 2026
Choose Inventora if
- You already sell on Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Square, Wix or Squarespace. Six channels keeping stock straight without anybody typing is a real feature and we have nothing like it.
- You print in resin as well as filament, or you hold hardware, magnets and packaging as stock. Their materials model covers all of it; ours is built around filament.
- Printing is one of several things you make. They sell the same product to six other trades, so one subscription covers the candles and the prints together.
- Purchasing and supplier records matter to you. Theirs is a proper inventory product with that side built out, and it is cheaper than the other maker-inventory tools.
Choose LayerFlow3D if
- Material cost is not what a print costs. Twelve hours of machine time, the power it drew and the hour you spent finishing it are all missing from a COGS figure built from filament alone.
- You would rather not type print time and filament weight at all. We take both out of the slicer file.
- You want to see what the machines are doing. Live telemetry from six printer families is on our free plan; nothing in Inventora connects to a printer.
- You want to sell from a page of your own rather than plug into somebody's marketplace. Ours comes with every plan, and a buyer needs no account.
- You want to start without paying. There is no free tier on their side, only seven days.
Side by side
| Feature | LayerFlow3D | Inventora |
|---|---|---|
| What goes into the cost of a print | Filament, machine hours at the printer's own rate, power draw, labour and your margin. | Material only: "Inventora calculates COGS based on the filament, resin, components". Machine time is not in the model. 1 |
| Reading the printers | Live telemetry from Bambu Lab, Klipper, OctoPrint, Voron, Creality and Anycubic, on every plan. | Not mentioned on their 3D printing page. 1 |
| Where print time and filament weight come from | The slicer file. Drop in a 3mf or gcode from Bambu Studio, Orca, Prusa, Cura, Simplify3D or ideaMaker. | Not mentioned. Slicer import is not among the capabilities the page lists. 1 |
| Materials it can hold | Filament, as sealed boxes and open spools, tracked to the gram. | Broader than ours: "filament, resin, hardware, packaging, finished products, production, purchasing, and sales". 1 |
| Print queue | Orders move through the shop, with the printers' own state beside them. | "Keep your print queue organized as orders come in. Plan what needs to be printed, set due dates". 1 |
| Sales channels | None. We give you a shop page of your own instead. | Six: Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Square, Wix and Squarespace, syncing stock levels. 1 |
| Selling to customers directly | A public shop page included on every plan, that a buyer can order from without an account. | No storefront of their own; they sync with the one you already run. 1 |
| Shipping labels | Carrier integrations, from the order. | Not among the capabilities their 3D printing page lists. 1 |
| Free plan | Free, no card: 2 printers, 50 orders a month, live telemetry and a shop page of your own. | No. Seven-day trial of any plan, then from $23 a month. 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.
Inventora
Three tiers, monthly, in US dollars: Starter $23 (500 materials, 500 product variants, 2 team members, 2 integrations), Business $48 (2,000 and 2,000, 5 members, 3 integrations), Growth $120 (10,000 and 10,000, 10 members, 5 integrations, 3 production locations). Annual billing saves 18%; the page does not print the annual figures, so neither do we. Any plan free for 7 days. 2
Questions people ask
Inventora has a 3D printing page. Is it not the same thing as you?
It is a real page and it does real things: filament and resin as stock, a print queue with due dates, COGS from materials, and six shop channels. What is not on it is a printer, a slicer file, or an hour of machine time - and those are the three that decide whether a print job made money. It is inventory software that has been pointed at print shops, rather than software built around what a print shop does.
Why does machine time matter so much?
Because for most shops it is the larger half of the bill. A part with eight dollars of filament in it can occupy a printer for fourteen hours, and that machine cost you something to buy, costs something to run and will eventually need replacing. Price from material alone and the busiest jobs are the ones losing you the most, which is exactly the pattern nobody spots until the year is over.
Can I use both?
If you make several kinds of product, yes - Inventora across the business, us for the printing. If prints are all you sell, running both means typing everything twice for the sake of channel sync you may not need.
What does Inventora cost?
Starter is $23 a month for 500 materials and 500 product variants, Business $48 for 2,000 of each, Growth $120 for 10,000. Annual billing saves 18%, though the page never prints the annual totals. There is no free plan, only a seven-day trial of whichever plan you pick.
Sources
Every claim about Inventora 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.