LayerFlow3D vs Printforge
Printforge is built by a print shop owner in Sydney for shops like his: a cost calculator, quotes, jobs, invoices and, on the Maker plan, a widget on your own website where a stranger uploads an STL, sees a price and pays. That front door is better than ours for one-off work. Behind it, it does not connect to the printers or take filament off by the gram.
Checked October 26, 2026
Choose Printforge if
- Your work is one-off jobs from files strangers send. A price on their STL, on your own site, paid on the spot, is exactly that job, and we do not price a raw STL.
- You invoice, in Australia above all: GST tax invoices and Xero are built in.
- You want a free tier with room in it: twenty quotes and twenty printers.
Choose LayerFlow3D if
- You sell the same products again and again, from a page of them a buyer can order from.
- You want to see what the printers are doing.
- You want spools taken down to the gram as orders are made, not counted when one runs out.
- Your team or your customers work in a language other than English.
Side by side
| Feature | LayerFlow3D | Printforge |
|---|---|---|
| A customer with a file | A sliced G-code or 3MF can be priced on the shop page when upload quoting is on; a raw STL waits for you. | "Visitors upload their STL files, pick a material, and see an instant price … If you take card payments, they can pay on the spot." From the Maker plan. 1 |
| Selling to customers directly | A public shop page included on every plan, with your products on it, that a buyer can order from without an account. | The widget embedded on your own site, a client portal, upload links, and a marketplace of Australian print shops. 2 |
| What goes into the cost | Filament, machine hours at the printer's own rate, power draw, labour and margin. | "Total cost = Material + Machine + Labour + Overhead", the machine rate from depreciation, electricity and maintenance. 3 |
| Where print time and filament weight come from | From the slicer file: a sliced G-code or 3MF from Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer, Cura, Simplify3D or ideaMaker fills in the print time and the grams. A raw STL or an unsliced 3MF has neither yet, so it is sliced first. | An STL by its volume, or G-code from Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Cura. 3 |
| Filament stock | Sealed boxes and open spools to the gram; an order takes its planned filament when it moves to In progress. | A count of spools per material, updated "when you receive new stock or use up a spool". 4 |
| Reading the printers | Read-only telemetry on every plan: Bambu Lab, Creality and Anycubic, confirmed on real machines; Elegoo, Flashforge, Klipper + Moonraker and Prusa / OctoPrint in beta, built to their published protocols. | "Any 3D printer. The calculator is generic." No connection to the machines. 5 |
| Invoices | Not yet. | GST tax invoices, Stripe card payments and Xero sync. 5 |
| Sales channels | A shop page of your own, plus order import from Squarespace (beta), Prom.ua (beta) and Shopify (beta). | Shopify on the Scale plan: it "pulls unfulfilled orders as jobs". 5 |
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 page.
Printforge
In Australian dollars: Hobby free (20 quotes, 20 printers), Maker $4 a month, Starter $12, Pro $24 and Scale $49, or $48, $108, $216 and $468 a year. A 14-day Pro trial, no card. 6
Questions people ask
Which Printforge is this?
The software at crm.printforge.com.au, by Daniel Scott in New South Wales, who also runs a print shop under the same name at printforge.com.au. It is not printforge.com, the iPhone apps called PrintForge, or 3D PrintForce, which we compare separately.
Can I take card payments with LayerFlow3D too?
Yes, on the shop page, through Stripe, Revolut or Mercado Pago, for products you have listed. What we do not do is price a raw STL a stranger uploads; with upload quoting on, a sliced file is priced and the order waits for you.
Sources
Every claim about Printforge on this page came off their own public site, read on October 26, 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.