PrintStash vs Manyfold: 3D print file management comparison

PrintStash and Manyfold are both AGPL-3.0 web applications you run in Docker to keep a private 3D-model library. Most people should pick one as the primary record, and the deciding question is whether the library exists to describe your collection or to run your prints.

Manyfold is the stronger catalogue. It knows about creators, licenses, sources, relationships, and permissions, and it can publish or federate over ActivityPub. PrintStash is the stronger production record. It attaches sliced G-code to the source model as revisions with parsed settings and outcomes, and it connects to five printer providers.

Checked against each project’s published documentation on August 22, 2026. PrintStash claims describe v0.12.1; Manyfold was at v0.147.2, released August 14, 2026.

Head to head

Capability	PrintStash	Manyfold
G-code revision tracking	Revisions on the source model with labels, notes, outcome states, and exactly one recommended revision	Stores and previews G-code. A built-in version control system is listed for Q4 2026
Slicer metadata parsing	Extracts printer, nozzle, material, temperatures, layer height, estimated time, and filament use from OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio, and Cura output, including .bgcode	Not documented
Revision comparison	Two revisions’ parsed settings side by side	Not applicable yet
Printer integrations	Moonraker/Klipper stable. PrusaLink, OctoPrint, Bambu LAN, and Elegoo Centauri beta, with capability-specific limits	Sends sliced files through OctoPrint, Moonraker, and other printer APIs, with a plugin system for more
Print history	Jobs recorded against the revision, with measured duration and filament from Moonraker	Not part of the product
File formats	STL, 3MF, OBJ, STEP/STP, G-code, BGCODE	Much wider, including meshes, print and slicer files, images, video, documents, and archives
Existing folders	Shared volumes index local or NAS folders in place, with write-back that never overwrites	Scans model folders on disk, with S3 support
Federation and publishing	Expiring read-only share links only	ActivityPub: publish models, follow remote instances, likes and comments, share to Mastodon
Metadata imports	URL captures as reviewable pending imports	Cults3D, MyMiniFactory, and Thingiverse sync, currently triggered manually
Multiple users	Accounts, collection roles, per-printer view/print/control/admin grants, API keys, audit log, optional OIDC	Multiple users, fine-grained permissions, OIDC
Extensibility	REST API. A formal plugin system is an explicit non-goal	REST API plus a plugin system shipped in v0.146.0
Stack and deployment	Docker Compose, SQLite and local disk by default, Postgres and S3 optional, amd64 and arm64 images	Docker Compose, Ruby on Rails, Postgres in production
License	AGPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0

Where Manyfold is clearly ahead

Format coverage is the first thing you notice. Manyfold indexes far more than printable meshes: its supported-formats page covers 3D models, print and slicer files, images, video, documents, and archives, with previews for many of them. If a project folder contains reference photos, a PDF of assembly notes, and a Blender source file, Manyfold treats all of it as part of the record. PrintStash handles STL, 3MF, OBJ, STEP/STP, G-code, and BGCODE, plus attached documents, and will simply ignore the rest.

Federation has no equivalent anywhere else in this category. A Manyfold instance can publish models publicly, follow models and creators on other instances, and push updates to Mastodon followers, with likes and comments as part of the model. That is a different product idea from a private vault, and if you want your collection to have an audience, nothing PrintStash does will substitute for it.

The catalogue model is deeper too. Creators, sources, licenses, related models, lists, and library problem detection give you somewhere to put the provenance of a download. Manyfold can pull that metadata straight from Cults3D, MyMiniFactory, or Thingiverse, though the sync is manual for now. Add the plugin system from v0.146.0 and a release history stretching back years, and Manyfold is the more extensible and better established project of the two.

Where PrintStash is clearly ahead

Everything that happens after slicing. In PrintStash a G-code file is a revision of the model rather than a separate entry: it gets a revision number, a label such as 0.6 nozzle for faster farm run, free-text notes, and an outcome of needs_test, known_good, failed, or archived. One revision, and only ever one, carries the recommended marker, and the first G-code you upload claims it automatically. Three months later the model page tells you which file to print rather than presenting four plausible candidates.

The parsed metadata makes that record useful instead of decorative. PrintStash reads what the slicer wrote into the file, so layer height, walls, infill, material, temperatures, nozzle, estimated duration, and filament use never have to go into a filename. Select two revisions and you get their settings side by side, which is how you confirm that the fix was the brim rather than the temperature. It is not a line-by-line G-code diff, and firmware macros still need a text editor.

Printer coverage is broader and goes deeper than a handoff, though Manyfold’s send paths are no longer a weak spot: its features page lists direct sends through OctoPrint, Moonraker, and other printer APIs as available today. PrintStash keeps the loop closed: send a revision, optionally start it, watch live status, pause or resume or cancel, sync the printer’s file inventory where supported, and record the job against the revision that produced it. Moonraker returns measured duration and filament use, which feeds cost trends and optional Spoolman write-back. The limits are in the compatibility matrix and they matter: only Moonraker is stable, Bambu LAN has no remote inventory, Elegoo Centauri upload still needs broader hardware validation, and measured consumption is Moonraker-only.

For a fleet, PrintStash adds a queue across configured printers with manual, default-printer, or least-busy routing, plus maintenance windows and soft-drain for pulling a machine out of rotation. That shipped in v0.11.0 and is still being shaped by real farm use. Since v0.12.0 the queue also reads loaded material and nozzle data: under the default safe policy, least-busy routing prefers compatible printers and skips known mismatches, and a manual send to a mismatched printer asks for confirmation instead of going through quietly.

Choose Manyfold if

You download more than you print, and losing track of who made something bothers you more than losing track of which slice worked. You want an instance other people can browse, follow, or federate with. Your library includes files PrintStash does not index, and you would rather have one place for all of them. You want a plugin system, or you weigh a long, steady release history heavily when deciding where years of manual tagging will live.

Choose PrintStash if

You reslice the same parts and the recurring question is which revision to reprint. You want the printer inside the library rather than in another tab, with print history attached to the file that caused it. You have a NAS folder that other tools use and want it indexed in place rather than absorbed. You care about cost per print, measured filament, or Spoolman. Or you are running several machines and want a queue that already knows about your G-code.

Running both

Neither tool has to own the bytes, so pointing both at the same NAS folder works: PrintStash indexes it as a shared volume, Manyfold scans it. You pay for that with two databases, two sets of metadata, and a decision to make every time you tag something. It is a reasonable arrangement when you really do need federation and revision tracking, and a bad one if you were only avoiding a choice.

Whichever way you go, test the exit before you commit. PrintStash exports models, files, metadata, taxonomy, print history, favorites, and saved views as a versioned archive, and its full backup covers the database, owned blobs, documents, thumbnails, and a manifest, though not source bytes that live on a shared volume, since those are still your files. Check the equivalent path on the other side before you have entered three thousand tags.

Questions that come up

Does Manyfold track G-code versions?

Not as structured state today. It indexes G-code, previews it, and can send it to a printer, but its features page lists a built-in version control system under Q4 2026 alongside a built-in slicer. Until that ships, the difference between two slices of the same part lives in whatever you typed into the description. PrintStash records it as a revision with parsed settings and an outcome you can filter on, and a completed print can promote a revision to known good automatically without overwriting a manual failed or archived verdict.

Can I migrate a Manyfold library into PrintStash?

There is no importer that reads a Manyfold database, so plan on moving files rather than metadata. Because both tools work against folders on disk, the practical route is to point PrintStash at the same library path as a shared volume, which hashes and indexes everything in place without copying or moving bytes. Your Manyfold instance keeps working on the same files while you evaluate. Collections and tags need to be rebuilt, and content-hash deduplication means re-indexing the same file twice does not create a second model.

Which one is better for a print farm?

PrintStash, mainly because printers are first-class objects rather than a send target. It queues G-code across a fleet, routes by default printer or least-busy machine, keeps outcomes attached to revisions, and takes machines out of rotation through maintenance windows. Those features are recent and still maturing. Manyfold suits a farm that already has a dispatch layer it likes and wants a better catalogue beside it, and its permissions model is good if several people need different access to the same collection.

Do they use the same amount of hardware?

Roughly, with different floors. PrintStash runs two containers on SQLite and local disk by default and asks for about 1 GB of RAM, comfortable at 2 GB, mostly because thumbnailing large meshes is the heavy step. Postgres and S3 are optional rather than required. Manyfold is a Rails application that expects Postgres for production use, so the baseline is a little higher. Both publish Docker images and run happily on a Pi or a NAS, and PrintStash’s ARM STEP preview gap closed in v0.12.0.

Sources

• Manyfold features, supported formats, integrations, and release news. Checked August 22, 2026.
• PrintStash capabilities, printer compatibility, core concepts, and known limitations.

For the three-way version including STL Shelf, read PrintStash vs Manyfold vs STL Shelf. The alternatives overview covers monitoring and farm tools that are not libraries at all, and the server versus desktop comparison adds Orynt3D for anyone who would rather not run a server.