What is Printbuddy

What is Printbuddy?

Printbuddy is a self-hosted 3D printer management and print-archive dashboard.

The goal is simple: one clean web interface for different printer ecosystems instead of one tool for Bambu, another for Klipper, and another for Prusa.

What Printbuddy does

• Shows multiple printers in one dashboard.
• Tracks current printer state, temperatures, progress, and camera access where supported.
• Archives print jobs with useful metadata so old prints can be found again.
• Provides queue, review, and virtual-printer workflows for supported slicer handoff scenarios.
• Adds optional notifications, backups, metrics, filament/inventory integrations, and Home Assistant integration paths.
• Runs self-hosted, usually through Docker Compose.

What Printbuddy is not

• It is not a slicer replacement by itself.
• It is not a cloud-hosted service.
• It does not make every printer expose identical capabilities. Bambu, Moonraker/Klipper, PrusaLink, and Prusa Connect have different APIs and limitations.

Provider-based design

Printbuddy uses printer providers. Each provider knows how to talk to a specific printer ecosystem:

• bambu for Bambu Lab LAN/MQTT/FTP workflows.
• klipper, fluidd, and mainsail for Moonraker-backed Klipper printers.
• prusalink for local PrusaLink HTTP API printers.
• prusaconnect for Prusa Connect Mobile API support.

That boundary is important. It keeps Bambu-only functions, Moonraker functions, and Prusa functions from being mixed together incorrectly.

Current project status

Printbuddy is under active development. For normal installs, use the stable Docker image:

docker.io/vmhomelabde/printbuddy:latest

For testing development work, use the dev branch/image only when you explicitly want development behavior.