Filament refills are still too expensive and limited in color

Bambu Filament and Accesories
1

Although there have been several topics about this in the past, most are more than 2 years old. I wanted to start a new one to highlight that it seems to be a universal problem.

TL;DR: Why do filament manufactures make us want to buy filament on “reusable” plastic spools when it’s better for us to just toss the spools into recycling than to buy refill filament? How can we convince them to do better?

Bambu PLA refills cost $15/kg, but the only way to buy is two-roll packs of the same color. If you buy Bambu PLA wrapped around a plastic spool, it is more expensive, but you only need to buy 4 rolls to get enough discount to make each roll cost the same ($15). If you buy more than 4, the price can go down even more. You also don’t have to match colors to get the discount…you can buy any color as long as you buy 4 rolls.

Then, there’s the fact that Bambu has 30 colors of PLA to choose from if you buy rolls on plastic spools, while refills have only 5 color choices.

But, enough bashing Bambu…they might not have the best refill policy, but it’s also not the worst.

Sunlu will sell you a 1kg filament refill for $12.50, while the same filament on a plastic spool is $11.50. Refills are flat out more expensive from Sunlu. They do at least have a better selection of colors on refill (20), but that’s still less than the 38 available on plastic spools.

eSun is pretty much the same…$16.80 for a refill, and $16 for the same filament on a cardboard spool. They don’t even sell reusable plastic spools, but they do sell refills, which at least is an attempt at helping the environment. Maybe not having to mess with cardboard spools in whatever automatic filament loading system you have is worth the extra $0.80. But, they still have a much worse color selection (27) on refills compared to spools (45).

So, what can we do to convince filament manufacturers to give us good selection and lower prices on refills? Normally, the suggestion is “vote with your wallet”, but we all seem to be doing that right now, and as long as manufactures keep feeding us deals on non-refills, we will keep buying them.

2

I agree with most of what you say. It does not make sense, but it is a business decision that they are making.

I assume that they make most of their money on filament sales, so it does not make financial sense for them to reduce the prices more. They have already shown on multiple occasions that they can sell filament for ~$11 per spool and still make money.

Buy normal spools, that is the solution. Buy from other places.

3

Great topic.

Filament makers won’t change unless the market forces them to. As long as customers keep rewarding bad behavior, there’s no incentive for manufacturers to rethink pricing or quality.

One thing I’ve noticed is that most people default to whatever filament requires the least “tinkering.” I get the appeal, but filament costs add up fast, so I went the opposite direction and focused on mastering calibration. A properly tuned $10 spool prints just as well as a $27 spool of the same material. I even posted a side-by-side comparison in 2024 that showed the only real difference was the ink on the label:

I also understand the convenience of dropping a spool into the AMS and hitting print. It’s frictionless. But I still question the value of paying a premium for that level of convenience.

A call for open RFID standards

Open standard information:

Since leaving the Bambu ecosystem after the Bambu Connect fiasco, I’ve been digging into Material Management Systems, especially those using RFID. I was glad to see Prusa pushing an open RFID standard aimed at making spool identification universal across systems. That kind of interoperability is exactly what Bambu, Creality, and Elegoo do not want, since each is working hard to create transactional friction around competing filaments.

If this open standard gains traction, even with a small group of printer makers, and customers begin favoring systems that support it, the competitive pressure could finally push filament pricing back toward something realistic.

Curious what others here think: Is open RFID adoption a real possibility, or is the market too locked into proprietary ecosystems for this to take off?

4

What county/store are you buying from? It’s practically the opposite in the US.

Personally, my buying preference is plastic spool → refill → cardboard spool as long as the price delta is reasonable (usually is).

I can’t figure out what you are saying here, it appears contradictory.

5

Same in Germany (European store).
A lot more PLA colors available in refills than in complete spools.

6

I am in the US, and I guess my problem was Bambu’s hard-to-navigate storefront.

If you search explicitly for refill, you only get the 2-packs (with 5 color choices) at $15/spool. I did not realize that normal filament pages had choices for both “with spool” and “refill”.

Still, with Bambu selling a re-usable spool for $12, and 1kg of PLA plus a reusable spool for $23 (base price), I’d expect to see the refill base price starting at $15, not $20.

Again, Bambu isn’t the worst at the refill filament game, but they still aren’t where they should be.

Most manufactures either give no or very little discount on a refill compared to filament on a spool. Because of this, everybody buys filament on spools. Thus, we are already voting with our wallets, and this makes manufacturers continue their behavior.

Bambu’s discount of 15% for buying a refill really doesn’t mean much when we can buy filament on spools from other reputable companies for less than $15. Sunlu’s current deal requires you to buy 3 spools to get the same price as Bambu’s 14-spool-required deal.

7

So 6 months on and nothing much has changed with BL filaments. They are still expensive, have limited selections, but for me the issue is delivery times.
I like some of the colors jade white and the deep yellow, but delivery is unpredictable. Last night I ordered from another manufacturer both direct and from Amazon - the latter was on my door step at 8.00am, both at a very competitive price.

I think the RFID concept is great, I’m still a newbie with 3D printing, when the specs are the same I tape the “tag” on the outside of the reel and it works fine. The sooner that all manufacturers offer refills with RFID tags the better.

BL should look into stocking their filament products in the US to be competitive.

8

to refill or spool, that is the question.

I have no hard insight. Just a logistics mindset. What is available depends greatly on the warehouse you are pulling from. I would guess most locations have a few locations. They want to stock what sells, and what will bring in the most profit. Sometimes the choices are more long term. And beyond the details that the average user considers relevant. It is not like they can just restock a spool and refill.
Filament is almost a commodity. How do you differentiate your product from others. Consistency, quality, RFID…

I wish the RFID standard would take hold. I wonder what it would take to hack a Bambu system to use one of the other standards. It might be taken up by a few hackers. But not by the masses. I am sure that would void the warranty. But are there other consequences? Without a financial gain why would someone do it. There is a benefit to Bambu keeping a closed eco system, keeping the RFID proprietary. If they open it up it will be a commodity, a race to the bottom.