MatterHackers has been selling filament for a long time now and has become a household name for makers. Its Build Series is the company’s consumer filament line, made to balance cost and quality.

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MatterHackers Build Series PETG Filament Review

MatterHackers Build Series PETG is certainly a good material for the low price, with a dimensional accuracy of ±0.05 mm for a retail price of ~$22 for 1-kg spools. It’s a reasonably strong material suitable for standard use that comes in 27 colors, and with multiple features.

Buy For: An affordable, good-quality material from a reputable company.

MatterHackers doesn’t just sell to consumers; the company also diversifies its portfolio with the professionally-aimed Pro Series, which aims to deliver the most consistent dimensional accuracy it can.

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MatterHackers Pro PETG Filament Review

At ±0.02 mm, Matterhackers’ Pro Series PETG is a highly consistent product in 15 colors. The company bills the material as “exceptionally tough and sturdy,” producing high-durability prints. It is pricey, though. A 1-kg spool of MH Pro Series PETG will run you $57 (with free shipping in the USA).

Buy For: Extra toughness with high dimensional accuracy for professional use.

Polymaker is another reputable 3D printing material manufacturer with lots of product lines for different specializations, but we’re looking at PolyLite, its general consumer material that covers the most popular varieties of 3D printing filament.

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Polymaker’s PolyLite PETG has a standard tolerance of ±0.05 mm and is priced at ~$23 for a 1-kg spool. The packaging is also fairly nice, with lines on the label that tell you approximately how much material you have left on a spool. Good for knowing when you need to order more.

Buy For: A standard material from a reputable brand, or if you like spools that mark material levels.

Polymaker positions PolyMax as their high-quality product line, using “nano-reinforcement technology” to make a superior product. The claim: PolyMax PETG, like other materials in the category, has “exceptional mechanical properties and printing quality.”

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The company doesn’t seem to be targeting professional applications with PolyMax materials necessarily and has an average tolerance of ±0.05 mm. Rather, it markets the filament as a generally superior variety of consumer material. For that, customers are asked to pay ~$33 for 750 grams of filament available in just two colors, black and white.

Buy For: Specific applications — if you need a high-quality version of familiar material and don’t mind the average dimensional accuracy.

A popular materials company, Hatchbox gets a lot right with its PETG filament.

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It keeps tolerances reasonably tight with a dimensional accuracy of ±0.03 mm, and the price is right at ~$25 for a 1-kg spool. There’s also an incredible variety of 31 colors to choose from — which launches Hatchbox PETG into our top picks for Value Pick. If you like having plenty of pretty options from your materials, this is the way to go.

Buy For: Good tolerances with exceptional color variety.

The darling of the 3D printing community, Prusa Research, also has its own line of 3D printing materials. Like all of the company’s products, its PETG filament is produced to exact specifications.

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Because Prusa Research’s PETG filament has an exceptional dimensional accuracy of ±0.02 mm for a reasonable price of ~$30 per 1-kg spool, it’s earned its place as our all-around Top Pick. It also has an enviable variety, with 22 colors available to choose from.

Since Prusa Research is well known for its excellent support, we’re confident it translates to materials.

Buy For: High dimensional accuracy for a reasonable price from a highly reputable company.

Recycled materials, though excellent for the environment, are often avoided for their reputation of lesser quality. Recycled filament is typically something of a stringy mess, but there’s at least one exception we swear by: FormFutura’s ReForm rPET.

As with all FormFutura’s ReForm filaments, this material is comprised entirely of recycled filament from FormFutura’s own manufacturing waste streams — rPET specifically from its HDglass filament. ReForm rPET surprised our editors when we started using it; finding little (if any) trouble with stringing. Shocking, since you can usually expect PETG to be stringy on its best days, and recycled material does this behavior no favors. We’ve also observed surprisingly little warping from the material and generally regard it to behave like PLA. Bliss.

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ReForm rPET also goes for a fantastic price. At about just $20 per kilogram, it’s around the cost we’d expect from an average PLA.

Because the material is sourced by a waste stream of various colors, rPET’s color can vary significantly, including white and black now. So, you may not want to use it for projects that eat multiple spools — though it is also available in a wide variety of sizes. If you’re prepping for a large project, you can purchase bigger spools of 2.3, 3.5, or 4.5 kg for more material of the same shade and at a bulk price to boot. Or, if you’re worried about filament getting old, FormFutura sells rPET in smaller quantities of 250 and 750 grams.

Because of its incredible ease of use, great price, and varied buying options, we’ve replaced our previous editor’s pick, Eryone PETG, with FormFutura’s rPET.

Buy for: Incredible PLA-like behavior from a low-price, recycled PETG.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the most commonly used plastic in the world. It’s the unmodified parent of PETG, and it’s in everything from your water bottle to clothing fibers — even in your food containers. But, it’s not an especially common filament.

Special property: Food safe and melts at higher temperatures of at least 260 °C. It may be curbside recyclable in your community, but check whether unlabeled plastics are accepted.

rPET is exactly the same as its base material, but this filament gets a lowercase “r” in its name because it is made of recycled PET. The distinction is important because materials can only be recycled a certain amount of times before they reach the end of their lifecycle. While printing, rPET will still behave like PET — making it an excellent material choice where unlabeled recycling (like 3D prints) isn’t possible.

Special property: Environmentally friendly.

Though a less common practice, some brands will choose to differentiate their PET products by using a moniker. Fillamentum and Ultimaker specifically use “CPE” because it stands for copolyester. It’s just a different name, so it should act exactly like any other PET unless you’ve gotten your hands on an unusual blend.

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Special property: Tough, strong, more flexible, less odorous.

PETT, or Polyethylene coTrimethylene Terephthalate, is slightly more rigid than PETG because the glycol content isn’t modified. So, if you need some extra strength, it could be worth considering. PETT isn’t very common in 3D printing but was popularized by Taulman T-Glase for its impressive clarity after printing. Like PET and PETG, it’s usually food-safe (but still check).

Special property: It’s more rigid than PETG, beautifully clear, food-safe, and offers low shrinkage.

If PETG isn’t quite strong enough for your purpose, consider using a composite variant. Composite PETG, and other base material, is simply filled with small strands of another material to reinforce it. These strands are incredibly short, usually less than one millimeter, and serve to lend some of their properties to the base material.

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Both glass and carbon fiber reinforced filament are common composites you can find with a base PETG material that increase material strength by a great deal, but check their individual properties to see which is best for your needs. Make sure you have a hardened steel or ruby nozzle and that your system is otherwise compatible with these abrasive filaments.

Special property: Very high tensile strength, other properties depending on the fiber used.