What people are printing, and what it sells for

How to read this

Opportunity is our attempt to answer “what should I print next” from three numbers this page already shows: demand (MakerWorld downloads, or Printables' where a category has no MakerWorld list), median price, and competition (how many results Etsy's own search returns for the category's term — more results chasing the same buyers). Each is ranked against all 22 categories today (demand against the same site's figures only, since MakerWorld and Printables count downloads differently), the three ranks are averaged with fewer results counting as better, and the result is shown as five dots. It moves as the underlying numbers move; nothing in it is estimated, and a category missing any one of the three inputs shows a dash rather than a guess.

Demand is the total lifetime downloads of the models each site ranks highest in that category today, from our newest daily check. It covers the top of the category, not all of it. The site's own ranking decides which models are in. Where two of a site's lists match one of our categories, we keep the best 100 by downloads. The category page names both lists. Each bar is scaled to the biggest category on that site, so compare MakerWorld with MakerWorld and Printables with Printables. MakerWorld ranks by a hot score, so its top 100 is almost all models published in the last 30 days. Printables ranks by likes this week, and those models are often years old, so their download totals are far bigger. The Demand sort uses MakerWorld only. 7-day change counts only models we have seen on at least two days, so new entries never inflate the growth number.

New ≤7d is the share of today's MakerWorld top 100 that was published in the last seven days. It shows how much of the category's attention goes to brand-new models. It comes from dates the site publishes, so it is real from day one. The demand map plots the first against demand for every category with MakerWorld data.

Searched is how often the category's term was searched on Google in the latest full week. We record it weekly from Google Trends in groups of five terms and rescale it so the busiest week of ‘3d printed dragon’, which is in every group, reads 100. It counts searches, not sales. Each category page also lists what buyers type. These are the suggestions Etsy's own search box shows for the category's starting terms, in Etsy's order, recorded weekly.

Etsy price is the middle price (the median) of up to 48 Etsy search results for that category, recorded every week. Each category has one Etsy search term. We chose it by hand and show it next to the price. We leave out digital files. The price does not include shipping. We leave out any price from fewer than 10 listings. That's too few to trust.

Each category page also shows what page one of that Etsy search looks like. It counts how many of the results are ads, on sale, offer free shipping, come from Star Sellers, and so on, and how many different shops are behind them. These come from the same weekly check as the price, so they describe the search a buyer sees, not all of Etsy.

Currency. Prices are in US dollars, the way Etsy's US search shows them. We do not convert anything. If a price ever comes back in another currency, we leave it out of the comparison. Your own numbers in the calculator are what you paid.