What are the most popular 3D model repositories in mid-2026?
Two years ago, I did a brief analysis of the popularity of major 3D model sites using Google Trends to see which sites were leading.
Since then, things have immeasurably changed. During that time, the Chinese “dragons”, that is, Bambu Lab, Creality, Elegoo, and Anycubic, significantly grew, now taking up an incredible 88% of the sales of under US$2500 3D printers.
Here’s the thing: each of them has its own cloud network that is associated with a dedicated 3D model repository. They’ve set up their equipment to more easily access those repositories because it’s directly built into their software tools. In theory, these sites should be a lot more popular simply because of the huge sales and direct link to the sites.
But is this really the truth?
It’s impossible to know for certain because each of these sites is proprietary and does not universally publish its traffic numbers. But we can get a glimpse of its popularity by using Google Trends.
Trends is a search utility by Google that shows, over time, the frequency of a given search term. They don’t provide specific numbers, but do provide relative position against other terms. So, for example, we could investigate whether there are more searches for “Printables” versus “MyMiniFactory”.
And that’s exactly what I did.
One problem in analyzing this stuff is that all repositories are not the same. While MakerWorld and Printables are focused tightly on providing printable 3D models, sites like TurboSquid are mostly providing visual assets, not printable models. I didn’t look at those unless they had a significant portion of 3D printable models.
There are other sites that focus on providing CAD files rather than directly printable STL/3MF files. These are suitable for analysis and include sites like GrabCAD or CGTrader.
Trends allows you to compare up to eight searches at a time, so my goal was to figure out which eight of all the 3D model repositories were the highest ranked.
Sites I investigated included:
- 3DKitBash
- Creality Cloud
- Cults 3D
- DayInLA
- embodi3D
- Gambody
- Hum3D
- MakerOnline
- MakerWorld
- MyMiniFactory
- NopSCADlib
- Pinshape
- Printables
- RedPah
- Thangs
- Thingiverse
- Threeding
- YouMagine
- CGTrader
- GrabCAD
- Libre3D
- repository)
- STLFinder
- SketchFab
- RenderHub
And a few dozen more that turned out to be so small they didn’t even register with Trends. There is a very surprising number of very small niche topic sites. Also, I did not include several that were simply search engines, not having any content of their own, like Yeggi.
There were some interesting discoveries along the way. For example, I learned that YouMagine, that at one time was the “Thingiverse” for UltiMaker, is now a site dedicated to automotive 3D models.
The final eight, in order of current search popularity, were:
- MakerWorld (rank 79, Dark Blue line)
- Printables (66, Red)
- SketchFab (46, Light Blue)
- Thingiverse (41, Yellow)
- GrabCAD (13, Purple)
- CGTrader (9, Pink)
- Thangs (6, Green)
- MyMiniFactory (4, Orange)
Those numbers are just relative to the others. Most repositories were ranked “0” by Google against these major repositories.
I discovered something else quite interesting. You can see the search popularity over the past three years in the image at top.
You’ll note that these lines change over time, and we can observe how popularity has changed. Here’s what I see:
Thingiverse, while quite large, continues on a long-term downward trend. The service has been bounced around among several corporate owners, some of whom didn’t really keep the site up to date. Today it’s owned by MyMiniFactory, who pledged to get the site back in order, but they have to make a big turnaround. Note how much larger Thingiverse is as compared to MyMiniFactory.
Printables exhibits a strong seasonal pattern, likely people getting 3D models to print for the holidays. Printables also shows strong long-term growth.
Bambu Lab’s MakerWorld is at the top, which is unsurprising given that they now sell the highest number of machines worldwide. Their result is now larger than both Thingiverse, the long-term champ, and Printables, which only recently overtook Thingiverse. Notice that their blue line does not exhibit the seasonal patterns of Printables, and it seems to be rocketing upwards.
SketchFab shows quite strongly, but much of their traffic is likely non-printing visits. They do have a considerable amount of printable 3D models, however.
All others were very small in comparison to the big players, and their growth patterns are very sluggish in comparison. In other words, they are not likely going to catch up anytime soon.
To answer the question of which is the most popular printable 3D model site right now, the answer seems to be MakerWorld.
