Stickers are a fun and versatile way to add personality to your belongings, or promote your business. They can be used for a variety of purposes: decorating laptops, water bottles, and other personal items, promoting a business or event, creating educational materials, and making labels for products or containers. However, if you want to start making your own stickers, you need to know which is the best sticker printer.
We’ve reviewed sticker printers from across the market to bring you our top five best options for home and business. Each of these printers has been evaluated against the criteria that matter: print quality, value for money, paper handling, and connectivity. Let’s get started, and find you the best printer for making stickers!
Product Comparison Table: Best Printer for Making Stickers
Title | Price | Rating (Amazon) | Best in class | Buy | |
HP Sprocket Portable Sticker Printer | $$ | 4.5 stars | Best Portable | Amazon | |
Brother VC-500W Compact Color Label Printer | $$$ | 5 stars | Best for Crafting | Amazon | |
Phomemo M02 Mini Thermal Printer | $ | 4.5 stars | Best Value | Amazon | |
MUNBYN Shipping Label Printer | $$$$ | 4.5 stars | Best for Shipping | Amazon | |
Brother QL-800 High-Speed Professional Label Printer | $$$ | 4.5 stars | Best for Businesses | Amazon |
HP Sprocket Portable Sticker Printer
The HP Sprocket Portable Sticker Printer is a fun and easy way to print 2×3 inch photos from your smartphone or social media. The free HP app includes fun editing tools like filters, borders, and emojis. HP’s ZINK Zero Ink paper technology means you don’t need toners, ribbons, or inks; the self-adhesive photo paper has colors embedded inside already. Prints are also smudge, water, and tear resistant. The compact, portable design fits in a purse, and the printer is rechargeable with a Micro USB cable for on-the-go use. Each charge provides enough power for approximately 35 photo prints. It only prints via Bluetooth enabled devices, but can connect to multiple devices at once.
Pros
- Portable and battery powered
- Comes in a range of colours
- No inks or ribbons required
- Comes with sticker creation app
Cons
- Only supports HP ZINK papers
- Only connects via Bluetooth
Verdict
The HP Sprocket Portable Sticker Printer is our best portable printer for making stickers. The Sprocket produces great quality photos for such a small machine, and it is definitely the most fun and functional machine on our list. However, the fact that it only supports ZINK papers does increase the long-term cost of using the machine. If you only use the machine at home, the cost of the ZINK papers will not be too prohibitive.
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Brother VC-500W Compact Color Label Printer
The Brother VC-500W Compact Color Label Printer is a high-resolution, full-color printer that produces professional-looking results without the need for ink. You can experience full-color printing at an impressive resolution of over 313dpi, as fast as printing a Polaroid. It uses ZINK Zero Ink technology, which embeds all the colors needed for printing directly onto the adhesive-backed paper. This means you’ll never have to worry about running out of ink or dealing with messy cartridges.
The VC-500W also comes with a free Color Label Editor app that lets you customize your labels with a variety of frames, fonts, art, backgrounds, and ready-made designs. As for connectivity, you can print your labels wirelessly from your computer, tablet, or smartphone using AirPrint, WiFi, or USB.
Pros
- High resolution color prints
- Comes with Color Label Editor app
- Wireless printing available
Cons
- Only compatible with ZINK papers
Verdict
The Brother VC-500W Compact Color Label Printer is our number one sticker printer for crafting. With this printer, you can easily create stunning crafts with minimal effort – and no technical know-how. The best feature for us is image quality, and the fact that you can instantly print creations from your phone. The proprietary ZINK sticker papers may be expensive, but that’s the price you pay for Brother quality.
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Phomemo M02 Mini Thermal Printer
The Phomemo M02 Mini Thermal Printer is a small, pocket-sized printer that is both convenient and affordable. Despite its small size, it has an impressive range of print options; it is perfect for printing memos, records, organizational labels, product labels, text stickers, and photo stickers in either black and white or color. The resolution is 300dpi, which is slightly lower than the Brother VC-500W. However, this printer is entirely wireless and only supports Bluetooth connections. This makes it easy to control using the connected app, but it also means that it is not compatible with desktop and laptop computers.
Pros
- Comes with connected design app
- Compact size, great value price
- High resolution, quality prints
Cons
- Can’t connect with computers
Verdict
The Phomemo M02 Mini Thermal Printer is our pick for the best value sticker printer. It offers many of the same features as printers that cost twice or even three times as much, including wireless connectivity, design software, and high-resolution color printing. However, there are some drawbacks: the printer only connects wirelessly to Android or iOS smartphones.
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MUNBYN Shipping Label Printer
The MUNBYN ITPP941P 3.0 thermal shipping label printer uses a Japanese ROHM printhead to produce high-resolution 300 dpi labels, outperforming other market leaders that only achieve 203 dpi. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac computers via USB connection, and its labels are suitable for all major eCommerce and shipping platforms, including Shopify, Etsy, eBay, Amazon FBA, FedEx, Royal Mail, and USPS.
The MUNBYN is designed with businesses in mind, with a print speed of 150 mm/s (enough for over 5,000 labels per day) and label widths ranging from 1.57 to 4.3 inches. As it is a thermal printer, there is no need for inks, cartridges, or toners. Automatic label identification instantly picks up the size of the label being fed in, so you don’t have to calibrate the machine yourself.
Pros
- Lightning fast printing speed
- Works with all major eCommerce and shipping platforms
- Prints a wide range or sizes
- High resolution for great print quality
Cons
- Only prints in black and white
- No wireless connections
Verdict
With the ubiquity of eCommerce, high-quality shipping labels have become essential for many businesses. The MUNBYN printer will ensure that your packages get where they need to go with its high print quality, while keeping your business efficient with its superfast printing speed. This is our recommendation for the best sticker printing machine for shipping labels.
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Brother QL-800 High-Speed Professional Label Printer
The Brother QL-800 High-Speed Professional Label Printer is designed for businesses. It is incredibly fast, with print speeds of up to 93 standard address labels per minute, while maintaining a high resolution of 300 x 600dpi. Although it is primarily monochrome, it offers a unique feature of printing in both black and red on the same label when using the correct DK-2251 tape.
The only downside is that the proprietary labels are more expensive than generic labels. However, the included iPrint and Label app does save you some money on software. In addition, Brother DK pre-sized, easy peel labels and continuous length tapes allow you to create a versatile range of sticker sizes, including banners up to 3 feet long!
Pros
- Superfast printing speed
- Very high resolution for quality prints
- Wide range of sizes
- Two-color black/red printing available
Cons
- Only supports Brother branded labels
Verdict
The Brother QL-800 High-Speed Professional Label Printer is incredibly versatile, letting you print labels for a variety of uses: package labels, product labels, envelope address labels, warning stickers, name badges, and extra-long banners, to name a few. This makes it excellent value for money, even if you do have to use slightly more expensive branded labels. The two-color feature also lets you be creative without compromising on print speed. All of these features make the Brother QL-800 our top business printer for making stickers.