Lychee Slicer Review

Lychee is worth trying if you print resin miniatures or detailed parts and want control over where their supports go. Start with the free Lite edition. Paid Plus access makes more sense when you regularly correct supports or prepare hollow models; it’s harder to justify if you mostly print files that already have supports.

A slicer turns a digital 3D model into layers and instructions your printer can read. This review focuses on Lychee 7.6.6, the current standard download, and resin printing, which uses light to harden liquid resin. Lychee also handles filament printing, where a nozzle lays down melted plastic, but that’s a separate buying decision.

The main drawback is that automation still leaves you with checking and editing to do. Paying unlocks more tools, not a guarantee of successful prints. If CHITUBOX already handles your work comfortably, you don’t need to switch.

Check Whether Lychee Fits Your Printer and Computer

Download Lychee through the official Lychee website. Version 7.6.6 has Windows, macOS, Linux Deb and Linux AppImage packages. The Lychee 8 Open Beta announcement concerns a separate development version; its promised engine improvements aren’t a reason to assume better results from the standard release.

Before preparing anything, find your exact printer in Add Printer. A similar name isn’t enough: screen resolution, build dimensions and file formats can differ between versions. Check the selected export format against your printer’s documentation and installed firmware—the software running inside the printer. Lychee’s support team notes that firmware changes can affect compatibility.

File export and wireless transfer are separate checks. Plus offers network printing for certain supported machines, not every printer with Wi-Fi. If yours uses USB, export to your computer first, then copy the file to the drive. A saved model or Lychee project isn’t the same thing as a sliced file ready for the printer.

The download page lists 16GB RAM as the minimum and 32GB as recommended for Windows and Mac. Recommended configurations include Windows 11 or macOS Ventura 13.4.1, with a WebGL2-capable graphics system required. Those memory figures don’t guarantee smooth handling of large models: the requirements are based on 2K/4K printing, and higher-resolution printers can need more graphics power. Linux users should check their particular distribution; having an AppImage available doesn’t establish compatibility with every setup.

There’s also an account requirement. Lychee documents up to seven days of offline use after signing in, rather than permanent offline access. If your printing computer must stay disconnected, that’s a reason to choose something else.

Getting a Model Ready in Lychee

Lychee’s preparation sequence gives you a sensible way to learn: arrange the model, prepare it, inspect the layers, then export. The hard part is understanding what needs support, not remembering the order of the buttons.

Start by importing your model, commonly an STL file, and selecting your printer and resin profile. A profile stores settings such as how long each layer is exposed to light. Community profiles can save you from entering everything yourself, but choose one for your actual printer, resin and layer thickness. Another user’s successful settings are a starting point for calibration—a small test print to check your settings—not proof they’ll work unchanged for you.

Next, check the model’s size and orientation. Think about which surfaces you most want to keep clean. On a miniature, putting support contacts on the face can leave you with more difficult cleanup than placing them on less visible areas. Automatic orientation can suggest a position, but it doesn’t know which details matter most to you.

The Magic button combines tasks such as orientation, automatic supports, support bracing and adding a raft, the foundation beneath the supports. You can choose which operations it performs. Use it to get started, then check and adjust what it gives you. Don’t treat the button’s name as permission to skip inspection.

Use the layer preview to look through the model from the first printed layers upward. Check where new sections begin, whether they’re supported, and whether any hollow spaces have openings. Confirm the printer and resin settings again before exporting.

Save an editable Lychee scene as well as the final sliced file. If a sword tip fails or a support leaves a bad mark, you can return to the preparation and change that area. This is the useful learning loop: make a deliberate adjustment, print again, and compare what changed.

How Much Control Do Lychee’s Supports Give You?

Lychee gives you both automatic placement and manual editing. You can move support tips and bases, change dimensions, and use different presets across a model. That’s a good fit when one miniature has a heavy body, thin weapons and small decorative details that need different treatment.

The Light, Medium and Heavy presets are starting points. Tip diameter controls the size of the contact with the model. A larger contact holds more strongly but leaves a larger mark; a smaller one can be easier to clean up but may fail to hold. Tip length and the thickness of the support shaft also matter. There isn’t one correct set of numbers for every resin and model.

Start with supports that hold the main sections, then examine smaller details. An island is a section that starts printing before it connects to the rest of the model, such as a downward-pointing fingertip. Lychee’s island detector helps you find these areas. Use its findings alongside the layer preview; a list of detected areas doesn’t tell you how much support a whole arm or cape needs.

Manual control also lets you move contacts away from delicate or prominent surfaces. That gives you a way to reduce cleanup where it matters, but it doesn’t make supports mark-free. A published 2021 miniature-printing account reported easier support removal after switching to Lychee. It didn’t specify matched resin, exposure and support settings, so it can’t establish that today’s Lychee produces cleaner removal than CHITUBOX.

Plus can help when you need to support a whole surface. Projection Supports, for example, lets you apply a pattern of supports to a selected area instead of placing each one separately. It doesn’t support every island above that area, so a complicated model still needs inspection afterward.

Hollowing deserves the same attention. Lite’s 2D hollowing leaves the inside blank when calculating printable layers; it doesn’t turn an exported STL into a hollow model. Plus provides 3D hollowing, including the voxel method introduced in version 7.6. Its pocket detection can fill enclosed resin traps and interior suction cups—cavities that resist separation during printing.

You still need to check drainage openings and the interior layer by layer. Lychee specifically warns that the voxel tool’s internal support pillars don’t automatically avoid drain holes. More automation can reduce the work, but checking where resin can get trapped remains part of preparing a hollow print.

What You Get Free and What Costs Extra

Lychee Lite is free. It includes basic slicing, manual and basic automatic supports, island detection and 2D hollowing, with ads on export. You can prepare and export prints without subscribing. That makes it a reasonable starting point for occasional printing, especially when your models already come with supports.

Plus is the paid slicer subscription. It adds the newer Auto-Support System, advanced hollowing, Support Painting, Grid and Projection Supports, full multi-plate access and ad-free export. Upgrade when a tool makes a job you do often less tedious.

For example, if you keep placing supports across similar surfaces, try the paid placement tools on those models. If you prepare large hollow figures, check whether voxel hollowing helps you find and deal with internal pockets. Judge the result by how much correction remains, not simply how quickly the automatic step finishes.

Lychee offers a 30-day Plus trial, after which you can keep using Lite. Use that period when you actually have models to prepare. An occasional printer may get everything needed from Lite; someone preparing fresh models every week has more opportunities to benefit from Plus.

Monthly and annual subscriptions renew automatically. Annual billing costs less over a full year, but monthly billing means a shorter commitment. Cancel before renewal if you don’t want another term.

If you’re searching for “Lychee Slicer Pro” or its price, be careful with older advice. Current subscriptions use Plus and Plus & Library; older documentation still uses Pro and Premium. Don’t assume an old Pro quote or device allowance describes a new Plus subscription. Existing subscribers should check their own account’s renewal terms and access.

The published single-user license allows activation on two computers, with use on only one at a time. Plus & Library costs more than Plus and adds a model collection. Choose it because you want those models; the support tools are the same as in Plus. Library models also have separate commercial-use restrictions, so access to them isn’t blanket permission to sell prints.

How Lychee Compares With CHITUBOX

CHITUBOX is the closest alternative to try, particularly if it came with your printer or you already know its controls. Its free edition also offers automatic and manual support preparation. Lychee’s appeal is how its editing tools fit your work, rather than exclusive ownership of those basic features.

For learning effort, there’s no dependable universal winner. A 2025 hands-on account using Elegoo Mars 2 printers preferred CHITUBOX for beginners and Lychee for detailed support work. An older miniature-printing account found Lychee straightforward. Those are useful experiences, but different users and older, incompletely specified releases can’t tell you which interface you’ll find easier now.

Performance needs an equally careful distinction. Opening a scene, moving around a model, generating supports and calculating the final slices are different jobs. The Mars 2 account reported slower loading in Lychee on large projects with many supports. Another comparison, centered on a Mars 5 Ultra and a third slicer, described Lychee as slightly faster at calculating slices. Those observations can coexist; neither establishes a current overall speed advantage.

Stability reports also need version details. In the Lychee 8 beta Reddit discussion, user argon_nn reported severe interface slowdown on a Ryzen 9/RTX 4070 computer while reporting no problems with 7.6. That’s one attributed beta experience, not a failure rate for 7.6.6. The standard release’s file-recovery fixes likewise don’t prove that every crash or damaged project is solved.

Print-time estimates are another separate issue. Lychee can estimate duration using a measured layer cycle through Print Time Override. That can help account for printer behavior the estimate misses, but the override needs revisiting when exposure or movement settings change. It adjusts the forecast, not how fast the printer works.

For your own comparison, open the same representative model in both programs. Check loading, support corrections and export separately. If you compare printed results, keep the printer, resin, orientation, layer thickness and exposure consistent. Switch when Lychee solves a specific annoyance; keep CHITUBOX when the change adds work without a clear benefit.

Should You Use Lychee for Your Prints?

Try Lite if your printer is supported and you want to learn resin preparation with editable supports. Consider Plus when you can name a paid tool you’ll use repeatedly, then use the trial to see how much work it actually saves. Stay with your existing slicer if you already get dependable files and acceptable cleanup without much effort.

Lychee is less suitable if you need permanent offline operation, your exact printer isn’t supported, or you expect automatic preparation to remove the need for manual judgment.

The best slicer depends on your printer and the models you make. Calling Lychee the best slicer in 2026 would go further than the available current comparisons support, especially across resin and filament printing. For resin hobbyists, though, it earns a place on the shortlist for a concrete reason: you can start free, learn what needs correcting, and pay for additional tools once you know why you need them.