Getting Started

Try It Online

Not ready to set up your own printer? You can try Printercow in action by joining our live demo on Twitch. Every second Monday our demo printer goes live—no hardware required!
Check out the next stream and test Printercow’s capabilities in real time.

Installation

Prerequisites

• A thermal printer that has a USB-B connection port
• A device to run Printercow:
  • For a dedicated networked setup: a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2 or similar single-board computer.
  • For quick testing (coming soon): a computer with a USB port to run the Printercow desktop app.
• Basic command line tools (such as curl and chmod) and administrator privileges.

Printercow is designed to be self-hosted or integrated into your existing infrastructure. Choose the installation method that fits your needs.

Installation via Raspberry Pi

For a permanent, headless setup that transforms your USB thermal printer into a network device, run the following command:

sh

curl -fsSL https://printercow.com/pi/install.sh -o install.sh \
&& chmod +x install.sh \
&& sudo ./install.sh

This command downloads and executes the Printercow installer, which will configure your thermal printer as an HTTP API endpoint.

Our mission

Printercow’s core is completely free and open source. Whether you’re a hobbyist or an enterprise, you can self-host Printercow on your own infrastructure. The complete source code for Printercow will be provided once we reach a stable version.

Desktop App (Coming Soon)

Prefer a plug-and-play solution without additional hardware?
Soon you’ll be able to download the Printercow desktop app, connect your thermal printer via USB, and start printing instantly.

Up and Running

Once the installation completes:

• For Raspberry Pi setups: Printercow is configured to run as a background service and will automatically start on boot.
  To manually start or restart the service, you can use:

  sh

  sudo systemctl start printercow
  sudo systemctl restart printercow

What's Next?

• API Reference:
  Dive into our API documentation to learn how to send print jobs, customize output, and manage your printer remotely.

• Configuration Guide:
  Learn how to adjust paper widths, embed images/logos, and set custom data retention policies in our Configuration Guide.

• Advanced Use Cases:
  Explore how Printercow can power interactive applications—from printing AI-generated poems and recipes to handling high-volume receipt printing in retail and hospitality. Check out our Use Cases for more details.

• Enterprise Solutions:
  For companies requiring SLA-backed uptime, dedicated support, and fully managed infrastructure, visit our Enterprise Solutions page.

With Printercow, you’re just a few steps away from turning any thermal printer into a powerful, networked printing solution!