TL;DR
If you live in North America: Perler. If you live in Europe or Japan: Hama. If you live in mainland China or want the widest palette in the world: Artkal. If you want a softer, more vintage colour range: MARD. All four melt and behave similarly when ironed — the choice mostly comes down to what's in stock locally and which colours you need.
Palette breadth
Artkal wins outright with 300+ colours including ample neons, glitters and pastels. Perler comes in second around 150. Hama focuses tightly on roughly 60 well-curated colours, which actually makes mixing them simpler. MARD sits between Hama and Perler and leans warm. For SEO-able "every Perler colour" type queries, our /colors pages list each brand's full palette with hex codes.
Ironing temperature & timing
All four brands fuse cleanly between 150–180°C with a household iron and a sheet of baking paper. Lower temperatures with longer dwell time (~25–35s) gives a flatter, more even fuse than blasting at max heat. Always iron in a circular motion to avoid scorching one spot.
Cross-brand mixing
You CAN mix brands in a single pattern, but watch out: bead pitches and heights vary by ~0.1–0.2mm between brands, which becomes visible after fusing. If you must mix, group adjacent beads from the same brand. Bitbead's per-colour breakdown lets you spot-check whether a pattern uses just one brand.