If you use primary cells, dont expect any replication. Macrophages are terminated, and therefore dont replicate anymore. Addition of M-CSF prevents apoptosis (Supernantant of L929 cells is a cheap source for this). If you want to get many cells back, use teflon-coated plastic dishes. That enables the cells to losly adhere (which they need), but also enables you to get them off easy. Again, this is only for primary cells. Check David Humes articles on macrophages, lot of useful details in there.

I used RPMI when culturing primary human monocyte derived macrophages, supplemented with 5-10% human serum.  If you are using cell lines you can try adding more serum to see if they grow faster.

I am working with primary cultured macrophages and  I am using RPMI plus 20% FBS which is working for us

I use RAW264.7 cell line RPMI + 10% FBS works for us. 

with the human monocyte i use RPMI medium with glutamine + 10% FBS, and you can have  a good confluency in 4 days if you start with 104 cells

The question posed is somewhat confusing.  In general monocytes are terminally differentiated or close to this.  Overall the goal is to avoid apoptosis with the addition of GM-CSF or better M-CSF.  We differentiate monocytes into dendritic cells using CellGenix DC media, although Lonza's X-VIVO-15 media is also commonly used.  Both of these are serum free.  If GMP is not a concern any serum can be used.  We have found that if you are isolating monocytes by adherence FBS works better than human serum.  Some author have a preference for FBS combined with equine serum.  Having said this growth, should this occur, and maintenance of viability will require growth factors.  In addition, there is lot to lot variance in serum so you might want to test 5 to 10 different lots to find the one that works best for you. 

RPMI-1640 medium is fine. Personally, I prefer to avoid to add bovine proteins to human cells and suggest to work in an homogenous setting (i.e. human cells with human serum). There are examples in literature showing that some observations made in the presence of human serum cannot be not made in fetal calf serum (e.g. FCS miss Vitamin D3 precursor). For mice, we are in trouble since mouse serum turns off the responsiveness of murine macrophages ! Maintenance and tests may require different cell culture media. Surprisingly, some short cultures for certain cytokine inductions are more efficient with no or very low amounts of serum (0.2%) than with higher amounts.

If you use primary cells, dont expect any replication. Macrophages are terminated, and therefore dont replicate anymore. Addition of M-CSF prevents apoptosis (Supernantant of L929 cells is a cheap source for this). If you want to get many cells back, use teflon-coated plastic dishes. That enables the cells to losly adhere (which they need), but also enables you to get them off easy. Again, this is only for primary cells. Check David Humes articles on macrophages, lot of useful details in there.

To follow-up on Dr Werling's comment if you are culturing large numbers of monocytes there are Teflon bags (Saint Gobain, which used to be Afc) that allows the culture of apheresis numbers of cells. 

RPMI-1640+10% FBS works best!

We also use the same medium described by Medhanie Alene. You can try 

Good luck

RPMI-1640 + 10% SFB

Any rich medium is good. The richer the medium - the more chance of infection in culture.

RPMI 1640+10% serum is good. For older cultures more serum concentration may be helpful.

I also think that the medium which is described by colleagues Alene most acceptable, at least for me!

We culture primarily human primary macrophages and use 1640 RPMI with 10% FBS and 5% human AB, and also add 10 ng/mL of M-CSF. We have tried other culture conditions, varying the amount of M-CSF and the percentages of serum and find that while this can cause some variation in the results, the variation is relatively small compared to the inter-donor variation we see in humans.

I have also seen a number of publications that use DMEM instead of RPMI for macrophages, but the times I have tried it we have not seen much of a difference in the function of the cells, although I have only tried it 1 or 2 times. 

Just a few comments to add here. Use DMEM (correct osmolarity for mouse cells) at 10% CO2 and RPMI-1640 at 5% CO2. Mouse macs will grow in either basal media. Mouse macs are typically generated in RPMI/10% FBS/glutamine plus 100 ng/mL murine or human CSF-1. L929 conditioned media (CM) can be used instead of recombinant CSF-1. Use the CM it at 30%. Mouse macs respond to either mouse or human CSF-1 and absolutely require it for development (maturation) and survival. For human macrophage, its a bit more complicated for various reasons. For one, when using human serum (10%), there is no requirement to add human CSF-1 (BTW, they don't respond to mouse CSF-1). So either its the CSF-1 in human serum or the cells are being "tickled" to produce their own CSF-1. When using 10% FBS, the yields are much better if you add human CSF-1 (20-50 ng/mL). The best way to establish what works best for you is to test it yourself empirically. Lastly, culture mouse (bone marrow cells) macs on "low-binding" (Ultra Low Attachment Surface) plastic plates from Corning. They will come off easy using 1 mM EDTA in PBS. But never culture human monocytes on this plastic, it tickles them the wrong way. Just use non-TC-treated plastic plates and remove cells with Accutase (15 minutes, then pipet, and then scrape off remaining cells).

Kenneth Brasel very useful info. Do you know what product for human CSF you have used and might recommend?

this is all very useful. what do you coat your plates with for primary mouse macrophage culture?

Marissa Scavuzzo , you don't need to coat the plates (as long as they are TC treated already). Monocytes, eventually macros, will stick to the plates quite quickly.