  We present a comprehensive study on anisotropic magnetocaloric porperties of
the van der Waals weak-itinerant ferromagnet Fe$_{3-x}$GeTe$_2$ that features
gate-tunable room-temperature ferromagnetism in few-layer device. Intrinsic
magnetocrystalline anisotropy is observed to be temperature-dependent and most
likely favors the long-range magnetic order in thin Fe$_{3-x}$GeTe$_2$ crsytal.
The magnetic entropy change $-\Delta S_M$ also reveals an anisotropic
characteristic between $H // ab$ and $H // c$, which could be well scaled into
a universal curve. The peak value $-\Delta S_M^{max}$ of 1.20 J kg$^{-1}$
K$^{-1}$ and the corresponding adiabatic temperature change $\Delta T_{ad}$ of
0.66 K are deduced from heat capacity with out-of-plane field change of 5 T. By
fitting of the field-dependent parameters of $-\Delta S_M^{max}$ and the
relative cooling power RCP, it gives $-\Delta S_M^{max} \propto H^n$ with $n =
0.603(6)$ and $RCP \propto H^m$ with $m = 1.20(1)$ when $H // c$. Given the
high and tunable $T_c$, Fe$_{3-x}$GeTe$_2$ crystals are of interest for
fabricating the heterostructure-based spintronics device.
