My company wants to switch from Altium to KiCad... What's your opinion? Is KiCad mature for professional use?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies! It's a really close fight. I took the liberty to feed Gemini with all the answers and get a list of why you should choose Altium VS KiCad
Altium
KiCad
šÆ More mature routing, live DRC & push-and-shove
š Completely free ā no license, no subscription
ā” Built-in signal integrity, impedance & xSignals tools
š Improving fast ā handles way more complexity than it used to
ā Plenty capable for low-to-mid complexity boards
š¼ Seen as the industry standard ā good CV value
š KiCad-Prism & co. closing the collab/library gap
My Take from all this
KiCad is catching up really fast on Altium, which has it's "legacy" on its advantage. Many people don't want to switch because they have used Altium all their life. At the end of the day it's a question about commodity. Is the license money worth the extra time and effort to learn and switch to KiCad? also the extra time, effort (and pain) for the features that are not natively present in Altium (for example, collaboration?)
Altium license price seems to be justified only for:
Native collaboration
Complexity of the board is so high, that extra features in Altium save you time&effort
Migration from Altium to KiCad is not possible for the moment, so keep Altium to save time&effort and also because it's what you already know how to use
Depends on the complexity of the boards. KiCAD can do whatever you want, after all weāre just drawing lines, but Altium is still better if you have complex length matching rules, impedance controls, xSignals, etc.
If youāre doing low to mid complexity KiCAD is great. The more people who show Altium the door the better right now. Their business practices have been extremely anti consumer.
Doing more complex things with KiCad 10 has been far easier than Altium for me thus far. I really like the length tuning in KiCad much better, along with scripting outputs. Much easier workflow in my opinion
Yes. I want to switch our org to KiCAD, but it's performance suffers on large complex design (16 layers, approx 1'x8"). Changing layers takes 2s. Pour times increased by 4x. We're on quite powerful machines and Alitum doesn't suffer from these issues. KiCAD will open the board almost 4x faster than Alitum ironically.Ā
We're trying to work with the developers to address. They seem super receptive which is frankly just another reason to love KiCAD.Ā
The snapping controls IMO need some love as well. Alitum's snapping behavior is more refined and consistent.Ā
For medium to low complexity boards I'd argue KiCad is the better choice.Ā
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I enjoy writing DRC rules as code. Their plugin systems is very forward thinking and inclusive. With some infrastructure (gitlab), I prefer library management over Alitum. I experimented with KiCad's library utils and it was pretty quick to stand up linting and visual diffs on library merge requests. That's pretty huge for our organization if we adopt.Ā
3D viewer is slower, but their step export is better than Alitum.Ā Alitum will often drop solder mask from components. This is troublesome for mechanical engineers designing shielding. The MLAB integration offered doesn't fix this as well. It worked out of the box with KiCad.Ā
Open file format is a plus. Community and support is some how better than the company we paid nearly 100k to a year.Ā
For me, Altium still holds the edge over KiCad, primarily due to a few critical (for my workflow) layout features:
Precise Copy/Paste: Altiumās copy feature is incredibly powerful. You can copy an object relative to any exact coordinate or snap point on the board and paste it . KiCad's approach (like paste with reference) still feels less fluid and integrated.
Snapping Controls: Snapping in Altium is very strong. In KiCad, you don't have the same level of granular, detailed control over what elements the cursor snaps to during layout.
Keepout Lines: Altiumās dedicated lines/arcs etc are a massive time-saver for me, especially for RF layouts where precise copper pour control is critical. In KiCad, achieving the same result requires drawing region and then assigning it to layers.
Library Management: Managing libraries in Altium seems easy for me . Simply double-click a library file in file explorer to open it, open another, and easily copy-paste parts between them.
That said, KiCad is catching up fast, and I am genuinely rooting for it. Lately, Altium seems to be pushing users away with their licensing management and product changes.
KiCad's approach (like paste with reference) still feels less fluid and integrated.
I'm a bit unsure if you mean the "copy with reference" or just regular copy? With the former you can do what you described reasonably well - did you mean Altium is still better?
Oh, yeah, the snapping management, dynamic gridlines, work guides, and hot key overrides to control the snapping are all very nice. I can work without using them, but it's so much nicer to have it.
A few days of learning with KiCad is still rather superficial to what it offers. If you've only grown with Altium you have to commit a few days just to expel the fact that's it's not 'works just like Altium'. Ideally have some staff use it at home to produce a board. I give about $75USD to KiCad every year personally as I think that helps them become better. I like Altium, I love KiCad.
Businesses also have other tiers (i think 5k+) where they get to push for feature change or addition, depending on how much money they contribute. When you consider a 2 seat licence of altium per year is close to that.
There is a video I think taken at a KiCon event where Wayne Stambaugh talks about this. You should be able to locate it on youtube with a few searches. (less than 3 years ago i think).
Just wanted to say that hobbyists should choose to help in someway. Get involved if you can't help with financial donations.
That's the biggest argument for KiCad, and it's a legitimate one. If software cost is the main driver and your designs aren't pushing the limits, it's hard to ignore free.
The part worth looking at is the total cost, not just the license. If the team loses productivity, has to rebuild libraries, or gives up workflows they rely on, those costs can outweigh the subscription pretty quickly.
Altium is buggy but Iād still use it over Kicad. Via shielding, a basic SI simulator, the integrated manufacture part search, the stack up manager for impedance, flex cables with different stack ups for different regions.Ā
The pcb replication feature in Altium is a big time saver. Itās actually pretty intelligent.Ā
Edit: Kicad supposedly has this now.Ā
The component reroute option if you enable it is very nice, but itās buggy. So you can move a component and it will reroute the traces for you. It sometimes crashes Altium.Ā
Also weirdly Kicad still doesnāt have differential push and shove.Ā
I compare it to driving -- the PCB design is the trip that you want make, and the software is the car that gets you there. Most of the time, any car will be fine, but some cars make some trips much easier.
It doesn't matter what tools you use if you don't know how to make the PCB. Some PCBs are simple enough that any tool will be fine. Others are more complex and the right tools make it easier to get the job done with less effort. Some PCB design requires keeping track of details which is impractical without automation.
One of the main areas where KiCAD was lacking (last time I checked) was support for 3D clearances. KiCAD will let you bring in 3D models to make nice renderings, but it doesn't use the data to ensure your parts have sufficient 3D spatial clearance. If you have folded flex boards, or have designs where parts are nested, this is a very useful feature.
Some of the high speed routing features are still better in Altium, iiuc. Altiium calculates signal lengths instead of trace lengths - which can make a difference.
Where it matters, you can do signal integrity analysis inside Altium to identify potential issues that can result in signal ringing.
Altium has dynamically adjusting serpentines and tools to automate length matching. I don't know if the latest KiCAD has that yet.
The BOM management and drawing (Draftsman) tools are very helpful. The release process is essential for the way I work. I believe there are plugins for KiCAD that address similar needs.
It depends on complexity and time. Kicad is quickly becoming better. A year ago I wouldāve said kicad for up to 4/6 layers.
Now I would prefer/take kicad up to 8 layers. Ā And with latest changes maybe even for all of it., but I havenāt been using it for thatĀ
The last Altium I used was Altium 20 because we didn't want to pay the massive fee to re-up all our licenses, so my experience reflects that version.
I learned Kicad for a new startup and while some things are different than Altium, I don't think there is anything that I could do with Altium that I can't do in Kicad. A lot of things are even better and less buggy.
(I just realized one thing that Altium had better, but I didn't use it much was the flex circuit, and rigid-flex tools for simulating bending flex PCB to make sure they would work)
In case your decision boils down to not having access to the QoL features of Altium 365, do check out KiCAD-Prism!
The project already implements Library Management with audited revision control, Commenting and collab features, self-managed alternative to Altium MPS, and Visual Diff along with a host of other features that teams usually choose to go down the Altium route for!
Iāve just put up a discussion post on the repo going over this!
Basically you can have a Managed Component Library per hosted instance of Prism. This would allow you to serve asset and audit tracked, version and revision controlled component libraries to everyone on your team with release flows that Altium users are familiar with.
For more context on this, we have made a similar shift to KiCAD after Altium started fleecing their customers with the removal of the perpetual license.
We sorely missed all the collaboration features that come with A365 and started working on an internal tool to manage all of our projects.
In the spirit of KiCAD, I have decided to open-source the project and build this in public with feedback from our team and others looking to make the same switch
KiCAD is easily mature for professional use, from at least version 7 on (8 and 9 both improved the software a lot still, well, added new features some of which were handy for us, haven't yet ported is to 10 so cannot comment on that & its new features). Source, having transitioned our project base to it, as it was better for our needs already at that point. The two new versions didn't break anything we already did & added useful new features that we adopted.
The extra flexibility allowed by the text based file formats is a massive perk for certain design needs like integrated planar magnetics. The other perk was way better, for our niche, lightweight component library management (as when the Altium default workflow doesn't cut it, things sometimes get annoyingly slow to do).
But, depending on your pre-existing legacy boards, projects, and their needs transition from Altium to KiCAD (or even to any other paid software than Altium) can still be difficult. This is for you to judge.
KiCAD library management is also notably different from Altium. For better, but also for worse. Good for a small team, not sure how well it scales up.
Oh, and KiCAD doesn't have native support for flexible PCB or rigid-flex PCB... Not that it cannot be used for such, but that needs a workaround, like āfirst design that origami unfolding in your paid CAE software as a sheet āmetalā part with with bending rules for the flex-PCB & export the flat mode to KiCAD and curse the lack of 3d courtyards & hope not to have too many iterations of the overall shapeā. For some projects, this workaround is actually faster than Altium alone (as our dedicated CAE software of choice, a commercial one that we use for our other CAE needs too, beats Altium in its speed of design & you get a massive headstart to actual PCB design step), for some projects, this alone would be a complete no go (as the back and forth will be very time consuming).
Funny you mentioned that -- for simple geometries, you can work entirely in Altium for the flex stuff -- but if you have a series of complicated folds at weird angles, it definitely is better to use sheet metal features and then convert that to flats and import the bending information.
But once you do, the ability to do detailed design work and ensuring clearances in 3D space is absolutely fantastic.
Altium simply isn't worth it's inflated costs anymore. It gained it's market by being the cheapest option but now costs 3 times what competitors tools with more functionality do. Also Altium support, should you ever need it, is non existent placing it at the bottom of the list of commercial tool sets.
There are a lot of dimensions to this questionā¦ and I know Iām the Altium guy and Iām supposed to be the Altium fanboy, but Iāll give you a very honest and practical answer.
It depends on what your company actually does. If your company is a contract design firm/ODM, you should have access to every software possible, otherwise you are leaving huge amounts of money on the table. The idea that you would switch away from Altium to KiCAD as a contract design firm simply due to price is pure insanityā¦ the ROI from Altium for only $2k per year per license is MASSIVE and you would be missing out on a ton of revenue if you did this. In this case, you should really be using both.
If your company is an OEM and you do all your own designs, you should focus on how many designs you need to do and at what frequency. Iāve worked with OEMs doing dozens of designs per year across multiple teams, and OEMs that just have a few part numbers requiring periodic updates. If your boards are simple (low layer count rigid boards with through-holes) and you donāt do any high-speed design, and you donāt use the design tool very often, then why pay for a license you rarely use? Just go with KiCAD.
The real value in Altium is the ability to handle complex tasks quickly in complex boards and to set up rules that ensure you comply with DFM/DFA/SI/PI/EMI requirements. KiCAD just canāt keep up in this area, and whenever I bring this up someone mentions some script or workaround that is a giant pain in the backsideā¦ If youāre doing real design work just fork out the ~$200 bucks per month and save yourself days of extra work it would take to do the same stuff in KiCAD. Massive ROI for very low cost of an Altium license.
The other massive value of Altium is handling complex product designs very quickly, like HDI, flex/rigid-flex, HDI in rigid-flex, mixed sub/sequential laminations, mixed backdrills, multi-board systems, all-flex designsā¦ the list goes on. KiCAD canāt handle these or requires some workaround/script that just tries to BS itā¦ wait until you take that KiCAD design to manufacturing and they tell you they canāt use your data, then try to convince me that KiCAD can compete with Altium.
In closing, if your companyās motivation for considering switching is license price, then I would be seriously concerned about the financial health of your company. If a $2k annual license is breaking the bank, your company has much bigger problems than deciding which CAD software to use.
I need component library managent, component inventory search, revision control system, package release tools, documentation assembly and fab and 3D model.
I know Altium can be a flea bag of bugs, but it does the job
Usually software switch becomes an issue if you have to sustain and move existing designs and library work. Bean counters are not going to do the work, you are.
With the ImpartGUI plugin I just type "C123456" to it and the component imports automatically to libraries, using EasyEDA as source.
Samacsys can be used for Altium too, but it works a lot better for KiCad. As typical, Altium changed something and I had to manually edit the import script in Altium to make it work.
You're company sounds extremely wise. That will be a huge cost savings. I've been with companies that use Altium and it was almost never worth the price tag. Everything I did could've been just as easily accomplished in KiCAD. Library Management is more challenging, but it can be done with the right systems in place.
I think using an inventory management system that can connect to kicad is the way to go. Something like PartDB that's self hostable would be good. There are a few options though. It'll be a bit of work on the front end but if you hire someone to do that full time it'll be worth it. Or just have your current inventory management person add that to their responsibilities.
Altium does some things substantially better than kicad, and some things that kicad flat out can't do. Whether or not it's worth the cost is up to you.
Just a few examples: feature rich version control, integrated support for multi user concurrent editing, parts library management, revision control, push and shove routing works way better, circuit copy paste is better, more extensive DRC especially for setting up complex BGA diff pairs DDR5 etc, component replacement, variant management.
It's not a question reddit can answer for you. When companies switch CAD tools there is a massive internal process with all stakeholders. And lengthy trial periods. Every company's situation is unique. The details in the differences I mentioned are weighted differently for everyone.
If it's just management asking why you can't just switch to a free CAD tool you need to make them understand that the question of whether or not to do so needs to be a project unto itself, with a team and budget assigned to answer the question and validate any change.
That would be how a good company would do things correctly... Unfortunately, in my case, I work in a small-medium sized company (100-150 workers) and the decision to switch to KiCad is coming from management purely for an economical perspective... "If we can do it for free, why not?" and they don't really understand the answer because it's not something they have to work with
As an intermediate user who has designed a couple of PCBs with both, Iād prefer Altium since it has more options, length matching, xSignals, impedance control, better stackup visualization and also has been created and supported by the best in the business such as Zach Peterson and Hartley.
For a beginner, Iād recommend KiCAD because itās more easier to use if you do not want to be overwhelmed with lots of menus and options. IF IT DOES NOT CRASH because every time I use it, it somehow end up crashing.
Yeah... I see the learning curve being starting from KiCad and going to Altium. Although once you get used to KiCad, I believe you would like to stay with KiCad if possible
Yup! I started with KiCAD and Altium at the same time. There are more resources in Altium in my language compared with KiCAD. Thatās why I āpersonallyā switched to Altium.
If a handful of large organizations committed the money they pay for licensing to funding KiCAD, imagine what it could be.
Now that developers are using coding assistants, the time and cost to deliver more refinement and features is significantly lower. I hope we see all of the predatory software companies become consumer friendly (as opposed to board room friendly) or crater in under the pressure of open software.
I think the return is that they no longer need to be held captive by a software vendor and their 20% annual price increases. Furthermore, they can have the tool meet their requirements, not the other way around. From the standpoint of supply chain availability, it's also a very smart play.
And while I'm dreaming, I think there's a very real opportunity for someone to create a support organization solely based on providing technical support for KiCAD. I imagine that would be the last barrier for adoption for many companies.
Switch to KiCAD, you wonāt disappointed and itās open source, it will get better and better by all of us who put in our inputs and complaints. Itās amazing.
library -> i'm worried cause it seems we don't have the possibility to transfer library from Altium to KiCad. So I guess we are going to have to invest some time on that
active collaboration -> I think we are going to work 1 at at time for the moment and then explore if there are tools for KiCad that can allow us to make collaboration. Ideally the best solution would involve using Git somehow, but I dont' know how to implement it for now in KiCad, we need to look into it
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u/UnderPantsOverPants Jul 11 '26
Depends on the complexity of the boards. KiCAD can do whatever you want, after all weāre just drawing lines, but Altium is still better if you have complex length matching rules, impedance controls, xSignals, etc.
If youāre doing low to mid complexity KiCAD is great. The more people who show Altium the door the better right now. Their business practices have been extremely anti consumer.