Best PCB Design Software
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Compare the Top PCB Design Software as of November 2025
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What is PCB Design Software?
PCB design software is software used for designing and laying out circuit boards. It allows users to quickly create and modify electrical components, as well as simulate potential designs. In addition, the software can be used to generate models and images of PCBs that can be shared with colleagues or printed for physical hardware manufacture. PCB design software offers an intuitive graphical user interface which makes it easy to learn even for non-technical users. Some of the features include auto-routers, track editing tools, control over component placement, 3D visualizations, and fabrication output formats. Compare and read user reviews of the best PCB Design software currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
Altium Develop
Altium
Altium Develop is a multidisciplinary product creation platform that breaks down silos and empowers teams to design collaboratively without limits. Built on Altium Designer and Altium 365, it unifies electrical, mechanical, software, sourcing, and manufacturing teams in a shared environment. Every comment, change, and decision is captured in real time, giving collaborators visibility without the need for constant check-ins. The platform enhances project outcomes by aligning requirements, supply chain data, and design context in one ecosystem. Manufacturing engineers and suppliers can provide feedback early, avoiding costly rework and delays. By transforming collaboration into true co-creation, Altium Develop helps organizations innovate faster, smarter, and with greater alignment across disciplines.Starting Price: 995/year/author -
2
OrCAD X
Cadence Design Systems
OrCAD® X is a unified PCB design software platform that offers significant improvements in ease of use, performance, automation, data management, and collaboration. Our cloud-enabled product suite contains applications for schematic, simulation, and PCB layout. OrCAD X Capture is one of the most widely used schematic design solutions for the creation and documentation of electrical circuits. PSpice® is our virtual SPICE simulation environment integrated within Capture that allows you to prototype your designs using the industry-leading, native analog, mixed-signal, and advanced analysis engines to deliver a complete circuit simulation and verification solution. Our two PCB layout environments, OrCAD X PCB Editor and OrCAD X Presto, allow designers to easily collaborate between ECAD/MCAD teams and build better PCBs faster. OrCAD X Presto is a new user-friendly option offering a simpler interface for quick-turn PCB design.Starting Price: $107 USD/month -
3
CircuitMaker
Altium
CircuitMaker is not just a free EDA software tool from Altium, it’s also a community of creative people and design content, working together to invent circuits and electronics products for a better future. For turning great ideas into real products, you need design tools that won’t limit your imagination or hold you back. CircuitMaker has all the power you need to design high quality schematics and Printed Circuit Boards, with no artificial limits on layer counts or board area. Best of all it’s free. The CircuitMaker community is where you will find great reference designs, and be able to promote and rate other projects in the community. You can even set up teams for collaborative design efforts. We think you deserve better design tools, made specifically for you, to turn great ideas into reality. That’s why we’ve created CircuitMaker. Besides being a collaborative community for electronic design content, CircuitMaker is Schematic & PCB design software. -
4
DipTrace
DipTrace
PCB Layout is a high-level engineering tool for board design featuring smart manual routing of high-speed and differential signals, shape-based autorouter, advanced verification, and wide import/export capabilities. Design requirements are defined by net classes, class-to-class rules, and detailed settings by object types for each class or layer. DipTrace features design process with real-time DRC, which reports errors on the fly before actually making them. The board can be previewed in 3D and exported for mechanical CAD modeling. Design rule check with in-depth detailing, net connectivity verification, and comparing to source schematic ensure maximum quality of the final product. DipTrace is a single environment with direct circuit-to-board converting, updating from schematic, and back annotation. Nets are divided to net classes with custom settings and class-to-class rules. Through and blind/buried vias are organized to via styles.Starting Price: $75 per license -
5
PCB123
Sunstone Circuits
PCB123 is a full-feature design tool for Printed Circuit Board designers of all levels. Introduced as a free tool in 2002, PCB123 still operates on a risk-sharing business model: We don't get paid until you succeed at designing your PCB. And to help ensure your success, we staff our technical support department with professionals that can answer your questions. So what's to stop you? Easy-to-use, and professional-grade PCB CAD software that's free and fully supported. We don’t throttle our tool and charge you for a license to give you full functionality. We get paid when you order boards – it really is that simple. software developer’s kit, with programmatic access to the PCB123 database, you can expand the tool for your own purposes. Our PCB layout specialists are available to help you stretch your resource dollars & speed your PCB prototyping cycle. Submit basic design information to get a quote.Starting Price: $0 -
6
CircuitStudio
Altium
Quickly design advanced board layouts with interactive routing and the intelligent Situs™ Autorouting technology. Effortlessly collaborate with your mechanical design team with Native 3D™ PCB editing and STEP MCAD support. Accurately simulate and ship advanced electronics with integrated XSPICE analog & digital simulation. Quickly transform your ideas into reality with hierarchical schematic capturing and constraint-driven PCB layout technology. Instantly begin work on your next design project with an easy-to-use interface and customizable workflow. Take advantage of your complete design history with Altium designer and EAGLE compatibility. Never miss another deadline with real-time component pricing and availability data from hundreds of suppliers. Quickly create custom parts in a snap with included parametrics and datasheets from the Circuitstudio content library.Starting Price: $495 per license -
7
Pad2Pad
Pad2Pad
Don’t complicate things by using multiple vendors to get finished boards. Pad2Pad will manufacture and assemble PCB’s for you or your business. Design, price and order your PCB’s using our free PCB design software or get an instant quote and upload your gerber file(s) to place your order. Whether for a personal project or commercial application, Pad2Pad is the comprehensive solution for design, manufacturing, and assembly of custom circuit boards. Whether you are an inventor needing a single bare PCB or a business seeking 100,000 assembled boards, Pad2Pad will smoothly move your design from layout to final product. Circuit testing and high-quality production standards are pillars of the PCB manufacturing industry. -
8
Proteus
Labcenter Electronics Limited
We started developing Proteus way back in the days of MS-DOS. Over 30 years of constant development later we're proud to offer one of the most productive and cost effective PCB tools on the market. Our philosophy has always been one of continuous improvement and innovation resulting in a modern software suite packed full of powerful, time-saving features to help you design PCBs faster. Purchasing Proteus is the start - not the end - of a successful business relationship. Included with the cost of the software comes a world class technical support service. After each professional purchase one of our team will introduce themselves as your technical support point of contact. This gives you an easy way to ask questions and direct access to Labcenter support. We may not be able to solve every problem immediately but we'll certainly try our best. Our customers are the reason for our success.Starting Price: $6,592 one-time payment -
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Autodesk Fusion 360
Autodesk
Fusion 360 unifies design, engineering, electronics, and manufacturing into a single software platform. Get integrated CAD, CAM, CAE & PCB on a single development platform. Also includes EAGLE Premium, HSMWorks, Team Participant, and access to consumptive services, such as generative design, cloud simulation, and cloud rendering. Engineer products with a comprehensive set of modeling tools. Ensure form, fit, and function of your products with various analysis methods. Create and edit sketches with sketch constraints, dimensions, and a powerful suite of sketch tools. Edit or repair imported geometry from non-native file formats. Make design changes without worrying about time-based features. Create and edit complex parametric surfaces for repairing, patching or designing geometry. Create history-based features, including extrude, revolve, loft, sweep, etc., that update with design changes.Starting Price: $495 per year -
10
Allegro X Design Platform
Cadence Design Systems
The Cadence Allegro X Design Platform is the ultimate solution for navigating modern electronic complexities that help support your diverse PCB design needs. As a full-stack engineering platform, it provides a scalable and highly integrated environment for multi-board electronic system design. Allegro X ensures that your global teams can effectively and concurrently collaborate to minimize project risks, lower production costs, and ensure design compliance and standards are met. Electrical engineers and PCB designers can make data-driven decisions with access to constraints and integrated analysis workflows reducing turnaround time while ensuring product reliability, manufacturing, and first pass success.Starting Price: Available Upon Request -
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Autodesk EAGLE
Autodesk
EAGLE is electronic design automation (EDA) software that lets printed circuit board (PCB) designers seamlessly connect schematic diagrams, component placement, PCB routing, and comprehensive library content. Bring your design to life with a wide range of PCB layout tools in EAGLE. Drag and drop reusable design blocks between your projects, complete with synchronized schematic and PCB circuitry. Validate your schematic design with a complete set of electronic rule checks, so your schematic can stay on track. All changes stay automatically in sync between your schematic and layout, so you can focus on the creative process. Control your design flow and avoid unexpected surprises with fully customizable PCB design rules and constraints. Worry-free libraries are ready for your next design. Find and place parts dynamically linked to our growing catalog.Starting Price: $60 per month -
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Ultiboard
NI
Ultiboard is printed circuit board design and layout software that integrates seamlessly with Multisim to accelerate PCB prototype development. Ultiboard software offers efficient PCB design layout and routing with a customizable environment. You can use its flexible tools to place parts and copper with manual precision to define critical board elements. With its automated functionality, you can quickly complete a design. The advanced spreadsheet view, toolbox, and design wizards help you easily manage, control, and define any board layout. Seamless integration with Multisim software provides simple schematic transfer to PCB, and forward and backward annotation ensures design iteration management. You can easily export industry-standard file formats such as Gerber and DXF to complete the design flow from schematic to layout. From data and automation to research and validation, our tailored, software-connected approach is rooted in helping you engineer what’s next.Starting Price: $ 2,816 -
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BluePrint-PCB
DownStream
BluePrint-PCB® works your PCB CAD system and/or CAM350® to help you quickly produce comprehensive electronic drawings to drive PCB fabrication, assembly and inspection processes. BluePrint-PCB “knows” it is creating a PCB document and imports the entire PCB CAD database once to automatically create and link unlimited PCB views and details, while at the same time maintaining the design intelligence and overcoming the constraints imposed by both PCB and mechanical CAD alternatives. The result is an electronic document which better articulates the instructions for successful PCB manufacturing. Automatically create PCB views, details, and tables from PCB CAD data. Remove constraints of PCB CAD but retain design intelligence. Use PCB intelligence to create common drawing elements. Create live and interactive documentation with hyperlinks and multi-media. Store all information associated with the PCB assembly in one electronic “release package”. -
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SOLIDWORKS PCB
SOLIDWORKS
SOLIDWORKS PCB enables the productivity you need to design Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) quickly along with unique, collaboration between electrical and 3D mechanical design teams. It offers a clear advantage where ECAD-MCAD collaboration is critical for overall success of electronic product design. Define rigid-flex regions, layers, and stack thicknesses enabling single board rigid-flex PCB design. The rigid-flex layer stack regions can be defined with bend lines and angles and validated with 3D folding and component clearance checking to ensure layout correctness. Manage project, design files and documentation with SOLIDWORKS PCB-PDM Connector and the SOLIDWORKS PDM-based design and data management workflow. Securely store and index design data for fast retrieval, eliminate concerns over version control and data loss, and collaborate on design data from multiple locations. Unmatched ECAD-MCAD integration and collaboration with SOLIDWORKS that unifies design data. -
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PCB Artist
Advanced Circuits
Professional-grade online PCB design software with free live technical support. PCB artist includes features such as multi-page schematics and Netlist import. Advanced circuits' online PCB design software is not only easy to use, it is absolutely the best free PCB layout software available! Our customers tell us one of the reasons they love doing business with us is because of our PCB design software. When it comes to designing printed circuit boards, we help you get it done right, and that saves you time and money down the line. -
16
PADS Professional
Siemens
As electronics content increases, so does design complexity. This video offers insights into how PADS Professional delivers powerful PCB design capabilities in an affordable and easy-to-deploy solution for hardware engineers. The Siemens portfolio enables the digital transformation of electronic systems design. See how it is best positioned to deliver digitally integrated product ideation platforms for the next market-winning products. Join this experience to learn more! Create a design from start to finish, and see how easy it is to use its advanced technology including rigid-flex design, RF design, and advanced routing, including HDI and area rules, to help get your job done faster! Intuitive project and design navigation, complete hierarchical support, and advanced tools for rules and attribute management help you meet your PCB design goals. -
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PathWave RFIC Design
Keysight Technologies
Go beyond traditional RF simulation to design, analyze, and verify radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). Achieve confidence with steady-state and nonlinear solvers for design and verification. Wireless standard libraries accelerate the validation of complex RFICs. Before taping out an RFIC, verification of IC specifications via RF simulation is a must. Simulations include effects of layout parasitics, complex modulated signals, and digital control circuitry. With PathWave RFIC Design, you can simulate in both the frequency and time domain and bring your designs to and from Cadence Virtuoso. Accurately model components on silicon chips. Optimize designs with sweeps and load-pull analysis. Integrate RF designs in the Cadence Virtuoso environment. Increase performance using Monte Carlo and yield analysis. Simplify debugging with safe operating area warnings. Utilize the latest foundry technology immediately. -
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PathWave EM Design
Keysight Technologies
Electromagnetic (EM) simulation brings you insight before physical prototyping. Customize EM simulations for speed and accuracy. Integrate EM analysis with your circuit simulations. EM simulations can take hours to run. Shorten your import and export time by integrating your EM simulation software with PathWave Circuit Design software. Integrate EM analysis with circuit simulations to maximize efficiency. 3D EM solid modeling environment for creating arbitrary 3D objects and importing existing 3D models from other CAD environments. Prerequisite for preparing a 3D geometry for 3DEM simulation by defining ports, boundary conditions and material properties. 3D EM solid modeling environment and Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulator. Compliance testing for Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and Hearing Aid Compatibility (HAC). -
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PathWave RF Synthesis
Keysight Technologies
Analyze RF and microwave circuits and systems with fast simulation and powerful optimization tools. Explore performance trade-offs with automatic circuit synthesis technology. PathWave RF Synthesis (Genesys) provides entry-level functionality suitable for all RF and microwave circuit board and subsystem designers. Identify RF design errors missed by traditional spreadsheet calculations with PathWave Circuit Design. With this entry-level design environment — including circuit, system, and electromagnetic simulators — you will gain confidence in your design reviews before hardware realization. Just a few mouse clicks and you can watch as your matching network is synthesized and optimized automatically. Then, transfer the design to PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) for inclusion into a more complex design. -
20
FloWare
FlowCAD
FloWare is a bunch of useful tool enhancements which increase productivity in CAD Flow and PCB Design with OrCAD and Allegro. These enhancements have been created to meet the specific needs of customers in the fields of Setup, Display, Edit, Draft, Shapes, Check/Review, Documentation, etc. Installation of FloWare modules is a simple process and does not require any expert knowledge. Installation process includes a wizard and guides you through the FloWare installation process. Menu structures are automatically recognized by PCB Editor and shown in the tool bar. Simply choose from the available modules according to your needs and increase PCB design productivity. The license is distributed by e-mail and is valid for the site of your company location. Each module provides a detailed documentation. -
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Pulsonix
Pulsonix
Automatically heal damaged copper areas during interactive editing. User-defined design selections can be easily refined. Interactively move components and enclosures in the 3D environment with real-time clash detection of violations. When your technology requirements are such; benefit from advanced technology features such as flexi-rigid design, embedded components, and chip-on-board to provide you with the functionality you require. Use our standard or create your own extensive BOM, pick and place, PCB acceptance reports, and netlists in a number of different formats with ease from Pulsonix. Unique to Pulsonix, construction lines provide user-definable lines within your design from which to guide your design items. Using construction lines you can create complex board outlines or align irregular shapes and design items. Define rules for automatically creating naming conventions for new and existing styles. -
22
Numerical Cloud
Numerical Innovations Inc.
With the Numerical Cloud, you get all the professional CAM / DFM / 3D Software Tools and Translators you need at an affordable cost. FAB 3000 - Professional Gerber, Editor, PCB Panelize and DFM Verification Software ACE 2D/3D Translator - The Easiest CAD/EDA/3D Conversion tool available EasyGerb for AutoCAD 2025 - AutoCAD Plug-in that's runs directly inside AutoCAD ACE for FUJIFILM Dimatix Printers - The Original OEM Conversion software built specifically for Fujifilm Dimatix printers. Runs Legacy Tools - FAB 3000 V7, EasyGerb V7, ACE 3000 V7 3D STEP and STL Translators The Numerical Cloud is our most valuable and affordable solution for all engineers! Use it when you need it - Includes Support - No Contract - Cancel Anytime. This is based on an auto-renewal / recurring credit card subscription.Starting Price: $74.99 -
23
FAB 3000
Numerical Innovations Inc.
The Most Easy to Use Gerber Editor, Panelization, & DFM Tool Available. FAB 3000 is a "Full-Featured" CAM software package targeted for anyone who would like to have "high-end" CAM software to run advanced DRC/DFM verifications, generate component centroids, create SMT Stencil pads, and perform many other useful features. Get ALL the power of those other CAM tools costing thousands of dollars for a fraction of the price. Available as a Subscription License or Perpetual License for an individual or team of engineers - both are affordable solutions for all levels of PCB Engineering - Beginner / Hobbyists to the Most Experienced PCB Engineer.Starting Price: $74.99/user/month -
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CR-8000 Design Force
ZUKEN
Break down the boundaries of your electrical design process with Design Force, a true innovation in system-level IC package and PCB design and analysis. As the process for designing a complete product continues to increase in complexity, it often includes technologies that have become difficult and sometimes impossible for most ECAD tools to manage and address. Design Force provides the ability for design teams to take system-level design information from as early as the conceptual and planning phase and layout each board in the product, simultaneously considering the entire system view. Design Force fully leverages the latest industry hardware and software capabilities, allowing users to design in a native 3D environment, obtaining optimal performance by utilizing native 64-bit, multi-threading, multi-core processors. Design Force supports multiple client-server implementations and includes the ability to work from your corporate cloud. -
25
Ansys HFSS
Ansys
Multipurpose, full wave 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulation software for designing and simulating high-frequency electronic products such as antennas, components, interconnects, connectors, ICs and PCBs. Ansys HFSS is a 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulation software for designing and simulating high-frequency electronic products such as antennas, antenna arrays, RF or microwave components, high-speed interconnects, filters, connectors, IC packages and printed circuit boards. Engineers worldwide use Ansys HFSS software to design high-frequency, high-speed electronics found in communications systems, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), satellites, and internet-of-things (IoT) products. HFSS’s unmatched capacity, coupled with indisputable accuracy, enables engineers to address RF, microwave, IC, PCB and EMI problems for most complex systems. The Ansys HFSS simulation suite consists of a comprehensive set of solvers to address diverse electromagnetic problems. -
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Ansys PathFinder
Ansys
Ansys PathFinder-SC is a high-capacity solution to help you plan, verify and sign-off IP and full-chip SoC designs for integrity and robustness against electrostatic discharge (ESD). Ansys PathFinder-SC identifies and isolates the root causes of design issues that can cause chip failure from charged-device model (CDM), human body model (HBM), or other ESD events. It’s high-capacity, cloud-native architecture can enlist thousands of compute cores for fast full-chip turnaround. PathFinder-SC is certified by major foundries for current density checks and ESD sign-off. PathFinder-SC’s integrated data modeling, extraction and transient simulation engine is an end-to end solution for ESD verification. The single-pass use model reads industry-standard design formats, sets up ESD rules, extracts the RCs for the power network, and performs ESD simulations to analyze root causes and provide fix and optimization feedback, all within a single tool. -
27
CAM350
CAM350
CAM350® is the industry de facto standard for verification, optimization and output generation to efficiently and effectively drive PCB fabrication and part of the truly integrated manufacturing data preparation solution from DownStream Technologies. Today’s complex PCB designs require comprehensive verification before they are transferred to the PCB fabricator to ensure a successful and timely manufacture of bare boards. Problems arising during PCB fabrication can drastically impact product schedules, result in costly design re-spins, and require modifications to the design that might compromise the design’s integrity and intent. Inspecting, preparing and validating the PCB design prior to release to manufacturing will result in a significant increase in efficiency, less risk of design re-spin, and, most importantly, successful electronic products, built faster, at less cost. -
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DFMStream
DownStream
3D visualization and documentation of manufacturing data helps to minimize manufacturing defects and delays in production. DFMStream® is a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use tool suite designed to help engineers and designers analyze, verify and optimize a PCB design for successful manufacturing. It checks design and manufacturing rules on PCB design databases, Gerber and NC data any time during the PCB design cycle. DFMStream also fosters collaboration between engineer/designer and fabricator. PCB designs that pass standard design rule verification within the PCB CAD system, may unknowingly contain critical flaws that derail an expedient transition to manufacturing and assembly. Commonly, the flaws are discovered prior to production when design data is being processed for PCB manufacturing or assembly. In many cases, these flaws result in costly time to market delays as designs are updated and reprocessed to address issues detected in pre-production. -
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ExpressPCB Plus
ExpressPCB
ExpressPCB is excited to introduce several new enhancements to our ExpressPCB Plus software! With the addition of Schematic Link and Netlist Validation tools to Plus, we provide peace of mind in the validation of your design from schematic to layout prior to manufacturing. Provides the ability to link the schematic netlist in ExpressSCH to the PCB layout in ExpressPCB Plus. Added a “Net Connection” tool to allow users to highlight connected pads in a net from the linked schematic to assist in board layout. Provides validation of the full ExpressPCB Plus layout for equivalence to the ExpressSCH schematic netlist. Provides error reporting for missing or additional components, pins, connections, or other design elements. Allows users to highlight errors, with option to zoom to location. Allows users to correct errors, and validate edits in one easy tool. Error reporting export capability in Microsoft Excel format. -
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Ansys Path FX
Ansys
Ansys Path FX allows you to calculate timing with variation on a full SoC, without taking any shortcuts. Its unique cell modeling delivers SPICE accuracy timing for any voltage or variation condition with a single library. Path FX has a fully threaded and distributed architecture, with the ability to scale to thousands of CPUs. Ansys Path FX’s path-based timing analysis has the technology to account for all critical contributors to delay and constraints across multiple process, voltage, temperature corners and scenarios. It can also automatically identify and simulate every clock path in your design. Two of the biggest challenges facing successful chip design today are limiting the power consumption through lower supply voltages and managing the complexity of advanced silicon processes at 7nm and below.