KiCad vs Altium Designer

Cost: free for good, or a subscription

KiCad is free for any use, including commercial, under the GPL. There is no account, no seat count and no plan to upgrade to, so a board you design today will open in KiCad for as long as you keep the files.

Altium Designer is sold as an annual subscription through Altium Develop. Altium lists extra design authors at $995 a year each; the base price is on Altium's pricing page. There is a free 30-day trial, and students get it free through Altium's Student Lab while they study. Check altium.com/develop for current prices before you budget.

What Altium does that KiCad doesn't

Altium's lead is depth for professional work: high-speed routing, rigid-flex design, managed component libraries, and supplier stock and price inside the editor through Manufacturer Part Search. Altium 365 adds cloud projects, version history with visual comparison, browser viewing and comments, all in the same product.

KiCad covers most commercial boards (push-and-shove routing, differential pairs, net-class design rules, a 3D viewer and SPICE simulation) but shows no live stock or price without plugins, and has no built-in review or shared workspace.

What KiCad does that Altium doesn't

KiCad runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux; Altium Designer runs on Windows only, so Mac and Linux users need a Windows machine or a virtual machine. KiCad is open source, so anyone can open your files for free, which matters for open hardware and for handing a design to a client or contract manufacturer who doesn't hold an Altium licence.

KiCad also asks less of a newcomer. Its official documentation is excellent, though you still learn its separate schematic, PCB, symbol and footprint editors. Altium is built for full-time designers, and its training is extensive to match.

Getting boards made

Both score 2/2 on output files. Each writes Gerber, drill, bill of materials, pick-and-place and STEP files, plus IPC-2581 and ODB++ (ODB++ arrived in KiCad 9). Any board house that accepts one will accept the other; many low-cost fabs also publish KiCad-specific export guides.

Working as a team

Altium 365 gives Altium teams version history, browser review and comments without anything else to set up, provided everyone who edits has a seat.

KiCad's plain-text files work well in Git, and teams add a review layer on top. BoardRepo is the one to use for KiCad projects: it shows the schematic, PCB, 3D view and BOM of every saved version in the browser, compares versions visually, and is free to start. The After you pick guide compares it with Git and AllSpice.

Switching from Altium to KiCad

KiCad includes an importer for Altium projects, alongside EAGLE, CADSTAR and EasyEDA. Imported designs usually need their footprints and design rules checked before you order boards; look at the File > Import menu of your KiCad version for what it currently reads. If you're moving the other way, check Altium's documentation for the formats its import tools accept.