Open Source KiCad AlternativesTop Electronic Design Automation Tools & Circuit Simulators like KiCad

The best open source alternative to KiCad is Fritzing. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try LibrePCB or eSim. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to KiCad and 15 is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to KiCad are Horizon EDA, gEDA Project, MeowCAD and atopile.

filter to find the best alternatives

KiCad alternatives are mainly Circuit Simulators, but if you're looking for Electronic Design Automation Tools or Circuit Designers you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Android, Mac, iPad and Open Source. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to KiCad.
Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard
KiCad alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. Fritzing icon
     109 likes

    Open-source initiative aiding designers, artists, and researchers in transforming prototypes to actual products, documenting circuits, sharing, teaching, and PCB manufacturing.

    57 Fritzing alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • AppImageHub
    • Flathub
    • Haiku
     
    |
    14
  2. LibrePCB icon
     22 likes

    LibrePCB is a free EDA software to develop printed circuit boards. It’s currently under heavy development to bring out first stable releases as soon as possible.

    52 LibrePCB alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
     
    |
    7
  3. eSim icon
     4 likes

    eSim (previously known as Oscad / FreeEDA) is an open source EDA tool for circuit design, simulation, analysis and PCB design.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  4. Horizon EDA icon
     2 likes

    Horizon is a free EDA package. Contribute to carrotIndustries/horizon development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  5. gEDA Project icon
     26 likes

    The gEDA project has produced and continues working on a full GPL'd suite and toolkit of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and production.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
     
  6. MeowCAD icon
     3 likes

    MeowCAD is an online free and open source electronic design application tool. Its focus is on schematic and PCB design for electronic circuits.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  7. atopile icon
     1 like

    atopile is a language and toolchain to describe electronic circuit boards with code. By replacing the point and click schematic interface with code, we introduce software development workflows like reuse, validation and automation to the world of electronics.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • Windows
    • BSD
    • Python
     
  8. Circuit Diagram is a free application for making electronic circuit diagrams and exporting them as images. Design circuits online in your browser or using the desktop application.

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Online
     
  9. This electronic circuit simulator is highly interactive giving the feeling of playing with real components. It's very helpful for experimentation and visualization. It's a desktop version of the Circuit JS.

    34 CircuitJS1 Desktop Mod alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  10. PCB Elegance icon
     1 like

    PCB Elegance is a suite of circuit board design tools for Windows. Including schematic capture, board layout, and manufacturing file generation. First released in 1998, it was proprietary software until 2012, when it was released as open source software under the GPL.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Windows
     
  11. pcb-rnd icon
     1 like

    pcb-rnd is a free/open source, flexible, modular Printed Circuit Board editor for design of professional and hobby boards. It has a strong UNIX mind set.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • FreeBSD
    • NetBSD
    • OpenBSD
     
  12. Coulomb icon
     2 likes

    Coulomb is a simple and elegant circuit simulator written using Java, Gtk4 and libadwaita.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
     
12 of 15 KiCad alternatives