PCB design editors / #1
KiCad
The best PCB design software for most people: free, complete, and your files stay yours.
29/35Ranked #1 in pcb design editors
Last reviewed
- Who it is for
- Hobbyists, students, freelancers and teams who want a full desktop editor with no licence cost, open files and no limits on board size or layers.
- Made by
- The KiCad project (open source)
- Runs on
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- Cost
- Free for every use, including commercial. Open source under the GPL.
- Poor fit for
- Teams that need a single vendor's support contract, or advanced signal-integrity and constraint tools bundled in the editor.
Strengths
- No cost and no board-size, layer or commercial limits; the licence cannot be taken back.
- Push-and-shove interactive router, differential pairs and length tuning.
- Exports Gerber, drill, pick-and-place, BOM, IPC-2581 and ODB++.
- Plain-text native files that work well with Git, and importers for Altium, EAGLE, CADSTAR and EasyEDA projects.
- Actively maintained: the 10.0 series had its 10.0.8 bug-fix release on 30 October 2026.
Limits
- Symbols and footprints are separate libraries, which confuses newcomers at first.
- No built-in cloud sharing, browser viewing or review: history and sharing need Git or a workspace such as BoardRepo.
- No vendor support contract from the project itself.
Scores and the reasons for them
| Criterion | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cost and licensing | 5/5 | Free and open source (GPL) with no limits on use, layers or board size. |
| Learning curve | 3/5 | Good official documentation and a large community, but the library model and the number of tools take time to learn. |
| Library and part support | 4/5 | Large official symbol, footprint and 3D libraries maintained in public; supplier data is not built in. |
| Board complexity | 4/5 | Multilayer boards, push-and-shove routing, differential pairs and length tuning; fewer high-speed analysis tools than Altium or Allegro. |
| Output for fabrication | 5/5 | Gerber, drill, pick-and-place, BOM, IPC-2581 and ODB++ export, with configurable design rules. |
| File portability | 5/5 | Open, text-based files on your own disk; imports Altium, EAGLE, CADSTAR and EasyEDA projects. |
| Collaboration | 3/5 | Works well with Git because files are text, but has no built-in review, comments or access control. |
Where it is our pick
Real boards made with KiCad
- HackRF One by Great Scott Gadgets (GPL-2.0)
- Glasgow Interface Explorer by Glasgow Embedded (0BSD)
- Corne keyboard (crkbd) by foostan (CC BY 4.0)
- SmartKnob by Scott Bezek (Apache 2.0 (electronics, software, documentation) and CC BY 4.0 (mechanical))
- b-parasite by rbaron (CC BY-SA 4.0 (hardware and design files); MIT (code))
- DeskHop by hrvach (GPL-3.0)
- OtterCastAudioV2 by Ottercast (MIT)
- The Open Book by Joey Castillo (CC BY-SA 4.0)