--- title: Altium CircuitMaker Reviews meta_title: 'Altium CircuitMaker Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 110 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Altium CircuitMaker works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.3 review_count: 110 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-29' parent_category: name: CAD url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad --- # Altium CircuitMaker Reviews **Vendor:** Altium **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 110 ## About Altium CircuitMaker Altium CircuitMaker is the best free-to-use schematic and PCB design tool for the Open Source Hardware community of designers, makers, hobbyists, students and professionals. CircuitMaker delivers powerful autorouting capabilities, hierarchical schematic entry, and Native 3D™ technology that's easily accessible and free to use. ## Altium CircuitMaker Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **ease of use and comprehensive tools** in Altium CircuitMaker, making PCB design efficient and accessible. (9 reviews) - Users appreciate the **wide range of intuitive features** in Altium CircuitMaker, enhancing their PCB design experience. (7 reviews) - Users find Altium CircuitMaker's **ease of learning** exceptional, allowing quick setup and minimal learning curve. (6 reviews) - Users value the **ease of use** of Altium CircuitMaker, allowing quick onboarding and efficient PCB design across projects. (5 reviews) - Users value the **extensive library management** features of CircuitMaker, facilitating easy component creation and integration. (5 reviews) - Users value the **seamless online collaboration** with global teams, enhancing their PCB design and engineering experience. (4 reviews) - Users praise the **3D visualization capabilities** of Altium CircuitMaker, enhancing design understanding and project presentation. (3 reviews) - ECAD Integration (3 reviews) - Integrations (3 reviews) - Versatility (3 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face **slow rendering** issues, especially with large files, impacting their workflow and efficiency in design tasks. (4 reviews) - Users struggle with the **complex interface** of Altium CircuitMaker, finding it frustrating and unintuitive for design tasks. (3 reviews) - Users find the **difficult learning process** challenging, especially for beginners navigating bugs and interface issues. (2 reviews) - Users express disappointment over **limited features** , particularly the inability to import external footprints and compatibility issues. (2 reviews) - Users find the **missing features** of Altium CircuitMaker, especially in the library and UI, frustrating and limiting. (2 reviews) - Outdated Software (2 reviews) - Users report **poor customer support** with unmoderated forums and lack of responses to feature requests. (2 reviews) - Software Bugs (2 reviews) - Users struggle with **limited component libraries** and poor support, hindering their overall experience with CircuitMaker. (1 reviews) - Expensive (1 reviews) ## Altium CircuitMaker Reviews ### 1. Review of pcb software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** LINGIREDDY SRINIVASA REDDY,ECE(2022) V. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium circuit maker software is a great use full for PCB design **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** There no thing else to unlike in this circuit maker **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helpful to design the most of high level pcb circuits ### 2. Review of pcb design in circuit maker **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** VAJRALA HARSHA VARDHAN REDDY,CIVIL(2022) V. | Developer in AI, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** In this circuit maker software all the tools are very helpfull to design circuit easily **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** In this there is no desliking thing or tool **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is used me to create a beautiful pcb circuits ### 3. CircuitMaker is a very professional software. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Benigno M. | Hardware engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is very like Altium; It is almost the same interface. I like that you can edit pads with a double click in the PCB; in other software, you need to edit the library; with CircuitMaker, you can edit just one pad (and all if you want). By the way, I like the cloud interface with Altium 365; I love it. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Libraries need to be improved; there are a lot of components, but some have errors in the design and lousy assignments in layers, and even if you can edit the footprint, it is hard to use them. Maybe CircuitMarker should be compatible with Altium libraries. Also, the footprint wizard from Altium would be helpful to CircuitMaker. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have a free tool for PCB Design (without piracy needs). It is beneficial because I am training engineers and can give them professional tools at no price. Now I can work with original software. ### 4. A great option for designing circuits. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac R. | Systems Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Circuit Maker is a professional quality tool from the same company that makes Altium Designer Studio. It has the same great user accessible interface and the same ease of use. If you haven't tried it yet, then you're missing out. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** That I don't have private projects, they are all public. Sometimes I'd like the ease of use, but I'd also like to keep the design out of the public view. I'd like to see a customizable BOM export feature. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves the problem of designing quick boards for prototyping. I like to use it when I'm in a hurry and I just need to get the board built so I can test the design. ### 5. Great free to use software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Raphael D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Modern and complete interface, with many functions, at no cost. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Some tasks are painful, for example create and modify components are not super easy. Basic features not available or hard to perform, like resizing a PCB. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** having a low cost (free) PCB design software to launch our product. No need for complex knowledge of a specific software. ### 6. Easy to understand, but powerful! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brittany J. | Returns Administrator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The circuit maker was really simple to install and setup. Learning how to operate it was also a smooth experience. It's a really powerful tool that can create some amazing circuits for electronics. I used it for tons of board designs during my Electrical Engineering undergrad. Amazing! **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** There isn't too much downside to this if you’re only using it for smaller projects, but if you needed it to make something commercial or wide scale, it wouldn't be very useful or supportive. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes it easy to create electronic circuits and test them before getting the materials to implement. So it can save tons of time and money! ### 7. Easy to pick up, although slow and exporting is challenging **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The platform is easy to pick up. I had no clue how to make PCBs and I made over 4 pcbs for our project in a weekend. All the boards turned out great. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The exporting is hellish, half of my time when I made it first was trying to figure out how to export with a proper outline and everything. JLCPCB made a tutorial that helped, but if I had not checked the validity of my gerber files I would have wasted lots of time and money on getting them printed. If the outlines and other settings for exporting would be easier I'd have a way better time. Additionally the online aspects of things is pretty nice, but the files are a pain to export and then go to the site and then download when it could just be put on my hard drive directly with some setting (which may exist and was just not easy to find for all I know) **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Minimizing the work that our users have to do in construction by making pre-routed PCBs that they can order for easy assembly. ### 8. A fragmented mess: Too expensive for hobbyist; not fully featured for premium **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chasen B. | Hardware Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It's closest thing to Altium? I guess? Idk. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Its a middle ground where no one is happy. Its not a simple choice and confusing. It's not the latest versions and the online help content isn't all the same. It would be better if the Altium 365 was free and ad driven with a banner, uninstallable libraries and pop up videos when exporting gerbers or i removable silkscreens or can't save locally or something like that. That way everyone is using the same product on the latest version. The online content and learning will be the same from all content creators. The community will be stronger and less fragmented. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I don't use it anymore. I'll use free software at home or 365 at work. It's not worth the money IMHO for home projects. I'd much rather use a feature limited version of 365 but that doesn't exist. Again everyone use the same software but with different software limited features ### 9. Good, free software that is mostly easy to learn **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Support library is fairly complete (most questions can be answered by reading the documentation). Also, the component database is extremely helpful to have. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** No autorouting option (traces must be manually routed). Generating correct output files is complicated and not obvious. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Need to design a PCB quickly, but still of good quality. ### 10. I have had the best experience of having a theoretical overview of my prototype **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aakriti B. | Graduate Student Researcher, Electrical Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The interactive routing is very helpful for extra-long nets (signal delays). The component library is massive, and the autoroute saves time when routing concerning design rules, making sure nothing gets overlooked. The software is incredibly low priced for hobbyists or students wanting hands-on practice of industry designs. I love that the interface is very similar to Altium itself, and since I am familiar with Altium, it was easy to learn. In addition, tutorials are easy to find. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Since my research is cybersecurity-based and all designs are saved in cloud, it is not the best for proprietary issues. I have also had problems adding my custom parts to the library. Some of the existing components in the library need to be updated - they have incorrect footprints or designs and sometimes even inconvenient layouts. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I do not have to deal with licensing issues, and it is helpful as a student conducting Ph.D. research. Team collaboration is easy when the design needs to be sent for review among peers. It is similar to KiCad but better in some ways. ### 11. The most fantastic Circuit Design system I've used. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paul J. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It's a potent design tool with a learning curve, but even a novice user can pick up. Of all the design tools I've tried, I have found that Circuit Maker is the most complete and visually pleasing tool out there! **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I have not found many parts of the system that I do not like. However, even with my very powerful desktop computer, it can be slightly slow in loading. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has helped me learn much more about circuit design and layout concepts, which I struggled to understand. It also has given me a sharper insight into how a circuit diagram provides a PDB with board design. ### 12. A Great Circuit Designer Program **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac H. | Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium CircuitMaker is the best PCB designing software I have used compared to competitors' software. As a student, I am using CircuitMaker, the free PCB design software. This software has helped me immensely with my Design Technology A-level. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** It would be great if more components such as GENIE microcontrollers and Arduino microcontrollers were featured within the program. I haven't found a way to install custom components. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Previous software that I have used was too basic unless I upgrade to a subscription to gain more components and features, which is not ideal for a student. Altium CircuitMaker is free! ### 13. Great free PCB design software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh L. | Electrical Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is user friendly, very intuitive, and best of all it is free. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Some of the advanced features that are available in Altium can't be done in Circuit maker. However over all I don't have hardly any complaints. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Circuit maker helps be design everything from simple to advanced PCBs. I also really like that the user interface is very similar to Altium so a lot of the basic functionality is the same. ### 14. The best tool for pcb design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 16, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is Easy to use and user friendly environment with advanced tools.It is extraordinary software tool in pcb design Domain for beginners. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Thee is no disliked matter in circuit maker . **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** First of all In pcb designing field.we require perfect designing tools to design the pcb accurately without errors.it is achieved by using circuit maker effectively. ### 15. Incredible Program **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dylan L. | Assistant Baseball Coach, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 16, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium allows for some of the quickest keyboard shortcut usages I've ever had. Altium 365 allows for seamless collaboration compared to any other program on the market. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium boasts its usage with solidworks, but it is clunky and almost unusable with any PDM system. It should be abandoned, and the 365 platforms be advertised more. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altiums MFG Component search tool solves the "so I have this part" and "does it already have a footprint" dilemma that drives most engineers bananas. Love it so much. ### 16. Altium is a great and simplified way of designing PCB's. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ethan P. | Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The Simplified design and UI of Altium CircutMaker makes it easy to use for beginners and even easier for students as they have a free educational license as well as tutorials. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Although a minor inconvenience, large prints are not able to be printed, as the number is extremely high, I do not think that most personal users will reach this level. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Circut Maker is helping us teach students about how to design PCB and educate them on how PCBs work. It also helps us with Computer Science Classes and the projects they make. ### 17. Excellent product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Corey M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** CircuitMaker is extremely simple to use and get up and running. When compared to products like Eagle or EasyEDA it's much more intuitive. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The parts library could be a little bit better, EasyEDA makes it much easier to find and place components however if I were to rank them in terms of library CircuitMaker would be second and Eagle would be last. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** CircuitMaker was being used to help develop a power supply for telecommunications equipment. While nothing has come to fruition yet, it is a promising prospect. ### 18. Great Free PCB Design Tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harish P. | Lead RF Product Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Being able to make complex board designs for free and a great community for support. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Sometimes the web browser integration to open files online doesnt really seem to work. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows me to do quick prototypes with real ease ### 19. Great free layout tool for hobbyist projects **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Parts integrated into the software with built-in access to symbols, footprints, and 3d models, costing, inventories, and which distributor to purchase from. Makes designing much easier when there is no specific list of parts to be used in the design. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I don't like the community and sharing aspect of the tool. I do like that it's been adjusted to not only be a community option for free. I also am primarily a Linux and MacOS user, thus requiring a virtual machine to use the tool. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Free tool to learn schematic and PCB design for hobbyist projects ### 20. A great tool to learn circuitry and develop the skills neccessary to make incredible circuits **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Natalia H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The ease of use, removes all the inconveniences that are associated with circuitry and makes the experience much nicer **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I wish there was more information regarding routing differential pairs. It makes some parts confusing. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has allowed me to develop the schematics and routing layout of boards for numerous projects relating to aviation ### 21. Best designer for many applications **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The schematic editor and the refined GUI is the best in Altium. I have also worked with other PCB design tools but Altium is the best among them. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Maybe add a lite version that works well on older pc's. Refine the online tool as well. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's more streamlined. Learning altium is easier for beginners and design is easy. ### 22. User friendly S/W **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hariharan R. | Post Graduate Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** This software helps the beginner to learn how to draw schematics and how to route the PCB and how to make the gerber file among that and user friendly interface. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The only thing is the lag happens when we pick and place the components due to buffer need to fix that and reproduce the well defined software in the future. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solves for me that the making tha schematics and routing path for the PCB for my project in quite efficient way and easy to understandable by the clients. ### 23. Best tool for students **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 22, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I like Altium Circuitmaker very much, because it offers almost the same infrastructure of a professional product Altium Designer. I use it as a convenient and an affordable tool to teach PCB design to my students. Since Circuitmaker uses the same infrastructure with Altium Designer, I expect that my students may use their PCB design skills easily in Altium Designer. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The only downside of the Altium Circuitmaker is that it crashes sometimes. So, I suggest to save the work frequently. I hope Altium may solve the crashing problem in their future versions. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used Altium Circuitmaker as an educational tool for my PCB Design courses. Since it is free, I do not need to deal licensing issues. I want to thank Altium for providing such a valuable tool to the education community ### 24. Very good software. Helps simplify things. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael N. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Layout tool design. Helps simplify and shorten the circuit process. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** N/A. So far, no problems/dislikes with altium. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Just making the process of designing a circuit simple and easy. ### 25. Altium Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bang N. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I like the built-in 3D system viewer. It was definitely helpful for our design. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium Circuitmaker is a heavy program and sometimes your hardware struggles to keep up. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** The built-in PCB and availability footprints ### 26. Good simulation and design tool. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sam B. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Siplisity of usage and reliability. Easy to create new symbol. Coupled PCB design tool. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The number of included symbols may be higher. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps design and check products quickly and reliable. ### 27. Seems like a good resource **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aviv B. | Senior Engineer – Mechanical Engineering & Industrial Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I used it to get an SVG, and found that it was okay, but open source SVG software was better for my use case. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is quite expensive vs some of the free options like EASYEDA. I recently had a colleauge use this to make a circuit board and it was really easy + they have their own factory and parts. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I would have a freelancer use it to make a board design if I could, but would steer tem towards EasyEDA if it was possible because of their cheap library of parts. ### 28. Does more than expected **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Davide F. | System/DevOps Enginner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The opportunity to design my own part if it's not already present in the library or if it is missing some details. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** A part the fact that you end up to be tied to one vendor, the absence of a (simple?) circuit simulator, you should look elsewhere and maybe redraw everything **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCB design of course and project sheets, since I'm coming from fritzing I also try using easyeda and kicad but since CircuitMaker is part of Altium it seems a lot more promisingly ### 29. Almost as good as Altium, but 100% free!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** easy to use, intuitive and lots of useful features **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** it would be useful to be able to save the work on your local machine. it's annoying that the library shows old revisions of custom parts **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** design a board from scratch without paying for a CAD SW ### 30. It worked well, wish it had more features **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Great visuals, Better than any other product I have tried. I was woried that it would be too slow, but it works flawlessly **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I wish it had more features that a full blown design software would have **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ease of collaboration ### 31. Good online webapp **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vincent T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The web based app is really useful as it is always available **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Its main force is also its weakness. Being dependent on the network can something cause frustration **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It let me check and adjust designed submitted by third parties ### 32. Has a few bugs but definitely worth trying **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicholas F. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The ease of use, and it is easy to collaborate with my team **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The initial sign up is a little to unrefined and hard to get the emails for the verification and the first one timed out instantly **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps with the simple things that i just dont want to take the time to look into, its like a shortcut ### 33. Best tool for hobby users to design and build custom circuit boards **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Austin T. | Sr. Systems Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is a design tool that is free to use while still being powerful enough for most hobby users to get a circuit design done. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** While it is free, There are some limitations. I don't feel like these limitations are unreasonable, though. If you need more powerful tool there is Circuit Studio or Altium. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has a lot of the main features that Altium has for ensuring that you have a well designed circuit board. ### 34. great free CAD, almost as good Altium! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** ease of use, intuitive and lots of good tools! **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** it would be helpful to save files locally and to automatically discard outdated custom library parts **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** designed a PCB board from scratch ### 35. Best PCB design software I have ever used!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bradley G. | Systems Test Engineer, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 24, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** What I like best about Altium Circuitmaker is it provides flexibility and makes it easy to use. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Altium Circuitmaker that it lacks some features of Altium itself. For example, it cannot import Altium library models of components in Altium Circuit Maker. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Circuitmaker allows me to choose how I want my PCB design. And at the same time, you are gaining valuable PCB design skills. ### 36. Nice offering **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Per-Anders S. | Design Engineer and Shop Owner, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Free and in the cloud and very similar to the big brother. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I would prefer to have real Altium in the cloud or desktop version but with with acceptable limitaitons such as the public thing. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I need to draw nice looking schematics mainly for illustration at my consultant assignment. Otherwise I use the normal Altium Design for doing pcb's. ### 37. Easy to use, a lot of items in database, easy even for a newbie circuit designer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Artur A. K. | Project Manager, Senior Consultant, Stream Lead, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Ease to use and database of items - flexibility of the tool (as I planned to use it myself fist and then grow with the company) **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** maybe a bit sophisticated for simple personal use - but the software is designed for professional use **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I wanted to understand modern circuit design to use for my smart home products and IoT design planned for my company to grow and implement in near future ### 38. It depends on what you want out of Circuit Maker **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark H. | Senior Project Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 02, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Low barrier to entry makes Circuitmaker approachable by almost anyone. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Complex or "out-of-the-box" solutions are difficult to implement. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It doesn't actually solve my professional design problems, but Altium Designer does. Altium Circuitmaker is fine for personal projects though. It's a lot cheaper than having a personal AD license at home. ### 39. Altium Circuit Maker is a great product that enhances my productivity while making things easy **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I love the massive amount of components in the component library and the ease of collaboration with others while using the software. One of my favorite things to use is the ability to route easily using push and shove. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** There are not very many things I dislike about circuit maker, even though it has an extensive component library, making new components could be made easier in the software. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Circuit maker really helps solve the collaboration piece for me on a large project. It allows better collaboration within the team and makes it much easier and better to create devices. ### 40. Simple process that lead to quick accurate service. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It has a very simple interface and I thought it was very easy to find parts that I needed for my design. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** My license kept deactivating on my computer such that I had to activate it a couple of times. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It was the first and only PCB design software that I learned to use for my senior projects boards ### 41. Clear user interface **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Łukasz P. | Inżynier ds. badań i rozwoju, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 16, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Professionally I use Altium Designer, but as an electronics hobbyist I use Circuit Maker as it's free and has similar user interface as in Altium Drsigner, so I'm not confused. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** I couldn't find any disadvantages at all **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3D preview is useful while fitting PCB into housing ### 42. An updated version of Protel99SE...Good enough. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 02, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** That it lets me leverage my Protel99SE experience, libraries, and designs moving forward. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The import/export process is more cumbersome than it should be. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can create new designs based on my existing infrastructure of libraries and prior designs. ### 43. Altium CircuitMaker **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Greg D. | Facility Engineer , Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The software is easy to learn and use. It is versatile enough perform all the design I have ever needed **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Picking different component sizes can be a bit tedious. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Prototyping different designs and comfigurations. ### 44. Used exclusively in first after Uni role **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Angela B. | Driver, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** The program is intuitive. Becoming proficient did not require extensive research into how to use it. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Complicated board layouts with multiple layers are best done with the human eye, rather than relying on the auto trace. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allowed our company to fit a complicated circuit into a restricted space by using multiple layers. ### 45. NA **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** mostafa R. | Research assistant - Master thesis worker, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is a complete software for PCB and very easy to use. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The simulation part of the program is somehow complicated so mostly all PCB designer I know use other software **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is solving the problem of desiging PCB! what kind of question is that? ### 46. Solid PCB Prototyping Software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Benny E. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It's very user friendly, and has plenty of external tool and add ons available. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** There aren't many downsides, but I do wish there was more platform flexibility. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I needed a schematic editor with good support for PCB creation, and CircuitMaker fit both of those requirements. ### 47. Gets the job done **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aditya S. | Electrical Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is quite similar to AD so the workflow is familiar and it's quite affordable. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Not all the shortcuts are mapped like in Latium designer. The UI is a bit clunky and begging for an update **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing a tool similar to Latium designer but at such an affordable price range ### 48. Well Rounded EDA **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Avery A. | Design Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** CircuitMaker is a great alternative to Altium Designer for us because we don't design enough PCBs to make the expense of AD viable. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** More difficult to learn than KiCad. We had a hard time finding advanced tutorials **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's another alternative software for us to design PCBs ### 49. Easiest software ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ilesh P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Auto route and online pcb viewing on altium viewer. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Some parts are not available and required to update appearance of application. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3D viewer and very close look for all different layers. ### 50. Lots of options but not beginner friendly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** MohammadHossein O. | Graduate Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** You can develop very professional designs **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** It is not beginner friendly and can be complicated at times **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing PCB board for company demo boards to showcase company's products ## Altium CircuitMaker Discussions - [What does Altium software do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/altium-circuitmaker-what-does-altium-software-do) - 1 comment - [What does Altium software do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-does-altium-software-do) - 1 comment - [Is Altium CircuitMaker good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-altium-circuitmaker-good) - 1 comment - [View Altium CircuitMaker pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/altium-circuitmaker/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-31+18%3A42%3A21+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=63228cf9-cc4c-45bd-bd9e-470407b68da5&secure%5Btoken%5D=4ab6ba5174d90771cd72b3c5c858d983c8a53a49479f8ca624c1c83387dce71b&format=llm_user) ## Altium CircuitMaker Features **Design** - PCB layout editing - Schematic editor **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **Library** - Component libraries **Platform** - Board size - Layers ## Top Altium CircuitMaker Alternatives - [KiCad EDA](https://www.g2.com/products/kicad-eda/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (64 reviews) - [EasyEDA](https://www.g2.com/products/easyeda/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (20 reviews) - [Autodesk Fusion](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-fusion/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (510 reviews)