--- 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: '2026-08-09' 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. New to ECAD, wanted something similar to Altium **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I am a total noobie to ECAD but work with some professionals who use Altium Designer. The overlaps between Designer and CircuitMaker are quite helpful because they can help me when I have issues, and occasionally I can help them. It also makes the transition between the two different software packages easier. For example, if I want to start using ECAD professionally, Designer won't be a completely new and unfamiliar tool. I also really like the integration to 365, as I often use 365 for importing and reviewing designs produced in Designer or other ECAD tools. Having all that data, as well as my work in CircuitMaker, in a single location is really useful. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The documentation is really lacking. Seaching anything with CircuitMaker in google often yields answers related to Designer. In some cases the answer is sufficient, but I think the limitations/restrictions of CircuitMaker are not well documented enough to know if you are just doing something wrong, or if the feature is unavailable. The application is also painfully slow to load on initial start up. I use a lot of engineering software packages (SolidWorks, ANSYS, COMSOL, etc.) and all of them are much faster and more responsive than CircuitMaker. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a mechanical engineer working closely with electrical engineers. I need to be able to understand the design language they speak, and the challenges they face. Having a free, accessible tool to explore PCB design and ECAD for my own learning and understanding has been incredibly valuable. It is only made more valuable by how similar it is to Altium Designer. ### 2. Essencial and easy tool, only a few headaches away from perfection **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** I really enjoy the wide range of features Altium offers for PCB design. The schematic view is intuitive, and sheet symbols make project organization much easier. I also appreciate how simple it is to access component properties and modify them to fit your needs, not only manufacturer parts but internal libraries too. The routing tools are excellent, every aspect of them works perfectly. It just took me only 2 weeks to learn almost everything in the software to start my own projects. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** The unit conversion system is frustrating and easily the least practical part of the software. The multiple tabs don’t interact smoothly, often causing me to accidentally close one or spend too much time switching between them. Another issue is the polygon pour colors, they’re overly intense and strain my eyes, yet I still haven’t found an option to change them **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium integrate the PCB design process for our autonomous robotics competition team by addressing critical workflow challenges. Its integrated component libraries and easy access to datasheets save us hours of manual research. Then, the real-time design rule checks help us catch errors early, which is essential because we (I mean my robotic team) don't have the resources to reprint a PCB to correct tiny mistakes on the design. ### 3. Best open source tool for schematic and PCB **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** We have been using Circuitmaker along side Altium 365, This has helped me in created layouts using the library for schematics, Our recent project requiring curcuit boards alongside electical engineers has been going great with the use of circuitmaker. Circuitmaker has both dark and light mode which is very much helpful in preferences. We have integrated this with all our other mcad tools like fusion 360, altium and codedesigner. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** There is not much to dislike here, the only drawback it the footprint takes a lot of time to load. Also there are no packages for a few circuits in schematic like 74hc245 **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helping me in creating PCB designs while working on varius projects ### 4. Been using for quite long time and I can say that experience is smooth **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium CircuitMaker?** Wholesome features available for circuit board making and designing like from being able to create schematic diagrams to testing and stimulating circuit boards all there. Quick and easy to access various different electrical and electronics components in the library. I am able to draw complicated circuit wirings with very easily with the help of this tool. **What do you dislike about Altium CircuitMaker?** Nothing big issue or problem to call out here for this tool but Some times may rendering issue for large size files. But it's fine. **What problems is Altium CircuitMaker solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am being able to make circuit boards and it's testing for my projects assigned.. ## 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?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2002935&qs=pros-and-cons§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-14+21%3A06%3A35+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=690e2825-2581-42d0-8450-0a08879dcf4d&secure%5Btoken%5D=efc3dbb179b9e829807e1da15e7be81300059783d36c21ba2b0c38f33ceb9e41&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)