CloudCompare
Open source point cloud comparison and processing maintained largely by one person in their spare time
Free
Category
The best CAD software
3D & CAD software and applications
- Tools listed
- 50
All 50 cad tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What cad software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 50 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $1Solid Edge
- Median entry price
- $329.50across 32 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $4,450Carlson Software
- Publish a $0 plan
- 16of 50
Paid cad plans in this set start anywhere from $1 a month for Solid Edge to $4,450 for Carlson Software. The median entry price across the 32 tools that publish one is $329.50, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is IronCAD's at $6,000 a month. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
16 of 50 publish a $0 plan, and 8 of those charge nothing at all. 24 tools have no free tier of any kind.
16 of 50 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 50 cad listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- subscription
- 17
- quote
- 6
- one-time
- 4
- One-time purchase
- 4
- Open source, no licence fee
- 4
- free
- 3
- Per user per year
- 2
- Free below a revenue threshold, then per seat per year
- 1
- freemium
- 1
- open-source
- 1
- Per user per month
- 1
Separately, 16 of 50 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 37 cad tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Advanced simulation , 2 of 37
- Full features , 2 of 37
- Non-commercial , 2 of 37
- Simulation , 2 of 37
Named by fewer
Nothing else is named by more than one vendor, beyond the list on the left, no two of these tools describe their tiers the same way.
Named by exactly one vendor: Add-on physics modules priced separately, cloud storage, extended import/export formats, Inventor + AutoCAD + more, Per seat, per year, Single-user MicroStation licence. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “CAD” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 50 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- cad11
- Open Source6
- 3d-printing5
- parametric5
- rendering5
- simulation5
- visualization5
- engineering4
- Free4
- real-time4
- vfx4
- 3d-modeling3
Carried by a single tool: 2d, beginner-friendly, concept, Enterprise, indie, materials, Pcb Design, scripting. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
16 of 50 cad tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with advanced simulation, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$1 to $4,450 is a $4,449 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $4,450 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
18 of 50 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, advanced simulation, full features, non-commercial, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 11 billing models: subscription on 17 listings, quote on 6, and 9 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare cad tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- CloudCompare vs Carlson Software
- Carlson Software vs MicroSurvey CAD
- MicroSurvey CAD vs Bentley iTwin Capture Modeler
- Bentley iTwin Capture Modeler vs RealityScan
- RealityScan vs CoreTechnologie
- CoreTechnologie vs COMSOL Multiphysics
- COMSOL Multiphysics vs ANSYS Fluent
- ANSYS Fluent vs KiCad
Go straight to the numbers
- CloudComparepricingalternatives
- Carlson Softwarepricingalternatives
- MicroSurvey CADpricingalternatives
- Bentley iTwin Capture Modelerpricingalternatives
- RealityScanpricingalternatives
- CoreTechnologiepricingalternatives
Questions people ask about cad software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does cad software cost?
- Across the 50 cad tools listed here, paid plans start between $1 and $4,450 a month, with a median entry price of $329.50. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $6,000 a month (IronCAD). 16 of 50 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest cad software?
- 8 of the 50 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Solid Edge has the lowest published entry price at $1 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free cad software?
- Yes, 16 of 50 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 8 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should cad software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are advanced simulation (2 of 37 tools that publish plan detail), full features (2) and non-commercial (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as add-on physics modules priced separately or cloud storage, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is cad software usually billed?
- subscription (17), quote (6), one-time (4), One-time purchase (4), plus 7 less common arrangements, counted across the 50 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 16 of 50 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does cad software actually cover?
- The 50 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are cad (11), open source (6), 3d-printing (5), parametric (5), rendering (5). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under cad may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do cad tools offer?
- 41 of 50 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 18 of 50 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many cad tools are listed on Softwr?
- 50 approved cad listings appear on this page, including CloudCompare, Carlson Software, MicroSurvey CAD, Bentley iTwin Capture Modeler. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/cad, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 50 picks
The shortlist for “CAD”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.