Softwr

CAD · head to head

Altium 365 vs ANSYS Fluent

Altium 365 logo

Altium 365

CAD

Cloud workspace for Altium Designer PCB projects, now inside Renesas

From
$1990/year
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
ANSYS Fluent logo

ANSYS Fluent

CAD

Computational fluid dynamics solver for turbulence, combustion and multiphase flow

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Altium 365 the 1,990 US dollar Altium Develop entry price is capped at five authors in total, so a growing team hits a forced migration to Agile Teams with unpublished pricing exactly when headcount is rising.; ANSYS Fluent solver seats and HPC packs are licensed separately, and the packs scale by core count, so the cost of running a large case in parallel can exceed the base licence several times over and is the line item that surprises first-time buyers.
  • They diverge on capability: Altium 365 covers Shared workspace, ANSYS Fluent covers Turbulence model library.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Altium 365 and ANSYS Fluent actually diverge.

Attributes where Altium 365 and ANSYS Fluent differ
AttributeAltium 365ANSYS Fluent
Starting price$1990/yearOn request
Pricing modelPer user per yearquote
PlatformsWeb, Windows, Cloud, On-premiseWindows, Linux

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (CAD).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Altium 365

  • Shared workspace
  • Managed components
  • Browser review
  • Unlimited workspace users
  • MCAD CoDesigner
  • Manufacturing portal
  • Requirements Portal
  • BOM Portal

Only in ANSYS Fluent

  • Turbulence model library
  • Combustion and reacting flow
  • Multiphase flow
  • Meshing
  • HPC parallel solving
  • Fluent aero and native GPU solver
  • Ansys Workbench integration
  • User-defined functions

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Altium 365

  • A hardware startup where two engineers draw boards but eight people need to review them, avoiding eight CAD seatsnot ANSYS Fluent
  • A team handing fabrication and assembly data to a contract manufacturer as a versioned release rather than a zip of Gerbersnot ANSYS Fluent
  • A company running board and enclosure design in parallel and needing bidirectional geometry exchange with mechanical CADnot ANSYS Fluent
  • A buyer checking component lifecycle and availability against the live BOM before a design is frozennot ANSYS Fluent

ANSYS Fluent

  • Certifying an aerospace component where the customer specification names a validated commercial CFD solvernot Altium 365
  • Predicting thermal performance of a data centre or electronics enclosure before committing to a mechanical designnot Altium 365
  • Combustion analysis for a gas turbine or industrial burner where detailed chemistry models are requirednot Altium 365
  • A consultancy that must hand a client an auditable analysis in a tool the client's own engineers can reopennot Altium 365

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Altium 365

  • The 1,990 US dollar Altium Develop entry price is capped at five authors in total, so a growing team hits a forced migration to Agile Teams with unpublished pricing exactly when headcount is rising.
  • Add-on portals are expensive per seat; BOM Portal has been quoted at around 1,999 US dollars per user per year and MCAD CoDesigner at around 499, so the real cost of a working configuration is well above the headline.
  • It is tied to Altium Designer; there is no meaningful use of the platform for teams designing in KiCad, OrCAD or Allegro, which makes it a lock-in decision rather than a tooling one.
  • Renesas acquired Altium in 2024, and a semiconductor manufacturer owning the design tool used to select competing semiconductors is a conflict some buyers will want addressed in writing before uploading a library.
  • Repeated repackaging, from Altium 365 Standard and Pro tiers to Altium Develop and Agile Teams, has made renewal comparisons difficult and customers have found their previous tier no longer maps to anything on the price list.

ANSYS Fluent

  • Solver seats and HPC packs are licensed separately, and the packs scale by core count, so the cost of running a large case in parallel can exceed the base licence several times over and is the line item that surprises first-time buyers.
  • Ansys does not publish any pricing, and quotes vary widely by region, industry and negotiating position, so a smaller firm has no way to know whether it is being charged fairly relative to a large account.
  • Synopsys completed its acquisition of Ansys in July 2025 and started shipping combined capabilities in 2026; packaging, bundling and account teams are changing, and buyers on multi-year agreements should expect renewal terms to be renegotiated on a different basis.
  • Getting trustworthy results demands genuine CFD expertise in meshing, turbulence model selection and convergence assessment, so the licence is useless without a specialist, and the specialist is harder to hire than the software is to buy.
  • Licences are typically served from a network licence manager, which means concurrent-use contention inside a busy simulation group; engineers queue for solver tokens, and organisations end up buying spare seats purely to avoid the queue.

Pricing, plan by plan

Altium 365

$1990/year
  • Altium Develop$1990/year
    • One Altium Designer author licence
    • One workspace for shared projects and libraries
    • Unlimited workspace users for review, comment, tasks and BOM access
  • Altium Agile Teams$undefined/year
    • For teams beyond five ECAD authors
    • Extended workspace governance and administration
    • Quoted, no published price
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • On-premise or private cloud workspace server
    • Formal ECO and lifecycle governance
    • Quoted, no published price

ANSYS Fluent

On request
  • Ansys Fluent$undefined/year
    • Annual lease or paid-up perpetual licence
    • Solver seats licensed separately from HPC parallel packs
    • HPC packs priced by core count and scale multiplicatively

Which should you pick?

Choose Altium 365 if

  • You need shared workspace.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want managed components.
Altium 365 review

Choose ANSYS Fluent if

  • You need turbulence model library.
  • You work on Windows, Linux.
  • You also want combustion and reacting flow.
ANSYS Fluent review

Questions people ask

Is Altium 365 or ANSYS Fluent better?
Neither clearly leads. Altium 365 starts at $1990/year and ANSYS Fluent at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Altium 365 or ANSYS Fluent?
Altium 365 starts at $1990/year and ANSYS Fluent at On request.
Does Altium 365 or ANSYS Fluent run on more platforms?
Altium 365 runs on Web, Windows, Cloud, On-premise. ANSYS Fluent runs on Windows, Linux.
What is Altium 365 best used for?
Altium 365 is most often used for a hardware startup where two engineers draw boards but eight people need to review them, avoiding eight cad seats, a team handing fabrication and assembly data to a contract manufacturer as a versioned release rather than a zip of gerbers, a company running board and enclosure design in parallel and needing bidirectional geometry exchange with mechanical cad, a buyer checking component lifecycle and availability against the live bom before a design is frozen. Of those, a hardware startup where two engineers draw boards but eight people need to review them, avoiding eight cad seats and a team handing fabrication and assembly data to a contract manufacturer as a versioned release rather than a zip of gerbers are not what ANSYS Fluent is typically brought in for.
What can Altium 365 do that ANSYS Fluent cannot?
Altium 365 covers Shared workspace, Managed components, Browser review, Unlimited workspace users. ANSYS Fluent covers Turbulence model library, Combustion and reacting flow, Multiphase flow, Meshing.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Altium 365: Is Altium 365 free with Altium Designer?

A workspace is included with a current subscription, but the higher tiers, extra authors and the add-on portals are chargeable. The unlimited non-author users are genuinely included.

ANSYS Fluent: How much does Fluent cost?

Ansys does not publish pricing. Expect an annual lease per solver seat plus separately licensed HPC packs for parallel cores, with the total for a serious capability running into six figures a year.

Altium 365: What does it cost?

Altium Develop starts at about 1,990 US dollars a year for one author plus a workspace, with extra authors at 995 US dollars each up to four more. Larger teams are quoted.

ANSYS Fluent: Is Fluent still an Ansys product?

Yes, but Ansys is now part of Synopsys following the acquisition that completed in July 2025, and the two portfolios are being combined.

Altium 365: Who owns Altium now?

Renesas Electronics completed its acquisition of Altium in 2024. Altium 365 is therefore a Renesas-owned platform.

ANSYS Fluent: Can OpenFOAM do the same job?

Numerically it can cover a lot of the same physics at no licence cost, but it lacks the meshing workflow, support and the validation pedigree that certification and customer specifications often require.

Altium 365: Can I keep design data on my own servers?

Yes, through the Enterprise on-premise workspace server, but that is a quoted product and most of the newer portal features assume the hosted platform.

ANSYS Fluent: Is there a free version?

There is a student edition with cell count limits, suitable for learning but not for production work.

Share

Related pages

More on Altium 365

More on ANSYS Fluent

Keep looking

Other head to heads