Altium 365vs
OnShape
OnShape: If your collaboration problem is mechanical CAD in the browser rather than PCB design
Altium 365
Cloud workspace for Altium Designer PCB projects, now inside Renesas
As of 31 August 2026, Altium 365 starts at $1990/year. The cloud collaboration and data management layer for Altium Designer: shared workspaces, managed component libraries, browser-based design review and manufacturing handoff. Softwr lists it under CAD. Altium 365 is made by Altium LLC, a Renesas Electronics company, available on Web, Windows, Cloud, On-premise.
Overview
What Altium 365 does
Altium 365 is the hosted platform that sits behind Altium Designer. It stores PCB projects and component libraries centrally, versions them, lets reviewers open a board in a browser with no CAD licence, generates manufacturing packages, links to distributor part data for availability and pricing, and provides ECAD to MCAD co-design against mechanical tools. It also hosts the Requirements Portal built on Valispace technology and a BOM Portal for supply chain work. What distinguishes it is the unlimited non-author user model. In most electronics design environments the mechanical engineer, the buyer and the manufacturing engineer all need to see the board but none of them will draw a track. Altium 365 charges for authors and lets everyone else review, comment, manage tasks and read the BOM without a seat. For a hardware company that constant is a substantial saving against tools that meter every viewer. Ownership matters here. Renesas Electronics acquired Altium in 2024, and in 2025 introduced Altium Develop, a repackaged subscription starting around 1,990 US dollars a year including one Altium Designer author plus a workspace, with additional authors at 995 US dollars each up to four more; beyond five authors Altium pushes buyers to Agile Teams. Buyers are small and mid-sized electronics hardware companies. The trade-off is that this ties your design data to a semiconductor manufacturer cloud, and the add-on portals such as BOM Portal are priced steeply per user on top.
What people use it 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
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Altium 365
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Altium 365vsFusion 360
Fusion 360: If you want combined mechanical and basic electronics design in one lower cost subscription
- Altium 365vsFreeCAD
FreeCAD: If you need a no-licence route and can accept KiCad-class electronics tooling instead
Pricing
What Altium 365 costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Altium Develop
$1,990 /yr
- One Altium Designer author licence
- One workspace for shared projects and libraries
- Unlimited workspace users for review, comment, tasks and BOM access
- ECAD to MCAD co-design
- Additional authors at 995 USD each, maximum four more
Altium Agile Teams
On request
- For teams beyond five ECAD authors
- Extended workspace governance and administration
- Quoted, no published price
Enterprise
On request
- On-premise or private cloud workspace server
- Formal ECO and lifecycle governance
- Quoted, no published price
Capabilities
Features
Shared workspace
Central versioned storage for PCB projects, schematics and libraries
Managed components
Company component libraries with lifecycle states and approved manufacturer parts
Browser review
Open and comment on a board or schematic without an Altium Designer licence
Unlimited workspace users
Reviewers, buyers and mechanical engineers participate without paid author seats
MCAD CoDesigner
Bidirectional board and enclosure exchange with SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo and others
Manufacturing portal
Release packages, fabrication and assembly data shared with the manufacturer
Requirements Portal
Requirements management built on the acquired Valispace technology
BOM Portal
Supply chain pricing, availability and lifecycle data on the bill of materials
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
Who owns Altium now?
Renesas Electronics completed its acquisition of Altium in 2024. Altium 365 is therefore a Renesas-owned platform.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from Altium 365
- Altium 365 alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Altium 365 pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Altium 365 badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All CAD softwareThe full category
- Best CAD softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best CAD software for
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- nTop
- 3D-Coat
- Bambu Studio
- CloudCompare
- COMSOL Multiphysics
- Siemens NX
- Alibre Design
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Altium 365, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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