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KiCad vs EasyEDA vs Altium in 2026: Pick by the Job, Not the Hype

"Which PCB software should I learn?" gets asked every week, and the answers usually come from whatever the person answering happens to use. So here's an attempt at a fairer version: what each of the three big options is good at, taken from each one's own published material, and which job it fits. EasyEDA: the gentlest start EasyEDA is free, runs in a browser (with desktop clients if you want them) and comes in two editions: Standard, aimed at students and education, and Pro, with larger designs, constraint-driven design, team features and a full offline mode. Both include SPICE simulation. Its real advantage is what it's connected to: the LCSC parts catalogue and JLCPCB's fabrication and assembly. You place a part that's actually in stock, and the board, the bill of materials and the assembly files line up with what will be sent to you. For a first board that removes a whole class of mistakes. The trade-off is that the workflow is built around one supply chain. KiCad: free, open, and serious KiCad is free and open source (GPL-3.0), runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and works completely offline. It stopped being "the hobbyist option" a while ago. Version 10, released in March 2026, added design variants, time-domain length tuning for high-speed nets, a graphical rule editor and importers for Allegro and PADS, on top of a good push-and-shove interactive router and built-in SPICE. A two-layer board drawn in KiCad 9, routed with the external Freerouting autorouter and rendered with KiCad's own 3D models. The cost is learning time. Libraries, footprint assignment and board setup take a while, and KiCad doesn't ship an autorouter. You route by hand with the interactive router or use an external one like Freerouting. Altium: when the licence pays for itself Altium Designer is a commercial Windows application sold by subscription, priced per seat, with a free trial; its own pricing page has the current tiers. What you pay for is depth: signal-integrity and constraint tools for high-speed design, managed libraries tied to supply-chain data, mechanical CAD integration, and collaboration for teams on the same product. One person drawing boards with no gigabit interfaces won't use most of that. A team shipping DDR, PCIe or RF products to production usually will. Altium also has CircuitMaker, a free Windows tool on its engine for personal projects. Which one for you First board, ordering from JLCPCB: EasyEDA. Free forever, any OS, offline, open source: KiCad. A skill that carries into many jobs and open hardware: KiCad. A team shipping high-speed or regulated products: Altium. Altium's engine for personal projects, free, on Windows: CircuitMaker. Switching later Moving between them is rarely clean. KiCad imports Altium designs and EasyEDA imports several formats, but footprints, design rules and stackups usually need fixing afterwards, and libraries don't travel perfectly. Fabrication output does: all three export Gerber, drill, BOM and pick-and-place files, so the fab never cares which one you used. A different first step I work on PCBEditor, which isn't a fourth editor for the same job. It covers the step before: you describe the board in plain English, an AI chooses parts and intent, and deterministic algorithms build the netlist, place, route and check it. You can then export Gerbers, or open the native KiCad file and keep working in KiCad. If drawing the first version is the part that's stopping you, that's what it's for. The full comparison table is on pcbeditor.com. Which one did you start with, and would you pick it again?

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