KiCad vs CircuitMaker: free-as-in-price vs free-as-in-freedom

Both KiCad and Altium CircuitMaker cost nothing to download, and both let you sell what you design. But "free" means two very different things here. One is free-as-in-price with strings attached; the other is free-as-in-freedom. If you're weighing them, here's an honest comparison — without the marketing gloss.

Short answer: CircuitMaker is a genuinely capable, Altium-derived editor that costs nothing — but your designs are public by default, you get only a handful of private projects, it's Windows-only, and everything lives behind an Altium cloud account. KiCad is GPL-licensed, fully local, private by default, cross-platform, and the files are unambiguously yours. For most people who care about owning their work, that difference decides it.

What CircuitMaker actually is#

CircuitMaker is a free PCB design tool from Altium, built on the same underlying technology as Altium Designer. That heritage is real: you get a polished schematic editor, multi-sheet and hierarchical design, the Situs topological autorouter, Altium's Native 3D view, and Octopart-connected component search. It supports up to 16 signal and 16 plane layers with no restriction on board dimensions, and there's no non-commercial clause — you can make and sell products with it.

The important part is the model. CircuitMaker is deliberately community-driven — think "GitHub for PCB layouts." Designs are meant to be shared publicly so other members can view, fork, and build on them. That's a genuinely nice ecosystem for learning and reference designs. It's also the core tradeoff.

The public-vs-private catch#

This is the thing to understand before you invest time in CircuitMaker: the default posture is open. CircuitMaker 2.0 gives each user up to 5 private projects, stored in your Altium 365 Personal Space. Beyond that limit, the platform steers you toward publishing to the community, where your schematics and layout become visible — and forkable — by anyone.

For a hobbyist sharing a synth board or a reference design, that's a feature. For anyone doing client work, a product with any competitive edge, or simply a project they'd rather not broadcast, it's a real constraint. You're trading privacy for price. If you need more private headroom, the path is upward into Altium's paid products — CircuitMaker itself is not designed to be your quiet, private workshop.

KiCad inverts this completely. Every project is a set of files on your own disk. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is published, nothing is visible to anyone unless you choose to share it. Private by default, with no cap on how many private designs you keep.

Platform and account requirements#

CircuitMaker is Windows-only. There's no macOS or Linux build. And it requires an Altium account — you sign in, and your projects live in Altium's cloud. That means no meaningful offline workflow, and your access to your own designs is mediated by a login and a service you don't control.

KiCad ships native builds for Windows, macOS, and Linux, requires no account, and runs entirely offline. Install it, and it works the same on any machine you own. This is the difference between renting access to a tool and simply having one.

PCB capability#

On raw editing power, this is closer than the license difference suggests — CircuitMaker inherits a lot from Altium Designer, and its schematic editor and 3D view feel refined. Its Situs autorouter is a genuine convenience KiCad doesn't match out of the box.

But KiCad is no lightweight. It supports up to 32 copper layers (versus CircuitMaker's 16+16), handles multi-sheet hierarchical schematics, has a strong push-and-shove interactive router with length and delay tuning, a proper stackup editor and impedance calculator, STEP-based 3D export, and — unlike CircuitMaker — a built-in SPICE simulation engine via ngspice for analog, digital, and mixed-signal work. For the vast majority of real boards, either tool gets you to a manufacturable result; KiCad simply does it without a cloud account and with simulation included.

Libraries and community#

CircuitMaker's community is its headline feature: a public library of shared projects you can fork, plus Octopart-backed part search. If you learn by taking existing designs apart, that's valuable.

KiCad counters with enormous, freely-distributed symbol, footprint, and 3D-model libraries, plus a huge independent ecosystem of tutorials, plugins, and manufacturer-provided parts. The difference is that KiCad's community grows around the tool rather than being locked inside a single vendor's platform — and nothing you make is exposed as the price of admission.

When to choose which#

Choose CircuitMaker if: you're on Windows, you like the Altium interface, you're happy to work in the open, and the community fork-and-share model is exactly what you want — for example, publishing hobby and reference designs you'd share anyway.

Choose KiCad if: you want your designs private by default, you work on macOS or Linux (or want to), you want a tool that's genuinely yours under an open license with no account and no cloud dependency, or you're doing client or product work where publishing isn't an option. For a deeper look at how KiCad stacks up against the paid Altium suite, see our Altium vs KiCad comparison, and if you're still surveying options, the best free PCB design software rounds up the field.

Closing the workflow gap#

Owning your files locally is the right foundation — but it does leave the workflow around them up to you: exporting Gerbers, a BOM, and a pick-and-place file by hand every revision, and keeping them in sync. That's exactly the gap GoForFab closes, for KiCad projects specifically. Connect a KiCad project and every push regenerates the full manufacturing package automatically — Gerbers, BOM, CPL, DRC/ERC reports, 3D renders — always current, always reproducible, and free forever. (GoForFab works with native KiCad files, not CircuitMaker projects.) It's the automated output pipeline that makes a fully-owned, private KiCad toolchain feel effortless.

The honest bottom line: CircuitMaker is free-as-in-price, and a good tool if you're happy in the open on Windows. KiCad is free-as-in-freedom — private, local, cross-platform, and yours.

Sources: CircuitMaker (Altium), CircuitMaker.com, KiCad vs CircuitMaker (Software Radius)