Honest comparison
Looking for an EPLAN alternative?
Start with the honest part: if you are a 200-engineer OEM with a PLM system, corporate drawing standards and a macro library someone maintains full-time, EPLAN is the right tool and you should keep it. This page is for everyone else — the three-person switchboard shop, the integrator who builds forty panels a year, the shop where "the CAD person" is also the person with the crimper.
What EPLAN costs a small shop
Not just the licence — commonly quoted in the thousands per seat per year once maintenance is included — but the parts that do not appear on the invoice: a training course before anyone is productive, a parts database that wants an administrator, and a workflow designed for organisations where designing and building are different departments. For a shop where the designer walks to the bench, that overhead never pays itself back.
Which is why so many small shops quietly do not use it. The panel gets laid out in AutoCAD LT, the BOM lives in a spreadsheet, the wiring list is a printout with pen marks, and none of the three agree with each other by Thursday.
What PanelPro does instead
- Layout on real geometry. Place parts on DIN rail and duct against manufacturers' actual 3D models — the same STEP files they publish — so clearances are real, not nominal.
- One source of truth. The wiring schedule, the bill of materials and the drawings are all read from the same panel. Change the panel and every document follows. Nothing to reconcile on Thursday.
- The workshop floor is included. A QR code opens the live panel on any phone — 3D model, wiring list with tick-boxes, parts list. No licence for the fitter, no printouts going stale.
- Set up a part once, ever. The shared catalogue means a breaker someone has already set up — footprint, connection points, 3D — is ready for every shop that follows.
- In the browser. Nothing to install, nothing to maintain, works on the shop PC and the laptop at home.
Side by side, honestly
| EPLAN Electric P8 + Pro Panel | PanelPro Studio | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Enterprise OEMs, large integrators | Small and mid-size panel shops |
| Typical cost | Thousands per seat per year | Free · $39 · $59 per month |
| Time to first panel | Training course first | The first afternoon |
| Schematic capture | Deep — its core strength | Not yet — PanelPro is layout, wiring and documentation, not schematics |
| Panel layout in 3D | Pro Panel add-on | Included, browser-native |
| Shop-floor access | Per-seat licensing | Free QR share link on any phone |
| PLC / macro automation | Extensive | No — and not pretending otherwise |
That schematics row matters: if your customers demand full circuit diagrams from the same tool today, PanelPro is not yet your whole answer. If your deliverables are the panel itself — layout, wiring documentation, BOM, general-arrangement drawings — it already is.
Try it against your next real panel
The free tier is the demo: five projects, no card, no time limit. Build the panel that is on your bench this week and see whether the schedule, the BOM and the drawings hold up — that test costs an afternoon and answers the question better than any comparison table.