CELUS Alternatives for AI-Assisted Electronics Design

CELUS is an AI platform that turns requirements into a block diagram, searches for matching components and generates a schematic and bill of materials. The homepage says the result opens "straight in Altium, Cadence, Siemens, Fusion or KiCad". The company is based in Munich with offices in Porto and Austin, per its embedded world 2026 release, which introduced a Design Canvas where an AI assistant builds the block diagram from plain language.

There is no public price. The site has a Get started signup and demo requests, so you learn the cost only after talking to sales. That, plus wanting one tool from idea to finished board, is why most people look elsewhere.

The seven picks below are electronics and PCB tools. If you need control-cabinet or power tools, see our ProfiCAD alternatives page.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Flux

Flux is the nearest match to what CELUS promises, and it carries the idea through to the finished board. It runs in a browser and pairs a schematic and PCB editor with an AI assistant whose usage is built into every paid plan. The difference from CELUS is that the design never leaves the tool for layout.

The pricing page lists Build and Pro plans for individuals, a Teams plan priced per editor with pooled AI usage, and Enterprise on custom terms. AI work is metered in ACUs, with optional pay-as-you-go on top of each plan's allowance.

Best for: A small hardware team that wants AI help and the full board in one browser tab.

Pricing:

• Build $80 per month, Pro $200 per month, Teams $408.33 per month, per a pricing tracker snapshot from November 2, 2026; these look like yearly-billing rates
• Billed monthly, the tracker lists $100 for Build, $250 for Pro and $500 for Teams with 5 seats
• Enterprise: contact sales
• Free trial; Pro asks for a payment method

Watch out for:

• AI usage is capped by plan, with extra usage charged as you go, so heavy copilot use raises the bill. Check the ACU allowance before you commit.
• Everything lives in Flux's cloud. Teams with export-controlled or offline-only projects need the Enterprise conversation.

Official site: Flux.

Altium Develop

Altium Designer is the target format many CELUS users are already exporting to, so buying it directly is a common next step. Altium now sells it inside Altium Develop, which bundles Altium Designer with the Altium 365 cloud workspace, per the pricing page.

Billing has two parts: a workspace subscription that activates the shared workspace, and annual concurrent author seats, with up to 5 authors working at once. Reviewers and other collaborators join free and without limit. Larger companies move to Altium Agile on a quote.

Best for: A professional team that wants an industry-standard tool and cloud review for the whole company.

Pricing:

• Altium Develop: workspace subscription plus annual per-author seats; price shown in the configurator on the pricing page
• Collaborators: free, unlimited
• Altium Agile (Teams and Enterprise): quote
• 30-day free trial for the whole workgroup

Watch out for:

• Seats are annual only, so there is no cheap month-to-month option for a short project.
• It has no requirements-to-schematic assistant of the CELUS kind, so an engineer still draws the circuit. Octopart Discover, the component tool on the pricing page, is listed as upcoming with no price.

Official site: Altium Develop.

KiCad

KiCad is free, open source and one of the five EDA tools CELUS exports to. Release 10.0.8 shipped on October 30, 2026, only weeks after 10.0.7, for Windows, macOS and Linux. Schematic capture, PCB layout, a 3D viewer and Gerber output are all in the one download.

Its licence page says the code is GPL v3 or later and the symbol and footprint libraries are CC-BY-SA 4.0. Boards you design are yours, with no seat count and no cloud account.

Best for: Startups, students and consultants who want a full PCB tool at no cost.

Pricing:

• Free and open source, no paid tier

Watch out for:

• There is no AI requirements assistant or automatic schematic generation. Parts selection and circuit design are manual.
• Support is community-based through the forum, with no vendor support contract.

Official site: KiCad.

Quilter

Quilter attacks the step that comes after CELUS. Its site calls it "the first physics-driven AI to fully automate complete PCB layout". You bring the schematic and constraints, it generates layout candidates, and the pricing page lists Altium, Cadence Allegro, Siemens Xpedition and KiCad among the formats you can download.

Pricing is per project, not per seat, and depends on the unrouted pin count at upload. Pins you route yourself are not charged. Teams can run it in Quilter's cloud or self-host at a higher price.

Best for: A team that already has schematics and wants AI to take over board layout.

Pricing:

• Per project, priced by unrouted pin count; no published figures; talk to sales
• No annual licences; self-hosted costs more than cloud
• A free option is linked from the pricing page

Watch out for:

• It does not pick components or draw schematics, so it replaces CELUS only if you pair it with a schematic tool.
• With no public rates, you cannot estimate the cost of a board before contacting sales.

Official site: Quilter.

OrCAD X

Cadence's OrCAD X is the mid-priced entry to the Cadence flow that CELUS also targets. OrCAD X Standard covers OrCAD Capture schematics, the PCB Editor, a constraint manager, real-time DRC, 3D ECAD and MCAD co-design, DFM checks and translators for Altium, Eagle and PADS, per the EMA store.

EMA, which runs the OrCAD store, sells 1-year single-user and floating licences and a perpetual floating licence. All of them include phone, email and web support and upgrades.

Best for: An engineering team that wants a Cadence toolchain without Allegro-level cost.

Pricing:

• OrCAD X Standard: €1,493.31 to €6,001.65 depending on licence type, per the EMA store (shown in euros)
• Perpetual licences need annual maintenance after year one for updates
• OrCAD X Professional: request a quote
• Free trial available

Watch out for:

• The store shows only a price range, not the figure for each licence type, so you still need a quote to compare.
• Perpetual buyers pay maintenance every year after the first to keep getting updates.

Official site: OrCAD X.

Autodesk Fusion

Fusion is where Autodesk moved its electronics after EAGLE. Hackster reported that Autodesk would discontinue EAGLE on June 7, 2026 and pointed users to the electronics designs inside Fusion. That date has now passed.

The attraction is one model for board and enclosure. A PCB designed in Fusion can be placed in the 3D model of the case around it, so clearance problems show up before you order parts. It runs on Windows and macOS, per the pricing page.

Best for: A hardware startup designing the board and the enclosure together.

Pricing:

• Fusion: $57 per month, billed annually
• Fusion for personal use: free, non-commercial, under $1,000 annual revenue, with limited electronics
• 30-day trial

Watch out for:

• The free personal tier lists "limited electronics and PCB designs", so serious board work needs the paid plan.
• There is no CELUS-style automated parts selection. You still choose and place every component.

Official site: Autodesk Fusion.

EasyEDA

EasyEDA suits makers more than corporate teams. The free plan allows commercial use with unlimited projects and team members, and runs in a browser or a desktop client, per the pricing page. Every plan includes both the Std and Pro editors, and the vendor points new users to Pro.

The appeal is speed from schematic to a manufactured board for small projects, with no install and no sales call.

Best for: Hobbyists and students building small boards on a budget.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 0.5GB cloud storage, 7 days of operation logs
• Premium: $19.9 per month, billed yearly only, 10GB storage and private libraries
• Enterprise: Coming Soon

Watch out for:

• Free users see ads in the editor that cannot be removed, the pricing page says.
• It offers no AI requirements-to-schematic flow, so it replaces the CAD half of CELUS, not the automation.

Official site: EasyEDA.

How to choose

When to stay with CELUS

Stay with CELUS if your bottleneck is the front end: turning requirements into a block diagram and finding parts that fit. That is the step none of the CAD tools above automate in the same way, and CELUS hands the result to Altium, Cadence, Siemens, Fusion or KiCad, per its homepage. Many teams use it alongside one of those tools rather than instead of it.

Frequently asked questions