ProfiCAD Alternatives for Electrical and Wiring Diagrams

ProfiCAD is a Windows program for electrical, control and wiring diagrams, with more than 2,000 symbols and automatic bills of materials, wire lists, terminal lists and cross-references. It is alive. The download page offers version 14.1.4, which needs the Microsoft Visual C++ 64-bit redistributable, and recommends ProfiCAD 12 for Windows 10 and ProfiCAD 13 for Windows 11. The purchase page sells a $277 single-user licence with no subscription.

People still leave it, for a few common reasons: a Mac or Linux machine, a client who wants DWG files, a need for panel layouts and PLC tools that ProfiCAD does not offer, or the free Home edition's cap of 3 pages per drawing. The eight tools below are ordered for the typical ProfiCAD user, a small firm or an electrician drawing control circuits.

Shops moving up to full industrial ECAD should also read our EPLAN Electric P8 alternatives, which covers Zuken E3.series and SOLIDWORKS Electrical in more depth.

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

Quick comparison

QElectroTech

For a ProfiCAD user, QElectroTech is the shortest step. It draws the same control circuits, wiring diagrams and building installations, plus hydraulic and pneumatic schematics, and it ships with more than 8,000 symbols, per the project site. It costs nothing under the GNU GPL v2, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

The free licence has no page cap, which removes the main pain of ProfiCAD's Home edition. The current stable version is 0.100 from January 25, 2024, with a Qt6 port in progress. Our QElectroTech alternatives page covers what to try if it does not suit you either.

Best for: A hobbyist or small shop that hit the Home edition's 3-page limit, or anyone on a Mac or Linux.

Pricing:

• Free, GPL v2, no paid tier

Watch out for:

• Stable releases are rare. The source repository warns that nightly builds are sometimes broken or only partly implemented.
• Panel layout documentation is thin, a February 2025 forum thread says, and there is no vendor support line.

Official site: QElectroTech. Our listing: QElectroTech.

AutoCAD Electrical

ProfiCAD's own homepage says it is not suited to full DWG or DXF editing. AutoCAD Electrical is the answer when contractors and customers expect editable DWG. The toolset page lists more than 65,000 intelligent symbols, a Symbol Builder, PLC I/O drawings generated from a spreadsheet and reports that update with the drawing.

Autodesk sells it only as one of seven toolsets inside an AutoCAD subscription. Version 2027 was released on March 25, 2026.

Best for: A contractor whose clients ask for DWG and who needs PLC I/O drawings.

Pricing:

• AutoCAD including specialized toolsets: $260 per month or $2,095 per year, suggested retail before tax
• 15-day free trial

Watch out for:

• One year of AutoCAD costs more than seven ProfiCAD single-user licences, and stopping the subscription ends editing.
• The 2027 requirements list Windows 11 64-bit only, so Windows 10 PCs that run ProfiCAD today will not qualify.

Official site: AutoCAD Electrical. Our listing: AutoCAD Electrical.

Capital X Panel Designer

Siemens now owns the old Electra product from Radica Software, and Radica says this browser tool was previously known as Electra Cloud. It does the drudge work ProfiCAD leaves to you. Insert a symbol on a wire and the wire splits and renumbers, and terminals are generated and numbered in step with the terminal list, per the product page.

Because it runs in a browser, it also works on a Mac without Parallels. The Standard plan adds an installed desktop version for offline work, per the Standard plan page.

Best for: A panel shop that wants automatic wire and terminal numbering and can work online.

Pricing:

• Essentials, Standard and Advanced plans; the pricing page lists the plan names and a 30-day free trial but no figures
• After the trial, a free plan without automation

Watch out for:

• A banner on the pricing page says the Essentials monthly rates "are going up soon".
• The free fallback plan is manual drawing only and aimed at people who design under 5 hours a month, per Radica's January 2026 post.

Official site: Capital X Panel Designer.

Microsoft Visio

Plenty of ProfiCAD users only draw one-line diagrams, small control sketches and building wiring plans for a report. In an office that already pays for Microsoft 365, Visio may be the cheaper way to do that. The plans page lists electrical and P&ID templates in Visio Plan 2, along with the desktop app.

Visio Plan 1 and the free Visio in Microsoft 365 run only in the browser and Teams, and neither includes the electrical templates. So the useful tier for electrical work is Plan 2.

Best for: An office team that draws simple electrical diagrams for documents and already lives in Microsoft 365.

Pricing:

• Visio Plan 2: $15 per user per month, paid yearly, auto-renews
• Visio Plan 1: $5 per user per month, paid yearly, web and Teams only, no electrical templates
• Visio in Microsoft 365: included in Microsoft 365 commercial plans, web only

Watch out for:

• Shapes are not a circuit. There is no automatic wire numbering, terminal list or relay cross-referencing, which is the main thing ProfiCAD does for you.
• The desktop app comes only with Plan 2, and Microsoft builds it for Windows.

Official site: Microsoft Visio.

WSCAD ELECTRIX

German vendor WSCAD sells ELECTRIX AI as its electrical CAD and announces ELECTRIX OS on its homepage. The pull for a ProfiCAD user is the parts data. WSCAD runs wscaduniverse, a free library of about 2.2 million parts from 457 manufacturers, who supply the data free of charge. Devices arrive with symbols and article data instead of being drawn by hand.

Terms are one or three years, with 10% off the annual fee on three, per the subscription page. Each year includes a free four-week temporary licence and an online training session. Schools can get a free Education edition.

Best for: A growing panel builder who wants manufacturer parts data in the schematic.

Pricing:

• No public price; offers by request form
• 1-year or 3-year subscription, 10% off on 3 years
• Free trial; free Education edition

Watch out for:

• Contracts renew automatically and need three months' notice to cancel, per the subscription terms.
• ELECTRIX AI needs Windows 11 64-bit 25H2, and the requirements page notes a 24H2 licence-service bug that shows "No matching dongle found".

Official site: WSCAD ELECTRIX.

SEE Electrical

ETAP now sells SEE Electrical, the former IGE+XAO product, in three annual tiers: Launch, Grow and Scale. Launch is close to ProfiCAD in scope, a schematic editor with basic reports, DWG import and export, and PDF output. Grow is where it pulls ahead, with automatic wire numbering, PLC management, a 2D panel layout editor and cabinet thermal calculation, per the ETAP page.

The 30-day trial includes every feature but caps each project at 3 schematic pages and 3 installation diagrams, the same page count as ProfiCAD's free Home edition.

Best for: A firm that wants to start with plain schematics and add PLC and panel modules later.

Pricing:

• No public price; every tier shows "Request pricing"
• Annual subscriptions
• 30-day trial, 3 schematic pages per project

Watch out for:

• Value for money scores 2.2 out of 5 on Capterra across 5 reviews, and one February 2023 review reports no after-sales service and no phone line.
• Windows 10 or 11 with at least 8GB of RAM, per the product page.

Official site: SEE Electrical. Our listing: SEE Electrical.

KiCad

Some people use ProfiCAD for electronics schematics, and for them KiCad is the better tool. It is free and open source, and its schematic editor feeds a full circuit board layout with 3D views. Release 10.0.8 came out on October 30, 2026 for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Code is GPL v3 or later, and the symbol and footprint libraries are CC-BY-SA 4.0, per the licence page. Fabricators accept its Gerber output, so a design can go straight to a board house.

Best for: Anyone drawing electronic circuits that will end up on a PCB.

Pricing:

• Free and open source, no paid tier

Watch out for:

• It is not a control-panel tool. A KiCad forum thread calls it a PCB tool and sends someone who wanted Eplan-style work to QElectroTech.
• Its symbols follow electronics conventions, so there are no ready contactor, terminal strip or cable reports.

Official site: KiCad.

EasyEDA

EasyEDA runs in a browser, so it is the quickest way to draw a circuit on a Mac or Chromebook where ProfiCAD will not install. The free plan allows commercial use with unlimited projects and team members and includes a desktop client, per the pricing page.

Like KiCad, it goes from schematic to circuit board. Every plan includes both the Std and Pro editors, and the vendor recommends Pro for new work.

Best for: Electronics hobbyists and students who want nothing to install.

Pricing:

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

Watch out for:

• Ads in the free editor cannot be removed, the pricing page says.
• It has no symbols or reports for control cabinets, so it replaces ProfiCAD only for electronics drawings.

Official site: EasyEDA.

How to choose

When to stay with ProfiCAD

Stay with ProfiCAD if you work on Windows and want to pay once. The $277 single-user licence covers one work PC and one home PC, minor upgrades are free and major ones are half price, per the purchase page. AutoCAD Electrical costs more than that every year, and the other industrial tools here are subscriptions. For control circuits with BOMs, wire lists and cross-references, it already does the job.

Frequently asked questions