QElectroTech Alternatives for Free Electrical Schematics

QElectroTech is a free, open source editor for electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic schematics. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and ships with more than 8,000 symbols. The project is alive. Its version history lists 0.100 from January 25, 2024 as the current stable release, and the team is porting the code to Qt6 for a version it calls 0.100.1 or 0.200.0. Nightly builds exist, but the source repository warns that they are sometimes broken.

People who search "QElectroTech online" are often surprised. There is no web editor. The site offers online viewers for its symbol collections, and that is all. Others leave because they need a vendor to call, a bigger parts catalogue, or files that a client can open in AutoCAD.

The list below keeps the free and cheap tools near the top, because that is what most QElectroTech users want. Panel builders who are ready to pay for industrial ECAD should also read our EPLAN Electric P8 alternatives page, which goes deeper on Zuken, SOLIDWORKS and WSCAD.

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

Quick comparison

ProfiCAD

Of everything here, ProfiCAD does the most similar job. It targets the same drawings QElectroTech users make: control circuits, wiring diagrams, pneumatics and building installations. The homepage lists over 2,000 symbols and automatic outputs for bills of materials, wire lists, terminal lists, cable lists and cross-references.

Licensing is the old-fashioned kind. You pay once and keep the version you bought, minor upgrades are free, and major versions cost half price, per the purchase page. Version 14.1.4 is the current download.

Best for: A Windows user who wants QElectroTech-style control drawings plus a vendor that sells and supports them.

Pricing:

• Home licence: free for hobby use, up to 3 pages per drawing and no DXF export
• Single user: $277 one-time, covers one work PC and one home PC
• Site licence: $827; School licence: $277
• Prices exclude tax. 30-day full trial.

Watch out for:

• Windows 10 and newer only. The download page sends Mac users to Parallels and says nothing about Linux, which rules it out for many QElectroTech users.
• Using the Home edition at work is limited to opening, viewing and printing other people's files, per the editions page. Any paid design work needs the $277 licence.

Official site: ProfiCAD. Our listing: ProfiCAD.

KiCad

For anyone on Linux or a Mac who wants another free, open source program, KiCad is the healthiest project of the lot. Releases come often: 10.0.7 on October 7, 2026 and 10.0.8 on October 30, 2026. The source code is GPL v3 or later, and the symbol and footprint libraries are CC-BY-SA 4.0, per the licence page.

Its schematic editor feeds a full PCB layout tool with 3D board views. That matters if your "electrical" work is really electronics: a sensor board, a power supply, a custom interface card. QElectroTech cannot lay out a board at all.

Best for: Engineers who design circuit boards and want a free tool on any desktop OS.

Pricing:

• Free and open source, no paid tier

Watch out for:

• It is the wrong tool for cabinet wiring. A KiCad forum thread answering a request for an Eplan-like Linux tool calls KiCad a PCB tool and points the poster to QElectroTech instead.

Official site: KiCad.

Capital X Panel Designer

Siemens sells this browser-based panel tool, which began life as Electra Cloud before Radica joined Siemens. It is the closest answer to "QElectroTech online". The Essentials plan page lists autowiring, autonumbering, automatic pin sets, panel layout generation, instant BOMs and reports, real-time collaboration and version history.

The automation is what QElectroTech lacks. The free tier is thin, though. A January 2026 Radica post says accounts fall back to a freemium plan after the 30-day trial, with manual drawing only and no automation, aimed at people designing under 5 hours a month.

Best for: Small teams on Mac, Linux or Chromebooks who want automated panel drawings without installing anything.

Pricing:

• 30-day trial, then a free plan without automation
• Paid plans: Essentials, Standard and Advanced, per seat. Essentials is also sold monthly
• Standard adds the installed Capital Panel Designer for offline work
• The US pricing page does not show prices without signing in or loading the store, so check Siemens' store for current figures

Watch out for:

• The pricing page carries a banner that Essentials monthly rates are "going up soon", so check the live figure before you commit.
• Essentials is cloud only, per the plan page. No connection means no drawings unless you pay for Standard.

Official site: Capital X Panel Designer.

AutoCAD Electrical

Clients who ask for DWG files expect AutoCAD Electrical or something close to it. Autodesk now bundles it as one of seven toolsets inside an AutoCAD subscription. The toolset page lists 65,000+ intelligent symbols, a Symbol Builder, PLC I/O drawings built from a spreadsheet, and automatic reports.

QElectroTech saves to its own .qet format, so a client who wants editable DWG files gets PDFs or a redraw. AutoCAD Electrical removes that step, at a steep subscription cost.

Best for: Freelancers and firms whose clients demand native AutoCAD drawings.

Pricing:

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

Watch out for:

• Windows 11 64-bit only, per the 2027 system requirements. Autodesk ties the toolsets to AutoCAD for Windows.
• Subscription only. Stop paying and you lose the ability to edit, which is the opposite of the free GPL licence you are leaving.

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

SEE Electrical

Originally an IGE+XAO product, SEE Electrical is now sold by ETAP in three annual tiers named Launch, Grow and Scale. Each tier includes everything in the one below it, so a small shop can start small and add modules later.

The free trial is generous on time and stingy on size. It runs 30 days with every feature, but caps you at 3 schematic pages per project and 3 installation diagrams. That is enough to redraw one QElectroTech project and judge the output.

Best for: Small electrical firms that want a commercial ECAD package with room to grow.

Pricing:

• No public price. Each tier shows "Request pricing" on the ETAP page.
• Free 30-day trial, 3 schematic pages per project

Watch out for:

• Capterra reviewers give it 2.2 out of 5 for value for money across 5 reviews, and a February 2023 review complains of no after-sales service and no phone line.
• Windows 10 or 11 only, with at least 8GB of RAM listed on the product page.

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

TinyCAD

At the small end sits TinyCAD, an LGPL v2 schematic editor for Windows. SourceForge describes it as a tool for circuit diagrams that is often used for one-line and block diagrams. It exports netlists for several PCB programs and for SPICE simulation.

The program is small and the file format is simple, so it suits quick drawings more than projects. SourceForge still records about 518 downloads a week and a 4.7 out of 5 rating from 66 reviews.

Best for: Quick one-line or block diagrams on an older Windows machine.

Pricing:

• Free, open source under LGPL v2

Watch out for:

• Development has stalled. The SourceForge page shows the last update on October 3, 2021, and version 3.00.04 is still the download.
• Windows only, with Wine listed as the route for other systems. The project description mentions netlists, not terminal plans or cable lists.

Official site: TinyCAD.

EasyEDA

Browser-first electronics work points to EasyEDA. Its free plan allows commercial use and gives unlimited projects, libraries and team members, plus the desktop client and an offline version, according to the pricing page.

Two editions sit side by side, Std and Pro, and every plan gets both. The vendor says new development goes into Pro, so start there. Like KiCad, it is a schematic-to-PCB tool rather than a control-panel tool.

Best for: Makers who want a free electronics schematic and PCB editor that runs in a browser.

Pricing:

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

Watch out for:

• Free users see Google Ads in the editor and workspace and cannot remove them, per the pricing page.

Official site: EasyEDA.

draw.io

Sometimes the job is one sketch for a quote or a manual. draw.io is free, Apache 2.0 licensed, and opens at app.diagrams.net with no account. You choose where files live: your own disk, Google Drive, OneDrive, GitHub or Confluence.

Its electrical shape library is meant for "circuit diagrams and server racks", per the engineering page. That covers single-line diagrams and rough wiring sketches. It is a drawing tool, so it does not know a wire from a line.

Best for: A free browser sketch of a single-line or block diagram that nobody will wire from.

Pricing:

• Free, open source under Apache 2.0

Watch out for:

• draw.io has no electrical logic: no wire numbering, cross-references, terminal plans or BOM. Every label is typed and updated by hand.
• Electrical symbol coverage is basic. For IEC or IEEE sets there are third-party libraries such as Draw-io-ECE on GitHub.

Official site: draw.io.

How to choose

When to stay with QElectroTech

Stay if you draw control cabinets on Linux or a Mac and want to pay nothing. No other free tool on this list is built for cabinet schematics and also runs on all three desktop systems. The weak spots are documentation and pace: a February 2025 forum thread calls the panel layout docs thin. If that is your only complaint, the forum and the nightly builds may serve you better than a paid licence.

Frequently asked questions