PCBEditor vs CircuitMaker
Both are free. One runs in your browser with AI doing the heavy lifting. The other is the Altium engine repackaged for makers, with community projects baked in.
CircuitMaker is Altium's free community tool. You get a slice of the Altium engine for personal projects, in exchange for keeping your designs public on their community platform.
PCBEditor is browser-based, AI-first, and your designs are private by default. The trade-off is the opposite of CircuitMaker's: you give up some of Altium's deep routing power, but you get AI generation and no install.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| FEATURE | PCBEDITOR | CIRCUITMAKER |
|---|---|---|
| AI circuit generation from plain English | ✓ | ✗ |
| Browser-based, no install | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free | ✓ | ✓ |
| Private projects | ✓ | ✗ |
| Community project sharing | ~ | ✓ |
| Altium routing engine | ✗ | ✓ |
| Schematic editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| PCB layout editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| 3D viewer | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gerber export | ✓ | ✓ |
| KiCad export | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-time AI copilot | ✓ | ✗ |
| DRC + auto-fix | ✓ | ✓ |
Comparison reflects publicly documented features at time of writing. Tool capabilities evolve — verify for your specific use case before committing.
Pick PCBEditor when
- ✓You want AI to generate the schematic instead of drawing it.
- ✓You want your designs to stay private.
- ✓You'd rather not install desktop software.
Pick CircuitMaker when
- –You want a slice of the Altium routing engine for free.
- –You're happy publishing your designs publicly to the community.
- –You're on Windows and prefer a native desktop app.