Cherry Blossom vs DipTrace: the best DipTrace alternative

DipTrace is four tools in one package: hierarchical multi-sheet schematic capture, PCB layout with manual push and shove routing and a shape-based autorouter, a component editor with an IPC-7351 pattern generator, and a real-time 3D preview. It runs on Windows and macOS. The current release as we write is 5.3.5, from September 2026. It advertises constraint-driven design with real-time DRC, native XML files that work with Git, Gerber and ODB++ output, and a perpetual licence it describes as "proven since 2002".

Cherry Blossom has no canvas to draw on, because you do not need one. You describe the board, an agent writes it as tscircuit code in a cloud sandbox and builds it, and you see the schematic, PCB layout, 3D view and BOM. Footprints come from real part data rather than a pattern generator, a verification gate checks every edit, and you change the board by asking.

DipTrace is sold as perpetual licences by pin count and signal layers, as listed on DipTrace's online store, September 2026:

• Starter: 300 pins, 2 signal layers, $75.

• Lite: 500 pins, 2 signal layers, $145.

• Standard: 1,000 pins, 4 signal layers, $395.

• Extended: 2,000 pins, 6 signal layers, $695.

• Full: unlimited pins and layers, $995.

Every edition includes unlimited plane layers, and all 5.x updates are free. DipTrace says major upgrades to 6.x and beyond cost about 25% of the edition price. There is a 30-day full-featured trial as well as the freeware.

Pro is $20 a month with 4M AI credits and 600 AI actions a day. Ultra is $140 a month with 32M credits and the frontier models. Usage past the allowance is $5 per 1M credits, only if you turn it on. The AI is included, with no API key and no per-seat licence. See the pricing page for details.

The money buys different things. DipTrace sells you an editor to work in. Cherry Blossom sells the design work itself, done by an AI and checked before you order.

DipTrace pairs hand routing with a shape-based autorouter, so here is a fully automatic route to compare against. An AI agent built this ESP32-C3 sensor board with tscircuit, the open source engine Cherry Blossom runs on. It ran on our own machine, on the same tscircuit version and review tool Cherry Blossom's agent uses. The tscircuit autorouter laid 121 traces and 60 vias, about 768 mm of copper at 0.25 mm nominal width. A full routed build took 111 to 205 seconds on our machine; a cached rebuild took 29.

It did not come out clean on the first try. Early attempts put a via inside the USB-C connector's ground pad and another 0.044 mm from a capacitor. The agent fixed those by flipping two resistors and adding via-to-pad clearance. The first clean route had 41 vias and diagonal runs, and the rubric gave the PCB 17 out of 25. Moving the USB-C connector let the data pair run straight, and the score rose to 20. Later, swapping one capacitor re-rolled the router, which dropped a via into a resistor pad until the agent stood two resistors on end. Then an outside review of the circuit added parts (a surge clamp, a second ESD chip and five test pads), so the whole board was routed again, and the via count grew from 40 to 60. Two builds that tried hand-placed ground stitching vias failed clearance checks, because the extra vias changed the whole route, so they came out. The final layout scored 85 out of 100.

A person should still widen the traces that narrow to 0.15 mm at fine-pitch pads and add ground stitching vias between the two ground pours by hand. The board has not been made.

• You want to place and route boards yourself, in a desktop editor with an autorouter to help.

• You dislike subscriptions and would rather pay once and own the licence.

• Your boards are small enough for the free 300-pin tier.