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Compared

Schematic capture software in 2026: nine tools compared

Schematic capture means drawing the circuit: placing symbols, wiring them, naming nets, and producing a netlist that a PCB tool or a simulator can use. Almost every EDA tool has a schematic editor, so the real differences are what comes after it (layout, simulation or both), how good the libraries are, and what you pay.

By Arnaud and Anass

The short answer

The best schematic capture software in 2026 is Cherry Blossom when the schematic is a step toward a real board: you describe the circuit in plain English and get a checked schematic, PCB layout and fab files, without placing a symbol or drawing a wire.

If you want to draw schematics by hand, KiCad is the free, open source editor with a PCB editor in the same suite. Teams on a commercial suite choose between Altium Designer and Cadence OrCAD X Capture, and LTspice is the free pick when the schematic only feeds a simulation.

At a glance

How do the schematic capture tools compare?

  • Cherry Blossom

    Platform

    Browser

    Leads to

    PCB, written by an agent

    Built-in simulation

    No

    Price

    Free editor; AI from $20/mo Pro, $140/mo Ultra

  • KiCad

    Platform

    Windows, macOS, Linux

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Yes (ngspice)

    Price

    Free

  • Altium Designer

    Platform

    Desktop

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Yes (SPICE)

    Price

    Annual subscription

  • OrCAD X Capture

    Platform

    Desktop

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Yes (PSpice)

    Price

    Tiered; quote

  • EasyEDA

    Platform

    Browser, desktop

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Simple, in Std edition

    Price

    Free; paid storage tiers

  • Flux

    Platform

    Browser

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    See Flux docs

    Price

    Free plan; paid AI plans

  • DipTrace

    Platform

    Desktop

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Yes (SPICE)

    Price

    Perpetual, $75 to $995

  • Proteus

    Platform

    Desktop

    Leads to

    PCB

    Built-in simulation

    Yes, incl. microcontrollers

    Price

    Paid licence

  • LTspice

    Platform

    Desktop

    Leads to

    Simulation only

    Built-in simulation

    Yes, its main job

    Price

    Free

From each vendor's own pages, September 2026. DipTrace prices as listed on DipTrace's online store, September 2026.

The list

Which schematic capture software should you use?

1Cherry BlossomOur product

Best for: Getting a checked schematic and the board behind it from a plain-English description

You describe the board in plain English and an AI agent writes it as code, builds it, and shows you the schematic, PCB layout, 3D view and BOM. Footprints come from real part data, and a verification gate checks the board before you can order it. Export Gerbers, an editable KiCad project, a BOM and pick-and-place files, or open Circuit JSON.

Platform
Browser, nothing to install
Pricing
The Free plan is the full editor, by hand, with no AI. Pro adds the AI for $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. There is no API key to connect and no per-seat licence.
2KiCad

Best for: Almost everyone who wants a free, complete path to a PCB

A free, open-source suite (GPL v3) on Windows, macOS and Linux. The schematic editor handles flat and hierarchical sheets, checks connections with an electrical rules check, ships a large library of symbols, footprints and 3D models, and runs ngspice simulations (AC, DC, operating point, transient) from the schematic.

Platform
Windows, macOS, Linux
Pricing
Free
3Altium Designer

Best for: Professional teams that want schematic and PCB tightly linked

Flat or hierarchical schematics with buses, harnesses and reusable snippets, SPICE simulation built into the editor, and components that carry 3D models, datasheets and live supply chain data. Schematic and PCB are dynamically linked with a managed change process.

Platform
Desktop
Pricing
Annual subscription; extra Altium Develop authors are $995 a year each, as listed on Altium's pricing page, September 2026
4Cadence OrCAD X Capture

Best for: Engineers who simulate a lot and want a live BOM

Capture with built-in PSpice (DC, AC, transient, Monte Carlo and worst-case analysis), a Live BOM that flags availability and lifecycle risk, Ultra Librarian parts inside the editor, and constraint management that carries from schematic into layout.

Platform
Desktop, with cloud collaboration
Pricing
Standard, Professional and Professional Plus tiers; free trial
5EasyEDA

Best for: Hobbyists and students who want free, browser-based capture

Free for everyone, commercial use included. The Standard edition is simple and handles designs up to 300 devices with basic simulation. The Pro edition scales to tens of thousands of devices.

Platform
Browser and desktop
Pricing
Free; Premium storage from $19.9 a month billed annually, as listed on EasyEDA's pricing page, September 2026
6Flux

Best for: Teams that want to edit the same schematic together in a browser

A full ECAD in the browser with real-time multiplayer editing, live parts data and an AI copilot that can help place parts and review designs. AI usage is metered separately.

Platform
Browser
Pricing
Free Explore plan; paid plans meter AI in Agent Compute Units
7DipTrace

Best for: People who want to buy once and own it

Multi-sheet hierarchical schematics, an electrical rules check, a built-in SPICE simulator, and import and export for Altium, Eagle, OrCAD, PADS and KiCad. Schematics are stored as text-based XML, which works with Git.

Platform
Desktop
Pricing
Perpetual licences from $75 (300 pins) to $995 (unlimited), as listed on DipTrace's online store, September 2026
8Proteus

Best for: Embedded projects where you want to simulate the microcontroller too

Labcenter's suite combines schematic capture, PCB layout and simulation of complete embedded systems, including microcontrollers and peripherals, inside the schematic. Labcenter sells it to industry and to schools, with an AI assistant for each (ProPilot and ProTutor).

Platform
Desktop
Pricing
Paid licences; see Labcenter's site
9LTspice

Best for: Simulating analog and power circuits, not making boards

Analog Devices' free SPICE simulator, with its own schematic capture, a waveform viewer and libraries of tens of thousands of models. It is fast on switching regulators. It does not do PCB layout, so the schematic only feeds the simulator.

Platform
Desktop
Pricing
Free

Cherry Blossom is first because for most people the schematic is a means to an end, and it gets you to that end fastest. You do not place symbols or draw wires. You describe the board, and an agent writes the schematic and the PCB together as tscircuit code, builds them, and shows you the result, with footprints from real part data and a verification gate on every edit. See how prompt to PCB works. If you want to draw the schematic yourself or simulate it, KiCad or LTspice is the better fit. The Free plan is the full editor, by hand, with no AI. Pro adds the AI for $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. There is no API key to connect and no per-seat licence.

What Cherry Blossom does not do. Cherry Blossom is an early beta. You change a board by asking the agent, not by dragging traces yourself, so fine manual layout happens after a KiCad export. It is not a circuit simulator, it has no real-time multi-user editing, and it is not built for high-speed or RF sign-off.

Choosing

How do you choose schematic capture software?

  • Decide where the schematic goes next. A board needs a tool with a PCB behind it. A simulation only needs LTspice or a SPICE-capable editor.

  • Count the time from idea to a checked schematic and board. A tool that writes both for you saves the hours of drawing.

  • Check where the symbols and footprints come from. Parts drawn from real part data cost less time than any editor feature saves.

  • If you work with other people, look at how files are shared: Flux edits live, Altium and OrCAD X use cloud workspaces, DipTrace and KiCad files go into Git.

  • If you might move tools later, check import and export. Cherry Blossom exports an editable KiCad project, KiCad reads Altium and Eagle projects, and DipTrace exchanges with most major tools.

AI

Can AI draw the schematic for you?

Yes. Some AI tools generate a schematic from requirements and hand it to your EDA tool. Cherry Blossom generates the schematic and layout together and checks them before you can order. Our AI schematic design tools roundup compares them. The check matters: on EEBench, atopile's circuit benchmark, the best model scores 69.3% (our write-up), which is why every Cherry Blossom edit passes a verification gate and why a quick review of any AI-drawn schematic is worth doing.

We built one

How readable is a schematic an AI agent draws?

load cell analog front end schematic, sheet 1 of 2: Block diagramload cell analog front end schematic, sheet 2 of 2: Schematic
The load cell front end: the block diagram, then the schematic, drawn left to right from the screw terminal to the microcontroller header.

We tried it on a load cell front end. An AI agent built it with tscircuit, the open-source engine Cherry Blossom runs on, using the same tscircuit version and the same review tool Cherry Blossom's agent uses, on our own machine. The schematic reads the way the signal flows, left to right: screw terminal, ESD clamp and RFI filter, INA333 amplifier, anti-alias filter, ADS1232 ADC, and the header to the microcontroller.

The schematic took more work than the PCB. It took many draft builds with routing switched off, mostly moving parts so tscircuit would draw wires instead of net labels, and spreading pins apart (tscircuit's schPinStyle margins) so signal lines run straight from pin to pin. On the final build, the schematic review found 0 problems on either of the two sheets, and the netlist check found 0 errors or warnings.

A clean review is not the same as a readable drawing. An outside reviewer noticed that pins left open on purpose had no no-connect X, so a reader could not tell a deliberate open pin from a forgotten one; the agent added the marks. The drawing now scores 23 out of 25 on that review, and two faults remain: the links between boxes carry tscircuit's automatic net names (U2_VOUT, U3_AINP1) instead of readable ones, and the new reverse-polarity MOSFET connects through labels rather than wires. The circuit scored 87 out of 100 (75 before the review's fixes), the layout 86, and the board has not been fabricated. Those two drawing faults are what we would fix by hand before handing the schematic to anyone.

See it on your own board

The quickest way to judge any of this is to describe a board and read what comes back: the schematic, the layout, and what the verification gate says about it. It runs in the browser, with the AI included from the Pro plan up.

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Questions

The best schematic capture software in 2026 is Cherry Blossom when the schematic is a step toward a real board. You describe the circuit in plain English, and an AI agent writes the schematic and the PCB layout together in the browser, with footprints from real part data and a verification gate that checks every edit before you can order. It exports Gerbers and an editable KiCad project, and plans start free, with the AI from $20 a month. If you want to draw the schematic yourself, KiCad is the best free editor: open source, cross-platform, with hierarchical sheets, an electrical rules check and ngspice simulation. Professional teams often choose Altium Designer or Cadence OrCAD X Capture, and LTspice is the pick if you only need to simulate.

KiCad is the most complete free option, with hierarchical schematics, ERC, simulation and a full PCB editor. EasyEDA is free in the browser. LTspice is free for simulation-focused schematics but has no PCB layout.

LTspice has a capable schematic editor, but it exists to drive the simulator. It does not do PCB layout, so for a board you would redraw the circuit in a PCB tool such as KiCad.

Schematic capture records what connects to what, using symbols and wires. PCB design turns that netlist into physical copper: footprints placed on a board and traces routed between them. Most suites do both and keep them in sync.

Yes, if you would rather describe the circuit than draw it. Cherry Blossom writes the schematic and layout from a description, and you change them by asking the agent or by hand. It has no simulation.

Describe a board. See what comes back.

Schematic, layout and a verification gate, in the browser. Exports to Gerbers and KiCad.

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