Autodesk

AutoCAD

Autodesk stopped selling perpetual licenses in 2016. Draft or pay.

  • Forced subscriptionYou rent it. Stop paying and you lose it.
  • Lock-inProprietary formats or cloud storage that make leaving painful.

The exits

  1. CADCraft

    by ArtCraft

    A clean-room AutoCAD-style drafting app with a command line, hatching and dimensions.

    Status
    Alpha Early and moving fast. Try it, expect rough edges.
    License
    Apache-2.0
    Get CADCraft ↗View source ↗

  2. Lightweight 2D CAD with DXF support.

    Status
    Stable Mature and ready for daily work.
    License
    GPL-2.0
    Get LibreCAD ↗View source ↗

Suggest an edit to this entry ↗

Autodesk / Dassault
  • Subscription
  • Paywall
  • Account wall

Fusion & SolidWorks

Autodesk stripped features from Fusion's free personal tier in 2020. Parametric CAD is still a subscription business.

  1. FreeCADStableLGPL-2.1

    Parametric 3D CAD. Version 1.0 fixed the topological naming problem.

    Site ↗Source ↗
Autodesk
  • Subscription

Maya & 3ds Max

Thousands a year in subscriptions just to model, rig and render.

  1. BlenderStableGPL

    The full 3D pipeline: modeling, sculpting, rigging, animation, simulation and rendering. Used on Oscar-winning films.

    Site ↗Source ↗
Unity Technologies
  • Betrayal
  • Lock-in

Unity

In 2023 Unity announced a per-install Runtime Fee, applied retroactively. It backed down, but the trust was gone.

  1. GodotStableMIT

    A free 2D and 3D game engine. No royalties, no fees, no strings.

    Site ↗Source ↗