User Poll: How much costs for a 1-year Eagle Premium license?

[Anonymous]

As the old year ended, many of us ended counting the gains and losses, the question is:

If you were to build a 20x20 cm 4-layer board and wanted a personal 1-year Autodesk Eagle Premium license,

how much of your yearly profit you would have to set aside?

1%?

2%?

4%?

6%?

8%?

10%

13%?

16%?

20%?

25%?

Honestly, I want to hear how much it would cost you.

Because I discovered that it would be around 20% for me.

The excuse that "you can buy a 30-day version" does not work for me, because I won't spend each and every of those 30 days with Eagle, some weeks I'll be doing completely different tasks.

[Anonymous]

Nobody bought Eagle Premium, I guess.
Maybe people are just using it because their employer bought it for them?
Lucky guys!

[C.Nicks]

ADresden,
I have found the cost of Eagle to be very competitive. The company I was with added a few Engineers and gave them all Altium licenses at ~7k a pop, with yearly maintenance. How long will that take to break even compared to Eagle's 500 in a year.

In my 6+ years of layout, I have averaged a board every 3 weeks. The cost has been covered in the past by my employer.
When contracting, 25% of a single design will generally cover a year of subscription. Do a contract design a month and the cost drops to 4%.

I don't want to tell you how to run your business, but If you want to make the cost efficient for you, you should focus all of your design efforts into time frames that allow completion within the 30 day increments.

If you simply cannot afford to pay for an Eagle subscription and you do not design a lot of boards, there are a few free programs out there that could get you by.

[one-of-the-robs]

I don't actually know what the annual profit of the company I do electronic design for is but it's a lot less than the one I do software only for (who use Altium for the electronics design). Nonetheless, I could offer this interesting comparison:

Each system this company sells contains at least four PCBs I designed. Between those four PCBs, the markup from what the company pays for the populated boards to what it includes in the system price would pay for a year's Eagle subscription. The company sells more than one system per year. It pays me the cost of a year's Eagle subscription roughly every two weeks in salary. And that's not even my day job.

Like Cameron, I do actually think that the price of an Eagle seat is very reasonable for a professional tool in a professional environment. I'm not keen on subscription licensing for philosophical and "gut instinct" reasons but the actual pricing of Eagle is very fair.

[Anonymous]

So, the Eagle Premium is not aimed for the Enthusiast and Hobbyist market, even if Matt bragged that that is where majority of their 1-million userbase is.

I still find it weird that for countries with lower PPP they put an extra heavy price tag for no reason.

How long have you spent writing the User Manual for the product after finishing the board layout?

How long did the inventing of the schematics, corrections and principles take per board on average?

How many re-works of the board or schematics on average?

[C.Nicks]

I would say that yes, it is aimed at the hobbyist market because you can use it free with some size restrictions. Then there is the intermediate much lower cost standard. In my past there were a lot of projects that wouldn't need the full premium version.

I don't know about the cost differences in other countries, but the standard version is 5 times cheaper, still has 99 schematic sheets, 4 layers, and an entire 2 square feet of PCB size. I would think that option would fit 95% of the userbase's needs. If you are doing larger, more layer count design work, then you should be making enough to buy the full version many times over.

User manual: That comes at the end so you can deactivate subscription while working on that.
Schematics: Most of the time I work in a team of engineers, so I can't really say. If I were doing the circuit design, that would be billed separate from the board layout.
Reworks: Rarely ever do I get to a rev 1.1 board unless the circuit design itself had flaws. I look over my design extremely in detail with gerber viewers before ever sending out.

[Anonymous]

0.33x0.52 feet is nowhere near a "square foot", not even two, you only get 100x160mm, 16000 square centimeters or so. (about 8.9% of the area you mentioned!)
Second, any 1-dollar FPGA won't be all too happy with a 4-layer board anymore. Even common dirt-cheap MCUs today use BGAs which might not be all too happy about a 4-layer board, that's 2 layers just for power supply.

I need just one schematic sheet, as do many hobbyists and occasional users.

What I poined to is, that since you are not doing the schematics, you are not going to repair the schematics mid-flight, thus you don't have a need to rework the board while doing the layout. But then, with so many engineers that is very many people and engineer-hours per one Eagle license. Quite the opposite of a hobby or small company use.

At a small company, one person would be doing the work of 10, and while the suggestion of putting Eagle license on hold seems tempting, the practical delay of 2-3 days for activation and likely 2-3 days for deactivation makes that not practical at all.

Because, you discover (post-factum) a simple error in the schematics, so you rush to correct it on the board, a 5-minute job, that would require waiting 2-3 days (nominal), then doing the same communication procedure to deactivate the license, and the same waiting period.

Like you said, there are other software options than Eagle.

P.S. I heard a story from a guy who told me that Autodesk asked them for 5000 euros for Eagle licenses, they thanked them and ran away. They BARELY use one computer SOME of the time. He said that they bought Protel.

As far as corporate accounting and ordering goes, Eagle is a win, but for anything single-manned, it is currently questionable.

[C.Nicks]

The Ealge subscription pages says the standard is limited to 160 cm2, which converts to 24.8 square inches. Is that a typo and supposed to be 160 mm2?

If you are doing FPGA layout with one schematic sheet, there are probabaly modules you could buy off the shelf. Also BGAs and FPGAs should be treated as advanced technology and charged accordingly. But you are right, a 4-layer board would not adequate.

Just because I do not do the initial circuit design does not mean I do not do a ton of fixes when I catch problems. That happens all the time, especially when digging into the details of building parts into libraries. Even recently I removed 8 pages of schematics and completely replaced the architecture. Things like this happen all of the time.
When other engineers design the circuit, they usually do them in other software packages and I translate everything from scratch into Eagle. I do not like taking other people's messy Eagle libraries and schematics and do the layout from them. I do everything from scratch, which is why I rarely have to spin the boards

In my last job, I was the only person doing layout with 4+ engineers feeding designs. So I had to keep up and be able to quickly fix any issues found in design reviews.
Now I am in another small company, with only 2 others working with me on designs and we all have input on the circuits and layout. The key is to work extremely efficient. I try to figure out the fastest way I can work in Eagle as possible in order to keep things moving.
That's how I have so much knowledge of the workings and configurations of Eagle.
When you see me or Rachael post about something and you go back and forth with us, know that we are doing massive amounts of work compared to you. So you may want to take notes and listen to the experts, because we know what we're doing and don't have the problems you do.
I rarely like taking my time to respond to posts that I do not think will help other users, but sometimes I have to jump in as well.
For now I'm done on this. Even with it's shortcomings, Eagle is a very professional, high quality tool at a good value. Just in the development this year alone is well worth paying the subscription.

[Anonymous]

First, thank you for the comments on your country and economy.

A square foot is 12x12 inches, right? That's 244 square inches per two square feet. Two sqare feet are approx. 30x60cm. Or about 0.1 tatami.

16x10cm is 160cm^2, that's 16000mm^2, that's 1.6dm^2, that's 0.016 square meters. Decades squared.

BGAs and FPGAs are no longer advanced or expensive, 5-10 dollar toys and hobby projects contain them. Chip makers prefer them. I could place 0.35-mm pitch BGA as well as a pro machine for tiny fraction of the cost. Some hobby market board makers started supplying 6-layer boards as standard.

You are doing massive amout of jobs, not just work. Work is defined by the effort spent, in Joules, calories, BTU, etc. (or time.) In the rushtime for a deadline, I spent 40 hours in three days reworking, placing, adding and finishing some design, pages and pages of new schematics made from scratch. Roughly the work of those 4 engineers and you. The difference is that I'm not being paid for that.

I just wish you that only people who actually work on the project will comment and try to change the design, not people who did not, will not and never would work on it, like in my case, I can tell you that is hell to live. People who will care only too much and pressure you about something cheap removed, yet the next day care not at all, yet the day after happily agree to some external suggestion of adding a useless component of the same cost level. You will spend a lot time explaining why one or another design choice has been made (three times), only for the person acting surprised and shocked that such a design choice is there in some important fourth meeting. I suddenly felt dizzy after that.

I just wish that you would never ever have to suffer that, lots of people wanting something, changing opinions, goals, wanting you to make a document, then wanting you to remake that document, and after that not caring about the document the slightest bit!!! Did I mention that the document work would stop you from actually working on the design? You guessed that there would be questions why the design has not proceeded in the meantime, yes. No, that person didn't even TRY to help with that document. Saboteur.

The solution you offer is simple: change country of residence, I see that.

Will try later.

Thanks.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi All,

Just some minor clarifications on the units and math.

EAGLE standard's board area limit is 160cm^2 = 16000mm^2 = 24.8 sq inches

A square foot is equal to 12 x 12 = 144 sq inches not 244.

Eagle standards board area limit is approximately 1/5 of a square foot.

Hope this helps, it's easy to get numbers mixed up when your quick firing a bunch of calculations.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

"A square foot is 12x12 inches, right? That's 244 square inches per two square feet. Two sqare feet are approx. 30x60cm. Or about 0.1 tatami."

I wrote the above and there is nothing wrong about that. I think it needed some accent, so you can see it.

While I have flat feet, those are nowhere near two square feet.

[one-of-the-robs]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

"A square foot is 12x12 inches, right? That's 244 square inches per two square feet. Two sqare feet are approx. 30x60cm. Or about 0.1 tatami."

I wrote the above and there is nothing wrong about that. I think it needed some accent, so you can see it.

While I have flat feet, those are nowhere near two square feet.

---

Errr... before you start getting offended by Jorge's correction, perhaps you should actually re-read what you wrote (rather than just bolding it) and re-check your maths.

[rachaelATWH4]

Picking up on a maths mistake Cameron made and making an issue out of it really wasn't necessary, I'm not sure why you felt the need to do that other than to try and make yourself look clever. You failed on that count though.

The board area and layer count of the standard version of EAGLE is maybe a little restrictive for some, 6 layers would make it fit more use cases, but then people designing with BGA parts are likely doing much more expensive boards which require HDI technologies and the annual cost of the EAGLE Premium license would be less than the cost of a set of prototype PCB's.

You refer to 0.35mm BGA's and you can place these like a pro, well done you. BGA's this pitch are restricted to lower pin count devices and even the most complex of these can usually be fanned out in a 4 layer board including dedicated layers for power and ground. As the pin count increases the layer requirements increase according to the number of routing channels required to escape out of the part but as the pin count increases the smallest pitch increases because there is a minimum manufacturable size which will still allow routes out between pads, even with microvias and via in pad. Hobbyist and Maker users for EAGLE are exceedingly unlikely to be using parts like these so your argument isn't valid.

I'm sorry but the cost of an annual license of EAGLE is way less than other commercial tools. The annual maintenance cost alone for Altium, Cadence, and Mentor Graphics tools costs way more than an EAGLE Premium subscription for a year, let alone the cost of buying those tools in the first place so think yourself lucky EAGLE is in the price range it is otherwise your choices would be very limited.

At the end of the day, if your profit is such that the cost of the EAGLE license is taking too much of it away then that's something you'll have to look at to determine if you can continue with EAGLE. If you can't there is always KiCAD which is free and is also available for Linux which I know is your platform of choice. You won't get regular feature updates like we are getting now from Autodesk with major advancements though, and you won't have a dedicated support team answering questions and helping resolve problems either. Don't underestimate how much money Autodesk are putting into supporting EAGLE as well as developing it and the value of the contributions on the forums from Jorge, Ed and Richard plus all the developers who also come on here to answer specific more in depth issues should not be underestimated. I think the cost of the EAGLE licenses is very fair considering how much Autodesk are putting into the development and support of the product.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[one-of-the-robs]

Oh, and just to throw in another mostly irrelevant datum point for hobbyists (who, as Rachael says, aren't likely to need Premium)...

Our lad, who is 16, took up martial arts last year (Wing Chun). His training sessions cost us £40 per month... not far off an Eagle Premium license (UK pricing being inexplicably higher than US). Some people obviously think this is a reasonable cost even for a hobby!

[Anonymous]

In the UK, as you said, not say, in Poland, Hungary, Bularia, Romania, where Eagle licence is far more expensive than in Austria or Germany.

The ratio of Eagle:PPP is thus 4 to, what ten, twenty? times higher, also because of the inexplicable price politics.

[Anonymous]

Cameron didn't make a math error I did, I have to defend him on this, he sincerely didn't know how much area Standard licence offers, he never had to care and that was my point.

I did a math error, it's 288, not 244. I multipled only the hundreds, omitted the tens and ones.

My point was that Eagle is now purely a full-time employment kind of project, the sporadic users (no matter how intensive) drew the shorter straw now.

The 0.35mm FPGA BGA costs 1.1 USD per one, the bigger ball version costs 4-5 USD each.

I have seen hobbyints cooking 0.65mm BGA in a kitchen mini-oven with success. (soldering)

And as far as you say that low pitch devices are out, more and more are coming, the likes of ST and various AUX chip makers are rolling out more and more silicon bieces with solder balls on them. Transistors, stabilisers, nobody bothers with packaging anymore.

Half of the ARM CPUs was in chip-form, and that means 0.4mm BGA or 0.35mm BGA. 1.9-2.6 USD each. And what does your average RC enthusiast do when told it can't be done?

My argument is that you can't get a cheap FPGA unless you use the 0.4mm or 0.35mm BGA. Over the next years, "Hobbyist and Maker users" are more and more likely to use those, if not for anything else, because of the widespread chip availability on this form and unavailability in other forms.

I have trouble finding a suitable and cheap stabilizer that isn't in the X-form 2x2 mm square. The selection just isn't there, new chips are going to be developped primarily in this way.

As a commercial product for the corporate world, Eagle is cool and fantastic. Yes. I know it, you know it, audodesk knows it. Corporations know it.

I have a full version of Eagle 4 I forgot about, even a floppy, I think.

Linux isn't my platform of choice, it's just that Microsoft has taken any usable platforms away.

BTW, certain distributor is sabotaging Eagle sales, and is going to act that they want to sell you Eagle, but will then recommend you a competing product instead. And because a friend had been asked by Autodesk people for some 5000 Euros (late 2016, maybe?) for a non-permanent license, and they are NOT using the PCB tools all the time, but only during irregular rush periods, they bought Protel in 2017.

BTW, Eagle isn't ISO 27001 compliant, so all companies who work under that use any other tools.

I'm repairing a digital multimeter that has a PCB entirely hand drawn. I just cleaned the nixie tubes. It doesn't have an ADC.

P.S. I still need only 1 schematic sheet and a 2- or 4-layer board space. Small, even. But I want more boards on my board.

[Anonymous]

It is a 3300-count autoranging multimeter, so I guess it uses a 4-input NAND gate to detect the need for an upshift. I think I could be able to rewire it for a higher range, such as 7700-count multimeter?
If it were a 5-digit multimeter, I would rewire it to switch ranges at 31337 counts. Interesting technology, these 1970's. No CPUs in sight.

[Anonymous]

ANd yet, notice, how self-righteously, nobody dared to directly answer such a simple question. I didn't even hear a "It would cost me exactly 0.0% and I'm proud of it." (imaginary response, YRMV). Such a simple question, and nobody to answer such a hypothetical question. It's like people fear it, or something.