7 Best Energy Toolbase Alternatives in 2026 (Ranked)

Energy Toolbase is very good at one half of a solar workflow and openly does not attempt the other half. Its own ETB Developer page carries a comparison table that marks “In-app PV panel layout tools” with a red X, offering “PV design partnerships with leading design software tools” instead.

That is an honest product decision. It also means every Energy Toolbase customer is paying for a second platform, and at $299 to $333 per user per month billed annually, the first one is not cheap.

Below are seven alternatives, ranked. Every price is quoted from the vendor’s own published pricing page and was checked on 28 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, this guide says so rather than estimating.

Why People Look for Energy Toolbase Alternatives

Energy Toolbase has no public G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius profile, so there is no independent body of user reviews to mine. Rather than invent switching stories, this section lists only what the vendor publishes about itself — which turns out to be enough.

It does not design. The red X against “In-app PV panel layout tools” on the ETB Developer page is the vendor’s own mark, not an outside assessment. There is no 3D modelling, shading analysis, roof capture, or CAD anywhere in the published product set.

Residential is marked unsupported. The same comparison table marks “Residential storage modelling” with a red X for ETB Developer and a checkmark for competing products.

The entry tier is capped. ETB Developer Individual allows “Up to 10 solar and storage proposals” for $299 per user per month billed annually — $3,588 a year.

There is no free trial. Nothing on the pricing page offers one. Hardware and services route through quote forms requiring name, email, and company.

Integration partners are not named. The product page markets an integration ecosystem and links to “Explore Integrations” without listing a single partner in text. The roughly fifty logos displayed are labelled clients, which is a different claim.

The published numbers do not always agree. Energy Toolbase gives three different ETB Controller deployment counts across its own pages: “150+ Sites Deployed with ETB Controller” on the homepage, “200+ Project Sites” in the ETB Controller banner, and “more than 120 commercial and industrial sites” in that same page’s FAQ.

At a Glance

Prices verified September 2026 from each vendor’s own documentation. “Limited” means the capability exists but is not the product’s strength. “—” means the vendor does not publish it.

SurgePV

SurgePV is the strongest replacement for Energy Toolbase buyers whose actual bottleneck is turnaround, not tariff depth. It covers the half Energy Toolbase declines — array layout, roof modelling, shading, stringing — and carries yield simulation, financial analysis, and proposal generation in the same workspace, so no production data has to be exported between tools.

Why it beats an Energy Toolbase stack:

• No second subscription. Energy Toolbase customers buy a design platform separately. SurgePV includes 3D design and array layout, shading and irradiance analysis, DC stringing, yield and financial modelling, and branded proposals in every plan.
• $1,899 per user per year against $3,588. SurgePV’s published Individual plan versus ETB Developer Individual, both annual list prices. At five seats it is $6,495 against $19,980.
• No proposal cap. Every SurgePV plan is published with unlimited projects. Energy Toolbase’s Individual tier stops at 10.
• Residential is in scope. Energy Toolbase marks residential storage modelling with a red X on its own page.
• Every feature in every tier. The pricing page states all features are included on all plans; higher tiers add priority features, roadmap access, and seat count rather than unlocking capability.

Where Energy Toolbase still wins. Two places, and they are real. Its utility rate database — “120,000+ verified rates” maintained by a dedicated in-house team, with 281 rates updated and 161 added in the week checked — is deeper than anything SurgePV offers, and SurgePV does not try to match it. And ETB Controller, from $34,000, physically dispatches a deployed battery and regenerates forecasts every 15 minutes. SurgePV has no control or monitoring layer at all. A developer who owns assets post-commissioning should keep Energy Toolbase for that.

Pricing: Individual $1,899/user/year · 3 Users $1,499/user/year ($4,497) · 5 Users $1,299/user/year ($6,495) · Enterprise custom. All plus 18% GST as published. No self-service trial; the published route is a guided demo with no credit card required. Source: surgepv.com/pricing, checked September 2026.

Best for: Solar installers and sales teams running residential and C&I projects who need a design-to-proposal workflow in one place.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Moderate. The design work is new capability rather than a migration, so there is nothing to port. What needs rebuilding is your proposal template and your financial assumptions. Teams with genuinely complex tariffs should plan to run both for a quarter rather than cutting over.

HOMER Grid

If you want what Energy Toolbase actually does, rather than what it is missing, HOMER Grid is the closest substitute on the market. It is a UL Solutions product, originally developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the vendor cites “over 250,000 users in 190+ countries”.

Pros:

• Tariff modelling described as covering rates “including those with time-of-use and seasonal rates, contracted demand and tiered rates”
• Access to Genability’s “over 35,000 commercial and industrial utility tariffs database”, with built-in coverage for “more than 90% of the zip codes in the U.S., Canada and Mexico”
• Value stacking across “demand charge reduction, energy arbitrage, incentive programs and self-consumption”
• EV charging sizing and site comparison, which Energy Toolbase does not publish
• A free trial is offered, unlike Energy Toolbase

Cons:

• No solar design or panel layout. The product page tells users to “Combine the power of your favorite solar modeling tool, HelioScope or PVSyst, with HOMER Grid” — the same handoff problem
• No live dispatch or asset control equivalent to ETB Controller
• Monthly billing is expensive at $665/month

Pricing: $350/month on the annual plan (“$4,200/yr, auto-renews”, 1 user, includes 6-hour instructor-led training and a second computer activation) or $665/month on monthly billing (“$7,980/yr”). Enterprise pricing is not published. Source: homerenergy.com, checked September 2026.

Best for: Microgrid, resilience, and bill-optimisation studies where tariff depth matters but the ETB price does not clear.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Moderate. Comparable modelling discipline, different interface conventions, and you keep the design-tool dependency.

Aurora Solar

The design platform most often paired with Energy Toolbase, and the one that makes the two-tool stack work. Strong on remote design and residential sales workflows.

Pros:

• Full remote design with on-demand site models, priced from “Starting at $9.99”
• Mature proposal and sales workflow built for residential volume
• Clear published pricing, which is not universal in this category
• Add-on plan sets and engineering stamps for teams that want permit output

Cons:

• Basic and Premium are both capped at 50 projects per month for a single user
• Enterprise is “Custom per project” with “volume-based discounts on credit purchases” — project-based pricing can scale unpredictably
• No free trial is published on the pricing page
• Annual plans carry “a one year commitment”

Pricing: Basic $159/user/month monthly, or $135/user/month billed annually (“$1620 billed annualy” as published). Premium $259/user/month monthly, or $220/user/month billed annually (“$2640”). Enterprise custom. Source: aurorasolar.com/pricing, checked September 2026.

Best for: Residential-heavy teams that want design depth and will keep a separate financial tool.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Easy, because it is additive rather than a replacement. Aurora does not remove your need for tariff modelling.

HelioScope

HelioScope is an Aurora Solar product and one of the design tools Energy Toolbase customers most commonly feed production data from. Its strength is commercial array layout and yield in the browser.

Pros:

• Well-established commercial and industrial layout and simulation workflow
• Browser-based, no desktop install
• Annual plans include 120 projects rather than a rolling monthly cap
• A free trial link is published, though no terms are given

Cons:

• Monthly plans allow only 10 projects per month
• No financial or tariff modelling to speak of — this replaces the design half only
• Enterprise is “Custom per-project pricing” with no published figure
• Trial length and conditions are not published anywhere on the pricing page

Pricing: Basic $159 USD per licence per month, or $1,620 USD per licence per year. Pro $259 USD per licence per month, or $2,640 USD per licence per year. Enterprise custom. Source: helioscope.aurorasolar.com/pricing, checked September 2026.

Best for: C&I designers who want layout and yield, and already have financials handled.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Easy and complementary. This is the other half of the stack, not a replacement for it.

OpenSolar

OpenSolar publishes “100%” next to “Free of charge” and has no pricing page at all. For a team trying to delete the design-tool line item from an Energy Toolbase stack, this is the cheapest way to do it.

Pros:

• No licence cost. The homepage describes “free, class-leading software to design, sell and manage projects”
• Covers design, sales, and project management in one product
• No seat or project caps published

Cons:

• No published pricing page means add-on costs are not transparent. Enterprise Services, the OpenSolar API, and an Imagery Marketplace are named as add-ons with no stated cost
• Monetisation runs through the partner and marketplace side, which shapes the product’s incentives
• Tariff modelling does not approach Energy Toolbase’s depth

Pricing: Free of charge, per opensolar.com. Add-on pricing is not published. Checked September 2026.

Best for: Teams with no software budget, and anyone pressure-testing whether their paid design tool is earning its fee.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Easy. Nothing to lose but time.

Enact Solar

Enact is the one tool on this list that covers both halves of the Energy Toolbase problem on its own, and it deserves a closer look than its rank suggests. It publishes 3D design and tariff modelling, which almost nothing else here does.

Pros:

• 3D design is claimed directly — “Affordable and Accurate 3D Designs in Minutes”, with “automatic height and pitch detection using the Digital Surface Model (DSM) included in your subscription”, refreshed every three months
• Shading analysis is claimed: “Run multiple scenarios with our fast and accurate shading analysis and delete panels with poor solar access”
• Tariff modelling under “Complex Rates Demystified” — “Pull up rates in any zip code and their associated billing structures”, plus a “Net Billing algorithm forecasts savings with storage during evening hours”
• Storage sizing with “battery charge and discharge cycles for any day of the year with Time-of-Use (TOU) simulations”
• Financing structures built in — “Loan, Lease, PPA” with cash-flow comparison
• Fleet monitoring “regardless of inverter brand”, addressing the post-commissioning gap
• “Unlimited residential projects & proposals” on the Design & Proposals plan
• Serves “thousands of professionals in over 35 countries”

Cons:

• Commercial work is capped at “10 new commercial projects per month” on the Design & Proposals plan — the same shape of limit Energy Toolbase imposes
• Asset Management has no published price: “Contact Us for Pricing”
• No native CRM. Enact markets API integration instead — “Sync Design data to any leading CRM”
• Engineering is a separate paid tier, and the navigation link points off-site to PVCAD
• No free trial terms are published for any tier
• Seat allowance is unclear above the 2-user note attached to the monthly rate

Pricing: Design & Proposals “$279/month billed annually” (or “$299/month – 2 users”), which is $3,348 a year. Engineering is sold as two further tiers: a PVCAD plug-in at “$267/month billed annually” (or “$347/month”) for teams that already hold a CAD licence, and a bundled tier at “$333/month billed annually” (or “$433/month”) for teams that do not. That bundle is the one that includes AutoCAD. Asset Management is not published. Source: enact.solar, checked September 2026.

Best for: Residential-heavy teams that want design, rates, proposals, and monitoring from one vendor and will pay monthly.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Moderate. This is the nearest thing to a true one-for-one swap on the list. Expect to rebuild proposal templates, and check the commercial project cap against your volume before committing.

Sunbase Data

Not a like-for-like swap, but it answers a complaint Energy Toolbase does not: there is no CRM. If your pipeline is leaking between lead and proposal rather than inside the proforma, this is the more useful purchase.

Pros:

• Lowest published entry point of any tool here, from $59 per user per month
• Modular — CRM, proposal and estimation, project management, inventory, financial tools, and reporting dashboards
• Serves adjacent trades, useful for contractors running solar alongside roofing

Cons:

• No named tiers and no fixed pricing. The page has a section titled “Why Sunbase Doesn’t Use Fixed Pricing Tiers”, and final cost is “customized based on your requirements”
• No per-module pricing, setup, or training fees published
• Nothing approaching Energy Toolbase’s tariff or storage modelling
• No free trial; the CTAs are “Request Pricing Details” and “Request a Demo”

Pricing: “Plans start from $59 per user per month”, customised by requirements. Source: sunbasedata.com/pricing, checked September 2026.

Best for: Solar contractors whose constraint is sales operations rather than engineering.

Switching from Energy Toolbase: Easy, because it solves a different problem. Most teams would run it alongside a design tool.

How to Choose

Four questions, in order. The first one that gets a confident yes decides it.

1. Does a utility tariff structure or a battery dispatch schedule decide whether you win the deal? Stay on Energy Toolbase, or move to HOMER Grid if the price is the issue. Nothing else on this list models tariffs at that depth, and switching to save a subscription fee would be a false economy.

2. Do you own and operate the asset after commissioning? Energy Toolbase’s ETB Controller and ETB Monitor have very little competition. Enact is the only other tool here with an asset-management product, and it does not publish a price for it.

3. Is your real bottleneck getting from a site address to a signed proposal? SurgePV. One subscription covers the whole path, and it costs less than the design tool alone in most Energy Toolbase stacks.

4. Is the constraint sales operations rather than engineering? Sunbase Data, or a general CRM alongside whatever design tool you already run.

What This Guide Did Not Do

Two things worth stating plainly.

It did not mine review sites for switching stories, because Energy Toolbase has no public G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius profile. Every criticism above is drawn from Energy Toolbase’s own published pages.

It did not estimate a price for any vendor that does not publish one. Scanifly, for instance, is a capable drone-based design platform and a reasonable Energy Toolbase pairing, but it publishes no pricing page anywhere, so it is not in the ranked table. Aurora’s Enterprise tier, HelioScope Enterprise, Enact Asset Management, HOMER Grid Enterprise, and ETB Consulting are all unpriced for the same reason.

Related Reading

• Energy Toolbase review — the full product breakdown
• Energy Toolbase vs SurgePV — direct head-to-head
• Energy Toolbase vs HOMER Grid — the two storage-economics specialists
• Energy Toolbase vs Sunbase Data — modelling depth against CRM breadth
• Aurora Solar vs Energy Toolbase — the most common two-tool pairing