Energy Toolbase vs Enact Solar 2026: Modelling vs All-in-One

Every figure below is quoted from each vendor’s own published documentation, checked on 28 September 2026.

Quick Verdict

Pricing

	Energy Toolbase	Enact Solar
Entry plan	ETB Developer Individual, $299/user/month billed annually	Design & Proposals, $279/month billed annually
Published annual cost	$3,588/year	$3,348/year
Monthly option	Not offered	“$299/month – 2 users”
Residential limits	“Up to 10 solar and storage proposals” on Individual	“Unlimited residential projects & proposals”
Commercial limits	Unlimited on the Business tier	“10 new commercial projects per month”
Team plan	Business, $333*/user/month billed annually, 5 users, $19,980/year	Not published
Engineering / CAD	Not offered	PVCAD plug-in “$267/month billed annually”; bundled CAD tier “$333/month billed annually”
Asset management	ETB Monitor from $7,500	“Contact Us for Pricing”
Control hardware	ETB Controller from $34,000	Not offered
Free trial	None published	No terms published

* Energy Toolbase’s own asterisk: final pricing “is subject to change based on customer requirements, customer classification, promotional offers”.

Enact’s bundled CAD tier is the option for teams that do not already hold an AutoCAD licence; the cheaper PVCAD plug-in tier assumes you do. Energy Toolbase offers no engineering or CAD output at any price.

Design: The Deciding Difference

Energy Toolbase’s ETB Developer page carries a comparison table that marks “In-app PV panel layout tools” with a red X and offers “PV design partnerships with leading design software tools” instead. There is no 3D modelling, shading, roof capture, or CAD in the published product set.

Enact publishes the opposite:

• “Affordable and Accurate 3D Designs in Minutes”
• Roof creation with “automatic height and pitch detection using the Digital Surface Model (DSM) included in your subscription”
• Obstacle and tree detection where “DSM detects height automatically and updates every three months”
• “Run multiple scenarios with our fast and accurate shading analysis and delete panels with poor solar access”

For a buyer choosing one tool, this is the whole comparison. Energy Toolbase is a modelling layer that assumes a design tool sits beside it. Enact tries to be both.

Rate and Storage Modelling

Enact is more capable here than most design-led platforms, which makes the comparison genuinely close. It is still not as deep.

	Energy Toolbase	Enact Solar
Published rate count	“120k+ Utility Rates Tracked” / “120,000+ verified rates”	Not published — described as “Pull up rates in any zip code and their associated billing structures”
Maintenance cadence	“Dedicated in-house utility rates team”; “281 Rates Updated this Week”, “161 Rates Added this Week”	Not published
Rate structures	Time-of-Use, NEM programs, “Support for VNEM, NEMA, and other billing structures”	Billing structures by zip code, “Net Billing algorithm forecasts savings with storage during evening hours”
Storage modelling	Six value streams including DC clipping recapture and demand response	Storage sizing, “battery charge and discharge cycles for any day of the year with Time-of-Use (TOU) simulations”
Residential storage	— (marked with a red X on ETB’s own table)	✓
Financing structures	“Real-time indicative pricing quotes from lenders”	“Loan, Lease, PPA” with cash-flow comparison
Live dispatch	✓ ETB Controller, forecasts regenerated every 15 minutes	—

The pattern is clear. Enact covers the common cases across a wider surface; Energy Toolbase covers the hard cases in one narrow band, and is the only one that reaches the battery after commissioning.

Note the residential row. Energy Toolbase marks residential storage modelling with a red X on its own comparison table — so for a residential-plus-battery deal, the tool with the smaller rate database is the one that will actually model it.

Where Both Fall Down: Volume Caps

The shared weakness is worth isolating, because it catches growing teams the same way.

• Energy Toolbase Individual: “Up to 10 solar and storage proposals” for $3,588 a year. Cross it and the next published step is the Business tier at $19,980 a year for five seats.
• Enact Design & Proposals: “10 new commercial projects per month” for $3,348 a year. Residential is unlimited; commercial is not.

Both are reasonable ways to price a product. Both mean a team winning more commercial work pays sharply more, or changes tools.

SurgePV publishes unlimited projects on every tier, including the $1,899 per user per year Individual plan, per the SurgePV pricing page (list price, GST additional). At five seats it is $6,495 a year against Energy Toolbase’s $19,980, and it covers array design, shading analysis, yield and financial modelling, and proposals in the same subscription.

What SurgePV does not do is match Energy Toolbase’s rate database or offer Enact’s inverter-agnostic fleet monitoring. If either of those is what you are buying, buy it.

How to Decide

1. Residential-heavy, one tool, one budget. Enact. It is the only one of the two that designs, and it is cheaper.
2. C&I where the tariff decides the deal. Energy Toolbase, plus a design platform. Nothing here matches its rate depth.
3. You own the asset after commissioning. Energy Toolbase for control (ETB Controller), Enact for monitoring — different jobs, and Enact does not publish a price for its version.
4. Commercial volume is growing. Both caps will bite. Price an uncapped platform before you renew either one.

Related Reading

• Energy Toolbase review — full breakdown with current pricing
• Enact Solar review — the platform in detail
• Energy Toolbase vs SurgePV — modelling specialist against all-in-one
• Enact Solar vs SurgePV — two all-in-one platforms head to head
• Energy Toolbase alternatives — the full ranked shortlist