Key Takeaways
- ETB Developer is $299/user/month (Individual, 10-proposal cap) or $333/user/month (Business, 5 users, unlimited), both billed annually
- SurgePV publishes $1,899/user/year for 1 seat and $1,299/user/year at 5 seats, all features in every tier
- Energy Toolbase’s own comparison table marks “In-app PV panel layout tools” with a red X — it is not a design tool
- Energy Toolbase also marks “Residential storage modelling” with a red X
- Energy Toolbase publishes 120,000+ verified utility rates, maintained by an in-house team — genuinely best in class
- ETB Controller runs live battery dispatch from $34,000, a capability SurgePV does not offer
- These products overlap less than the category suggests. The real question is which half of the job is your bottleneck
All prices and capabilities below are quoted from each vendor’s own published documentation, checked on 28 September 2026. Nothing here is sourced from a reseller listing or a review aggregator.
Quick Verdict
Our Verdict
Energy Toolbase and SurgePV are not really competitors — they are two halves of a workflow, and only one of them is priced like a complete platform. Energy Toolbase owns utility tariff depth and live storage dispatch. SurgePV owns everything from roof geometry to a branded proposal, in one subscription, for less than Energy Toolbase charges for the financial layer alone. If a tariff structure decides your deals, buy Energy Toolbase and a design tool. If turnaround from site address to signed proposal decides your deals, SurgePV replaces the stack.
Pricing, Side by Side
| Energy Toolbase | SurgePV | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | ETB Developer Individual, $299/user/month billed annually | Individual, $1,899/user/year |
| Entry plan limits | 1 user, “Up to 10 solar and storage proposals” | 1 user, unlimited projects |
| Entry plan annual cost | $3,588/year | $1,899/year |
| Team plan | ETB Developer Business, $333*/user/month billed annually, 5 users | 5 Users, $1,299/user/year |
| Team plan annual cost | $19,980/year | $6,495/year |
| Enterprise | Not published, Contact Sales | Custom |
| Free trial | None published | None published; guided demo, no credit card |
| Taxes | Not stated on the pricing page | “+ 18% GST” as published |
| Hardware and control | ETB Controller from $34,000; ETB Monitor from $7,500 | Not offered |
* Energy Toolbase’s own disclaimer: final pricing “is subject to change based on customer requirements, customer classification, promotional offers”. Treat it as a list rate.
If you have seen a lower Energy Toolbase price
A figure of $199 per user per month circulated widely and is still quoted in comparison articles. It is not what Energy Toolbase publishes today. The pricing page showed $299 and $333 per user per month when checked on 28 September 2026.
Feature Coverage
Every row is taken from the vendors’ own product pages. “—” means the vendor does not publish the capability, not that it is impossible.
| Capability | Energy Toolbase | SurgePV |
|---|---|---|
| In-app PV panel layout | — (marked with a red X on ETB’s own comparison table) | ✓ |
| 3D roof modelling | — | ✓ “3D embedded designing” |
| Shading and irradiance analysis | — | ✓ |
| DC stringing | — | ✓ |
| Yield simulation | ✓ (imported production data) | ✓ |
| Financial analysis | ✓ Deepest in category | ✓ “Generation & financial analysis” |
| Utility rate database | ✓ “120,000+ verified rates” | Limited — regional tariff library |
| Time-of-Use and NEM modelling | ✓ Including VNEM and NEMA | Limited |
| Storage value stacking | ✓ Six named value streams | Limited |
| Residential storage modelling | — (marked with a red X on ETB’s own table) | ✓ |
| Proposal generation | ✓ Interactive, with open and click tracking | ✓ Branded PDF proposals |
| Lender quotes in-product | ✓ “Real-time indicative pricing quotes from lenders” | — |
| Live battery dispatch | ✓ ETB Controller, from $34,000 | — |
| Asset monitoring | ✓ ETB Monitor, from $7,500 | — |
| AI assistant | — | ✓ Clara AI |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud, no desktop install |
Where Energy Toolbase Wins Outright
We would not try to talk a team out of Energy Toolbase in these situations.
Utility rate depth. Energy Toolbase publishes “120k+ Utility Rates Tracked” and a “Dedicated in-house utility rates team”. On the day its page was checked it reported 281 rates updated and 161 added that week. No other vendor in this category publishes a maintenance cadence at all, and SurgePV does not attempt to match the coverage.
Storage economics. ETB Developer runs “ESS simulations powered by digital twin of our EMS algorithms”. The model you sell from shares logic with the controller that later dispatches the battery. That closes the gap between projected and delivered savings, and it is the single most defensible thing about the product.
Complex C&I tariffs. Support for VNEM, NEMA, tiered demand charges, and seasonal TOU on one site. If this describes your pipeline, tariff modelling is not a line item you optimise.
Owning the asset after commissioning. ETB Developer to ETB Controller to ETB Monitor is a coherent lifecycle from one vendor. SurgePV has no equivalent, and very few competitors offer a control layer at all.
Where SurgePV Wins
It designs. This is the whole argument, and it is Energy Toolbase’s own admission rather than our claim. The red X against “In-app PV panel layout tools” on the ETB Developer page means every Energy Toolbase customer is also buying a design platform. SurgePV includes 3D design and array layout, shading and irradiance analysis, DC stringing, yield and financial modelling, and branded proposals in every plan, including the $1,899 Individual tier.
One subscription instead of two. A team running Energy Toolbase plus a design tool is managing two vendors, two renewal dates, two logins, and an export-import step between them. Production data moves into Energy Toolbase from elsewhere; it does not originate there.
Price at every seat count. $1,899 against $3,588 at one seat. $6,495 against $19,980 at five. Those are list prices from both vendors’ own pages, for the smaller and larger side of the same team.
No proposal cap. Energy Toolbase’s Individual tier allows up to 10 solar and storage proposals. Every SurgePV plan is published with unlimited projects.
Residential works. Energy Toolbase marks residential storage modelling unsupported on its own comparison table. SurgePV is built for residential and C&I from the same workspace.
See the workflow Energy Toolbase hands off
Roof geometry, shading, stringing, yield, financials, and a branded proposal in one session on a real project.
Book a DemoNo commitment required · 20 minutes · Live project walkthrough
The Comparison Most Articles Get Wrong
Ranking these two against each other on a single axis produces a useless answer, because they do not compete for the same budget line. The useful comparison is between two complete stacks.
| Stack | What you pay per year, 1 seat, list price |
|---|---|
| ETB Developer Individual + Aurora Solar Premium annual | $3,588 + $2,640 = $6,228 |
| ETB Developer Individual + OpenSolar (“100%” / “Free of charge”) | $3,588 + $0 = $3,588 |
| SurgePV Individual | $1,899 |
The second row is the honest best case for an Energy Toolbase stack, and it is still nearly double SurgePV’s published Individual price — while adding a vendor, an export step, and a tool whose own site publishes no pricing page.
What that table does not capture is tariff depth. If your deals hinge on modelling a VNEM structure correctly, the top row is the right purchase and the price difference is irrelevant. Most solar teams’ deals do not hinge on that.
How to Decide
Answer these three in order.
- Does a utility tariff or a battery dispatch schedule decide whether you win the deal? If yes, buy Energy Toolbase, and pair it with a design platform. Stop comparing on price.
- Do you own and operate the asset after commissioning? If yes, ETB Controller and ETB Monitor have very little competition, and the lifecycle argument is real.
- Is your actual bottleneck turnaround from site address to signed proposal? If yes, a single platform removes the handoff and the second subscription. That is SurgePV’s case.
If you answered no to the first two and yes to the third, the decision is made.
Related Reading
- Energy Toolbase review — full product breakdown with pricing and limitations
- Alternatives guides — ranked shortlists with every vendor’s published price
- HOMER Energy review — the closest functional substitute for storage economics
- Aurora Solar vs Energy Toolbase — the design tool most often paired with ETB
- HelioScope vs Energy Toolbase — the C&I design pairing
