European Alternatives to Aurora Solar
Looking for a European alternative to Aurora Solar? Aurora Solar is a cloud platform for solar design and sales, and its privacy policy states that personal information is transferred to the United States under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Installers that want an EU, UK or Swiss contracting party, a different price model or a desktop program they run themselves look elsewhere.
The European tools below range from complete installer platforms with CRM and quotes to desktop simulation programs with bankable yield reports and utility-scale layout software.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
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11 European Alternatives to Aurora Solar
Eturnity
3D roof design, quotes and project workflow for installers
Reonic
CRM, solar design and quoting in one installer platform
Sollit
Inspection, PV design and quoting for Dutch installers
PV*SOL
3D PV design and simulation with detailed shading analysis
PVsyst
Hourly PV simulation with a published yearly price
Polysun
Energy system simulation with a dedicated PV roof edition
archelios PRO
PV design with Pxx scenarios and Revit and SketchUp plugins
Solarius-PV
BIM-compatible PV design with photo-based shading analysis
PVcase
Site selection, ground mount design and yield on AutoCAD
HELIOS 3D
Terrain-based PV plant layout inside Civil 3D
SurgePV
AI roof modelling, electrical design and proposals per user
Key takeaways
- Aurora Solar is a US platform whose privacy policy relies on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, its UK extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework for transfers of personal data.
- Aurora Solar lists its North American Basic plan at $159 per user per month ($135 billed annually) and Premium at $259 ($220 annually), with Enterprise by quote.
- Eturnity, Reonic and Sollit are the three European platforms on this page that combine roof design, quoting and project handling for installers.
- PVsyst publishes a yearly price of CHF 700 for PVsyst 8 Professional, which makes it the one simulation program on this page with a plain list price.
- PVcase and HELIOS 3D are the only tools here built for ground-mounted utility projects, and both depend on Autodesk software (AutoCAD and Civil 3D).
Why people leave Aurora Solar
Aurora Solar is a US cloud platform that takes a residential solar job from the roof model to the signed contract.
Its own site lists a design mode, an AI roof-modelling layer, a sales mode with proposals, integrated financing, a contract manager, plan sets for permits and drone mapping, and a separate product line called HelioScope for commercial projects. Few installers use all of it, but the breadth is why it is the name the rest of the market compares itself with.
The reasons to look elsewhere are mostly practical. Aurora's privacy policy states that it complies with the EU-U.S.
Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework, which means your customers' addresses, consumption data and quote prices are handled by a US company under a transfer mechanism that depends on US-EU political agreement. For an installer that must show a data protection officer where project data goes, a contracting party inside the EU, the UK or Switzerland is a simpler file to keep.
Then there is the price model. The North American pricing page lists per-user monthly fees in dollars, with the annual rate about 15 percent lower, and moves AI site models, drone mapping and plan sets to an Enterprise tier priced by quote. A three-person office pays for seats it may only use for quoting, and a design office that never sells to households pays for a sales workflow it will not open.
- A US contracting party and a transfer framework Aurora's privacy policy names the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, its UK extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework as the basis for moving personal data, alongside standard contractual clauses. That is lawful today, but it ties your customer files to a political arrangement and to US law on access. The European tools below are contracted through entities in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Lithuania or the UK.
- Per-user dollar pricing On the North American page, Aurora Basic costs $159 per user per month, or $135 when billed annually, and Premium $259 or $220. Enterprise is quoted. For a small installer, that is a recurring dollar cost per seat. PVsyst publishes CHF 700 per year, Solarius-PV lists a EUR 599 upgrade, and several desktop programs let you buy a licence for one engineer rather than a seat for the whole sales floor.
- More suite than some teams use Aurora bundles financing, contracts and permit plan sets with the designer. A design office that hands finished layouts to a sales team elsewhere, or a developer laying out a ground-mounted park, does not need that stack. Tools such as HELIOS 3D, PVcase or archelios PRO go narrower and deeper: terrain, probability-based yield, or Revit and SketchUp models.
- Imagery and rules for your own market A roof model is only as useful as the aerial data and the electrical rules behind it. Aurora has regional sites for Germany, Spain, France and the UK, but you still have to test your own postcodes. Several European vendors build around local conditions: Dutch inspection forms in Sollit, MCS compliance in Reonic, Italian ENEA data in Solarius-PV, Meteotest data in HELIOS 3D.
What you have to replace, not just match
Replacing Aurora is rarely a one-for-one swap, because the product is several jobs under one login.
List them before you shortlist anything: roof modelling and shading, the proposal your sales rep shows on a tablet, financing and contract handling, permit drawings, and the design capacity you buy when your own team is full. Aurora's Expert Design Services promises a finished roof model in about three hours, at any hour, and none of the European pages we read advertises an equivalent on-demand service.
The European options split the work. Eturnity, Reonic and Sollit cover the installer chain of design, quote and project handover. PV*SOL, PVsyst, Polysun, archelios PRO and Solarius-PV cover the engineering side with simulation, shading and reports, and none of them describes a CRM. PVcase and HELIOS 3D cover ground-mounted plants. If you currently use Aurora for both selling and engineering, expect to run one platform and one simulation program side by side.
Also write down what lives in Aurora that your team never exported: saved price lists, component libraries, proposal templates, financing partners and the history of every quote. These are the items that decide how long a migration takes, not the roof geometry itself.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Eturnity | Chur, Switzerland | Not published; see website | Switzerland |
| #2 | Reonic | Augsburg, Germany | On request (demo booking) | EU (Germany) |
| #3 | Sollit | Zwolle, Netherlands | On request (free demo) | EU (Netherlands) |
| #4 | PV*SOL | Berlin, Germany | See website (rental and perpetual licence models) | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | PVsyst | Satigny, Switzerland | PVsyst 8 Professional CHF 700 per year; PVsystCLI CHF 3,000 per year; PVsystBasic CHF 25 per year (checked 27 October 2026) | Switzerland |
| #6 | Polysun | Winterthur, Switzerland | See website; prices not shown on the pages read | Switzerland |
| #7 | archelios PRO | Saint-Romain-de-Colbosc, France | On request (contact page) | EU (France) |
| #8 | Solarius-PV | Bagnoli Irpino (AV), Italy | See website; Power Pack upgrade listed at EUR 599 | EU (Italy) |
| #9 | PVcase | Vilnius, Lithuania | Pricing pages per product; demo on request | EU (Lithuania) |
| #10 | HELIOS 3D | Wuerselen, Germany | On request (presentation, quotation or demo version via the contact form) | EU (Germany) |
| #11 | SurgePV | London, United Kingdom | Individual plan $1,899 per user per year; 3 users $1,499 per user; 5 users $1,299 per user (listed in dollars plus 18% GST, checked 27 October 2026) | United Kingdom |
How each alternative compares to Aurora Solar
Eturnity
Swiss design-to-delivery platform for installers who sell PV with storage and heat pumps
Best for: DACH installers who want roof plans, quotes and permit paperwork from a single model
Against Aurora, Eturnity follows the same logic: draw the roof once, and let every later document read from it. Its modeller accepts satellite images, orthophotos, LiDAR and drone models, and the string plans and single-line diagrams come out of the same project instead of a second drawing session.
It reaches further into the supply chain than Aurora's pages suggest, with price and catalogue sync for named distributors in Switzerland, Germany, the UK and Sweden, plus exports to mounting-system software such as K2. The company is Eturnity AG in Chur, and a free trial is offered.
What Eturnity does better than Aurora Solar
- Swiss contracting party instead of a US transfer framework
- Distributor catalogue sync with one-click ordering
- Exports to mounting-system software
- Covers heat pumps and EV charging in the same project
Where Eturnity is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Price list not published
- Distributor links limited to the named partners
- No on-demand design service like Aurora's
Standout against Aurora Solar. Ties the roof model to named distributors' price lists with one-click ordering.
Best for: Installers who want leads, designs and delivery in one German-built system
Reonic goes wider than Aurora in one direction: it starts with the lead. A lead is scored, turned into a project, planned in 3D, quoted with a digital signature and carried through installation and invoicing on the same record. A heat load calculation sits beside the solar module, so heat pump jobs do not need a second program.
Reonic GmbH is registered in Augsburg (HRB 36147) and states more than 3,000 customers. For UK work it lists an MCS compliance module. Hosting location and prices were not stated on the pages we read, so both are questions for the demo.
What Reonic does better than Aurora Solar
- CRM, scoring and invoicing inside the same platform
- Heat load calculation for heat pump jobs
- MCS compliance module for UK projects
- German registered entity with a visible imprint
Where Reonic is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Design depth against specialist tools is not documented
- Pricing only via a booked demo
- Aurora's financing and contract tooling has no stated equivalent
Standout against Aurora Solar. Starts the workflow at the lead, which is earlier in the chain than any other tool here.
Best for: Benelux and German installers who want inspection forms and service contracts in the same tool
Sollit is the new name of 2Solar, run by Seed2Lead B.V. in Zwolle under Dutch law. Where Aurora starts at the design screen, Sollit starts with an inspection form that can be filled remotely or on site, and that answer feeds the quote. The PV module then adds aerial images, yield and shade calculation and a substructure calculation.
It can propose an inverter from your own product range and produce a quote in one click. After installation, service contracts and monitoring live in the same environment. The interface comes in five languages, including Belgian Dutch.
What Sollit does better than Aurora Solar
- Inspection forms before design
- Service contracts after installation
- Substructure calculation and inverter suggestion
- Dutch law and a registered Dutch entity
Where Sollit is a step down from Aurora Solar
- No published pricing, demo only
- Large commercial rooftop depth is undocumented
- Supplier connections are not itemised
Standout against Aurora Solar. Treats roof inspection as the first step of the quote rather than an afterthought.
Best for: Planners and installers who need shading and yield depth and a printed report in the customer's language
PV*SOL is a simulation program from Valentin Software in Berlin, not a sales platform. Against Aurora it gives up the proposal, financing and contract layers and offers more control over the physics: 3D shading from surrounding objects, up to 10,000 roof-parallel modules, and weather data from DWD-based procedures, Meteonorm 9, PVGIS, Solcast and SolarAnywhere.
It also models batteries, electric vehicles and heat pumps, runs a 20-year financial analysis, and writes reports in 24 languages as PDF or Word. It installs locally, which also means project data stays on your own machines rather than in a vendor cloud.
What PV*SOL does better than Aurora Solar
- Reports in 24 languages
- Local installation, no vendor cloud for project files
- Large product database, over 30,000 modules
- Free trial version to download
Where PV*SOL is a step down from Aurora Solar
- No CRM, quoting pipeline or customer portal
- Rental and perpetual licences need comparing
- No collaborative cloud workspace
Standout against Aurora Solar. Produces customer-ready reports in 24 languages from a program that runs on your own PC.
Best for: Engineers who must hand a lender or an authority a defensible yield study
PVsyst is the least like Aurora of the tools here, and that is the point. PVsyst 8 simulates grid-connected and stand-alone systems hourly and sub-hourly, with large equipment databases and a profitability calculation. It does not draw proposals for a homeowner.
It is also the one simulation program on the page with a plain list price: PVsyst 8 Professional at CHF 700 per year, with group discounts of 5, 15 and 20 percent, and a one-month trial. PVsystCLI, at CHF 3,000 per year, runs simulations from the command line for batch work. PVsyst SA sits in Satigny, near Geneva.
What PVsyst does better than Aurora Solar
- Published yearly price and group discounts
- Hourly and sub-hourly simulation depth
- Command-line automation for batch studies
- Local installation without a vendor cloud
Where PVsyst is a step down from Aurora Solar
- No quoting, CRM or proposals
- Priced in Swiss francs per user
- Not a visual sales tool for homeowners
Standout against Aurora Solar. The one simulation program here whose yearly licence price is published in the vendor's shop.
Best for: Planners who size PV, storage and heat pumps together in one simulation
Polysun is a family of four products from Vela Solaris in Winterthur, and only one of them, Polysun SPT, is aimed at PV roofs. SPT picks roofs from Google Maps or Bing, builds a 3D model with terrain, analyses near-field shading and produces CAD roof plans, string plans and a circuit diagram.
The wider editions simulate heat pumps, solar thermal, district heating and control strategies, which is why it suits mixed energy projects better than Aurora's PV-first suite. There is also a cloud API for embedding the calculation engine. Each edition has a 30-day trial; prices were not shown on the pages we read.
What Polysun does better than Aurora Solar
- Heat pump, thermal and district heating simulation
- API for embedding the calculation engine
- Large module and inverter databases
- Thirty-day trial for each edition
Where Polysun is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Four editions make the choice harder
- No quoting or CRM described
- Prices not visible
Standout against Aurora Solar. Simulates the building's heating and the PV system in the same model.
Best for: Design offices working in BIM or SketchUp that need P50 to P95 production figures
archelios PRO comes from Trace Software International, a French company with its registered office in Saint-Romain-de-Colbosc. Version 2025.1 added production indicators from P50 up to P95, with Gold and Platinum licence tiers that differ in how many indicators are shown. That probability view is what a financing discussion asks for.
It links to the tools architects and engineers already use: a Revit 2026 plugin, a SketchUp plugin, a web version, mounting-system import into the bill of materials and a single-line diagram. Meteonorm 9 is the default weather source, with over 4,000 stations. Prices are on request.
What archelios PRO does better than Aurora Solar
- P50 to P95 indicators on higher tiers
- Revit and SketchUp plugins
- Mounting-system import into the bill of materials
- French entity with RCS registration
Where archelios PRO is a step down from Aurora Solar
- No sales workflow or quote flow described
- Price on request only
- Some consumption profiles are France-specific
Standout against Aurora Solar. Brings a probability-based yield view into Revit and SketchUp models.
Solarius-PV
Italian BIM-friendly PV design with photo-based shading and Italian irradiation sources
Best for: Italian engineers and installers who already exchange IFC and DWG files
Solarius-PV is ACCA software's PV program, part of a family of BIM tools. It starts from nothing, a DXF or DWG file, or an IFC model from Edificius, Revit or ArchiCAD, and has 3D objects for roofs, obstacles, inverters and storage. Ground-mounted structures, including agrivoltaic frames, are in the block library.
Irradiation comes from ENEA, UNI 10349 or PVGIS, and distant shading is read from a photo survey on the solar diagram. The vendor offers one month of free use and lists a EUR 599 Power Pack upgrade. The product page we read is in Italian only.
What Solarius-PV does better than Aurora Solar
- IFC, DXF and DWG import
- Photo-based shading evaluation
- Agrivoltaic and ground-mount block library
- Italian irradiation standards built in
Where Solarius-PV is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Product page in Italian only
- No quote pipeline or CRM
- Base licence price not visible
Standout against Aurora Solar. The only tool here that reads IFC models straight from Revit and ArchiCAD.
Best for: Developers and EPCs designing ground-mounted and large commercial projects
PVcase sells four products: Prospect for site screening near interconnection points, Ground Mount and Roof Mount on AutoCAD, and Yield for energy modelling. Against Aurora, it is the tool for the stage before and beside residential sales, the developer's early due diligence and the engineer's utility-scale layout.
PVcase UAB is registered in Vilnius and the vendor states more than 1,900 customers in over 88 countries, figures we could not check independently. Its homepage also promotes site analysis for data centres, a sign of widening scope. Pricing is set per product and was not readable in our checks.
What PVcase does better than Aurora Solar
- Site selection before design starts
- Automated terrain-aware ground mount layout
- Covers rooftop and ground mount in one vendor
- Registered in the EU with a published privacy policy
Where PVcase is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Needs AutoCAD for design products
- No residential proposals or homeowner financing
- Pricing not readable on the pages checked
Standout against Aurora Solar. Begins before the design, with screening of land near grid connection points.
Best for: Engineers at EPCs planning large ground-mounted PV parks on uneven terrain
HELIOS 3D has been developed since 2010, by the vendor's account, by STOHR+SAUER CAD- und Computersystem in Wuerselen. It runs inside Autodesk Civil 3D and places racks on a TIN terrain surface without interpolation, then calculates local grading under each rack with cut and fill tolerances.
It adds electrical layout with cable lengths, voltage drop and losses, and a yield estimate based on Meteotest weather data. There is no roof design and no quote flow, which makes it a complement to Aurora's commercial line rather than a replacement for the residential product. Pricing is on request.
What HELIOS 3D does better than Aurora Solar
- Detailed terrain and grading handling
- Electrical layout with loss calculation
- Executable project data from the Civil 3D model
- German vendor with direct contact
Where HELIOS 3D is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Requires Autodesk Civil 3D
- No rooftop or residential design
- No published price or trial terms
Standout against Aurora Solar. Grades the ground under every rack, which no roof-first tool on this page does.
Best for: Small installers and EPCs who want a single annual subscription for design and proposals
SurgePV is the closest to Aurora in shape: roof models from satellite imagery, shading, string checks against inverter limits, a single-line diagram exported to PDF or DXF, and a proposal with CAPEX, LCOE, NPV, IRR and P50, P75 and P90 scenarios. The contracting party in its terms is SurgePV Technologies Ltd, London.
Individual plans are listed at $1,899 per user per year, $1,499 at three seats and $1,299 at five, with unlimited projects. Prices are in dollars plus 18 percent GST, so confirm the invoicing entity and VAT treatment before ordering. The standards library leads with NEC and AS/NZS, so check your national grid code.
What SurgePV does better than Aurora Solar
- Published per-user annual pricing
- Unlimited projects on every listed plan
- P50, P75 and P90 scenarios in the proposal
- UK contracting entity named in the terms
Where SurgePV is a step down from Aurora Solar
- Prices in dollars plus GST, billing entity unclear
- Standards library leads with US and Australian codes
- Younger vendor with a shorter track record
Standout against Aurora Solar. Publishes seat-based annual prices that fall as you add users, close to Aurora's own model.
What actually breaks when you switch
Moving off Aurora starts with your own data. Export customer records, saved price lists, component libraries and proposal templates before the subscription lapses, and ask each candidate which of those it can import.
Roof geometry rarely travels: a model drawn in one tool usually has to be redrawn in another, so keep the aerial images and measurements alongside the project files. Expect to rebuild proposal templates by hand, and run the old and new tool on the same ten recent jobs to see whether yield and price land in the same range.
The second cost is retraining and contracts. Installers who sell from a tablet in the living room need the new proposal view to feel as quick as the old one, and a sales team slows down for a few weeks even when the replacement is better.
Check notice periods and renewal terms in the Aurora agreement before you commit to a start date, and confirm currency, VAT and renewal terms for the new tool in writing, since several European prices here are in Swiss francs or dollars.
Is Aurora Solar compliant with GDPR for a European installer?
Aurora states in its privacy policy that it complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework, and it mentions standard contractual clauses for international transfers. On that basis, European installers do use it. Compliance is therefore not the question; the question is how much of the work you want to depend on a transfer mechanism.
If your data protection officer is comfortable with a DPF-certified US processor, the legal position is workable.
If you sell to public bodies, housing associations or customers who write the data location into the tender, a contracting entity in the EU, the UK or Switzerland removes one line from every risk assessment. Ask each vendor, European or not, where project data is hosted: Eturnity, Reonic, Sollit, archelios PRO, PVcase and SurgePV did not state a hosting location on the pages we read.
Which European tool is closest to Aurora for a small residential installer?
Eturnity and Reonic come closest, because both put the roof model, the quote and the project workflow in one cloud account. Eturnity is the stronger of the two on the drawing side, with roof plans, string plans and single-line diagrams from one model. Reonic is the broader one, with a lead CRM, a customer portal, invoicing and AI assistants.
Sollit fits Dutch, Belgian and German installers who want roof inspection forms at the front of the chain and service contracts at the back. None of the three publishes a price, so the practical test is a trial on a dozen of your own recent jobs, quoted side by side with what Aurora produced for the same addresses.
Which one to pick
If you sell to households and want one cloud account for design, quote and delivery, start with Eturnity or Reonic, and add Sollit if you work in the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany and want inspection and service in the same chain. SurgePV is the nearest match to Aurora's seat-based subscription, with the billing questions noted above. Test with your own addresses, because imagery and local rules decide the result.
If your bottleneck is engineering, pick by the output you must deliver. PV*SOL for shading and multilingual reports, PVsyst for lender-grade yield studies at a published price, Polysun when heat pumps share the model, archelios PRO for probability figures inside Revit or SketchUp, Solarius-PV for Italian BIM workflows. For ground-mounted plants, PVcase and HELIOS 3D. Stay with Aurora if you depend on its financing, contracts or on-demand design service and your data protection officer accepts the DPF basis.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on which part of Aurora you use. Installers who want design, quote and project handover in one cloud tool should compare Eturnity, Reonic and Sollit. Engineers who need shading and yield depth should look at PV*SOL, PVsyst, Polysun or archelios PRO, and developers of ground-mounted plants at PVcase and HELIOS 3D. SurgePV, a UK company, is the closest to Aurora in being a per-user subscription for design and proposals.
Partly. Eturnity, Reonic, Sollit and SurgePV produce quotes or proposals from the design, and Reonic adds a CRM and invoicing. None of the European pages we read describes integrated consumer financing or an on-demand design service like Aurora's Expert Design Services. If those matter, plan to keep a separate financing partner or a design subcontractor.
The tools that publish a price are mostly cheaper per user. PVsyst 8 Professional is CHF 700 per year, SurgePV lists $1,899 per user per year for an individual plan, falling to $1,299 per user at five seats, and Solarius-PV lists a EUR 599 Power Pack upgrade. Eturnity, Reonic, Sollit, archelios PRO and HELIOS 3D quote only after a demo, so a fair comparison needs quotes for the same team size.
Aurora's commercial line is HelioScope, which is a separate product from the residential suite. For large ground-mounted plants on uneven terrain, the European specialists are PVcase (Lithuania), which automates layout on AutoCAD, and HELIOS 3D (Germany), which works on a terrain model inside Civil 3D. Both need the Autodesk host program, so budget for that licence too.
PVsyst is the simulation program engineers cite for financing and permit files, with hourly and sub-hourly runs. archelios PRO shows P50, P75 and P90 production indicators, and SurgePV shows the same three scenarios in its financial model. Ask your lender which software and weather data it accepts before you buy anything, because that decides the choice more than features do.
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