Top 13 Best Circuit Simulator Software for Electronics Design (2024)

What is a Circuit Simulator?

A circuit simulator simulates/imitates electronic devices or circuits’ behavior. Similar to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, they enable you to draw, test, and perform virtual analyses on your circuit designs on a computer.

In addition to general circuit design, you can use them for:

• Research and Development (R&D): Circuit design and simulation software allows you to experiment with new design ideas without having to construct a prototype first. You can use the software to tweak and optimize older designs.     
• Troubleshooting: Engineers can use circuit simulators to digitally clone malfunctioning physical circuits to troubleshoot them virtually. A good circuit simulator features comprehensive diagnostic tools and can simulate various scenarios, which gives it an advantage over physical troubleshooting.    
• Performance Analysis: You can use the software to stress test your circuit design and predict its performance under different circumstances. You can then tweak and optimize your design accordingly. 
• Education: Teachers and instructors can use circuit simulators to illustrate how circuits function (or should function). In more advanced engineering courses, institutions can use simulators to teach students how to design functional circuits and electronics.

When assessing the quality of a circuit simulator, you must ensure that it has (most of) the following features: 

• Schematic capture
• Mixed-Signal analysis
• Real-time interactive circuit analysis
• Extensive component and device libraries
• Graphical simulation of input and output signals (including wave-form visualizations)
• Accurate modeling
• Graphical three-dimensional design
• Automated testing and design verification features

Newer circuit simulation programs may also feature machine learning/artificial intelligence integration and cloud-based simulation. These tools ease collaboration and ensure the accuracy of schematics and modeling.

Why Use Circuit Simulators?

Institutions may require additional financial aid to afford equipment such as breadboards and other tools for individual students. They may compensate for these deficits by forcing students to share resources. A better option would be to implement a circuit simulator in place of institute-wide breadboards and other physical learning tools.

Circuit simulators can encourage creativity and learning in STEM. They provide students with an opportunity to virtually construct and test projects on their computers. For instance, they can create pulsing LED circuits, multimeter circuits, and alarms without having to source or purchase the necessary components to do so. 

In addition to this, educators, students, and other professionals can use circuit simulators in their presentations. In a podcast interview, programmer and entrepreneur Mike Engelhardt revealed that he wrote his analog circuit simulator LTspice to help sell electronic components.

The program could essentially showcase how certain components would work within a circuit, enabling engineers to test and try each one. 

In the same interview, he posited that simulations were more valuable to engineers than actual hardware.

This is partially because designers are limited in what components they can gather in the real world.

On the other hand, circuit simulators allow them to virtually test which components would best suit their designs before finalizing and ordering said components.

This can help them save money, create optimal designs, reduce risks, and potentially save time, too. 

In effect, designers and engineers aren’t the only ones who stand to gain from using circuit simulators. They can be useful marketing tools for product salespeople and semiconductor and electronics manufacturers.

Many circuit simulation tools are free because they’re used as vehicles to advertise semiconductor components and other services (like PCB fabrication).  

List of the Top 13 Circuit Simulators

Below is a list of the 13 best circuit simulator software you should try. 

EasyEDA

EasyEDA is a cloud-based circuit simulation tool that incorporates features such as a mixed-mode circuit signal, enhanced schematic capture, and efficient PCB layout. 

While the base program is free and open source, power users can subscribe to a paid pro version that offers additional features. These features include:

• Private libraries
• Advanced permission management
• Advanced operation logs
• UI watermark settings
• 50GB cloud storage
• Technical support

You can use EDA through your web browser or download an official desktop client for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

EasyEDA has been around for over 13 years and has served nearly 4 million engineers worldwide. It’s well-supported and reliable. If you ever feel stuck or lost while using it, there are a litany of online resources and forums to turn to.  

EasyEDA download.

Advantages

• The base version is free.
• Features a clean, easy-to-use user interface.
• Offers both a web browser-based and offline client.
• The pro version features an open-source API/SDK that allows you to plug some of EasyEDA’s features into custom-written software. 
• EasyEDA integrates with various Product Lifecycle (PLM), Operations and Administration (OA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Product Data Management (PDM) tools. 
• You can order real hardware components that match your design directly from the EasyEDA user interface.
• Features comprehensive documentation and tutorials for beginners.
• EasyEDA has extensive design visualization tools, a large 3D model library, comprehensive data security, and support for high-frequency and high-density designs. 
• It is continuously growing and currently has a large community. 
• And it is very powerful.

Disadvantages

• While it’s free, EasyEDA isn’t completely open source. 
• The desktop client must be online to access certain features like library searching and saving, schematic conversion, etc.

LTspice

As we touched on earlier, LTspice was created and released by Mike Engelhardt in 1999 under semiconductor manufacturer Linear Technology (now Analog Devices). It’s a free circuit simulation tool based on SPICE (“Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis”) – one of the oldest analog circuit simulators.

It improves on many of the features of the original. For instance, it’s substantially faster and able to handle larger, more complex simulations. In addition to this, LTspice offers advanced models and libraries that aren’t available in the original SPICE.

For example, it provides users with tools to help them simulate switching regulators and other complex analog circuits.   

LTspice user interface is also easier to navigate. However, it does share one major similarity with the original SPICE: it’s free (but not open source).

LTspice features an integrated Schematic Capture tool and a waveform visualizer. You can export and import schemas into LTspice.

Supported schema file types include (but not limited to) .asc, .asy, .raw, .cir, and .plt. 

Once you’ve completed drawing or importing your schema, you can simulate it directly from the Schematic Capture screen and then analyze the results from the waveform. 

LTspice’s other notable features include MOSFET models, more than 200 operational amp models, transistor models, and many others.

LTspice download

Advantages 

• It’s free
• Offers a friendly graphical user interface (GUI)
• Features integrated schematic capture, simulation, and wave visualization functions
• Its schematic capture tool supports a wide array of file types for importation and exportation.
• Features extensive documentation and community support
• Allows users to create custom models and components
• Features a fully offline desktop version
• Available on a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, and Linux (using WINE)

Disadvantages

• LTspice is free but not open-source i.e., the code base isn’t available to the public, which can limit its customizability and development moving forward
• Despite its straightforward and intuitive user interface, LTspice has a high learning curve which can make it unappealing to beginners
• The user interface is slightly outdated (even on the latest version (LTspice XVII)) 
• Because LTspice doesn’t offer official support, most users will have to rely on the documentation and forums

NI Multisim

National Instruments (NI) Multisim is a desktop circuit simulation tool based on SPICE. There are currently two main versions, standard Multisim and Multisim for Designers. Most editions of Multisim are paid, save for the Education version.

Although this edition has comparatively limited features, it’s found wide usage in research and education. 

It is perfect for beginners when dealing with electronic circuits involved in circuit building. It features SPICE simulation, an interactive schematic capture environment, virtual instrumentation, and microcontroller simulations. 

If you can’t afford to use a paid version of Multisim but still want to use a more functional version, you can use QUCS. Qucs (Quite Universal Circuit Simulator) is an improved open-source version of Multisim.  

MultiSim download 

Advantages

• Comes with a user-friendly interface
• Features a desktop version and live (web version) that can be used on your mobile device
• The paid versions come with a large host of incentives, including larger component and model libraries, customizable GUIs, more comprehensive analysis and support
• Allows you to improve your work by workshopping and sharing it with NI’s large online community
• Lastly, it is rich in comprehensive beginner-friendly features.

Disadvantage 

• Obtaining clear pricing for the paid versions is challenging as their website is hard to navigate and online purchasing is available in select countries 
• The free version has limited features when compared to other SPICE-based programs

Circuit Sims

If you’ve found some of the entries we’ve covered thus far to be a little bloated, you’ll appreciate Circuit Sims.

It is a light circuit simulator applet originally written by Paul Fastad in Java. It’s fully free and open-source. You can find the official repository hosted on GitHub. 

Circuit Sims sports a clean and easy-to-navigate GUI. It’s perfect for designers, software developers learning to code, hobbyists, and professional engineers.  

Advantages

• Lightweight – loads quickly from almost any browser
• Offers sample circuits for new users to try
• Features a fully integrated schema drawer/editor, simulator, and waveform analyzer in a single GUI window
• While small and simple, it features a robust set of advanced features
• Open source with a publically available codebase 

Disadvantages

• Because Java Applets were deprecated years ago, some of the features may not work as intended 
• No offline version
• Limited model and component library

CircuitLogix

CircuitLogix is a full-featured electronic circuit simulator tool built on PSpice that was first released in 2005.

There are two main versions of the software: Student and Professional. The Student version is free and offers enough features to satisfy the demands of most hobbyists, researchers, and students. 

The Professional edition comes with a set of advanced productivity features such as automatic bill of material (BOM) generation, the ability to click and drag to reposition wires, etc. CircuitLogix Pro features a 15-day trial period for new users.  

Download CircuitLogix Student

Advantages

• Intuitive, well-designed user interface
• It allows you to simulate analog, digital, and mixed-signal circuits
• The Professional Edition features a library containing over 10,000 components, models, and devices
• Features a fully offline desktop application 

Disadvantages

• Its user interface is outdated
• No online version
• Only available for Windows operating systems

CircuitsCloud

CircuitsCloud is another fully web-based circuit simulator currently hosted by OpenCircuits. Before using it, you must sign up for an account. The sign-up process is relatively straightforward.

Once you’ve activated your account and logged in, you’ll have access to CircuitsCloud’s integrated schematic capture and circuit simulation features. 

Advantages

• Free
• Well-designed user interface
• Eases collaboration on projects by allowing users to share and comment on schematics online 
• Completely cloud-based
• Users can access it from almost any device or operating system that has a web browser

Disadvantages

• Not open source
• Requires users to register for an account before use
• CircuitCloud library does not feature sufficient support for microcontroller units and digital IC models
• The simulator does not illustrate the direction of a current in a circuit

Tina-Ti

TINA-TI is a free online circuit simulation tool that carries out functions like circuit building, noise analysis, DC/AC analysis, Fourier analysis, and transient analysis, to mention a few.

It was originally developed by multinational semiconductor company Texas Instruments (TI). 

TINA-TI is a Texas Instrument’s derivative of the SPICE-based Toolkit for Interactive Network Analysis. As such, it has many of its features with a large host of improvements.  

In terms of operation, it often carries out the mentioned analysis after circuit design and before the simulation process. What’s more, it will check for errors in a circuit before simulation.

Advantages

• Free
• Features SPICE-based modeling and simulations
• Delivers an intuitive GUI that makes editing and changing the values of components extremely easy
• Integrates well with the rest of Texas Instruments ecosystem of products
• Its symbolic analysis features can be useful for educational purposes
• Users can export schematics as schematic files, XMLs, or images (such as JPEGs and PNGs)
• Features a large device library
• Comes in multiple languages, including English, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese
• Features a large library of technical documents to help you get started

Disadvantages

• As with most free tools, TINA-TI has limited support
• TINA-TI has a large learning curve and, thus, can be difficult to master
• The graphical user interface is slightly outdated
• It generally struggles with the simulation of large complex integrated circuits

AutoDesk EAGLE

AutoDesk EAGLE is a popular computer-aided design (CAD) tool. When used alongside AutoDesk’s Library.io, users can leverage it to capture schematics, blueprint printed circuit boards, and perform SPICE simulations.

What makes AutoDesk EAGLE unique is its support for microcontrollers and single-board computers such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and CubieBoard. Eagle’s control panel allows you to script and automate certain functions. For instance, the triggering of simulations. 

Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, AutoDesk EAGLE was no longer available as a standalone application. Users are required to subscribe to Autodesk Fusion 360 which would either cost them $100 per year for the standard version or $500 per year for the premium edition.

Although this may be unappealing for some users, it also comes with a long list of incentives, such as dedicated support and access to select software from AutoDesk’s ecosystem. 

Advantages

• Features wide component and model support
• Facilitates extensive automation and scripting functions
• AutoDesk EAGLE is best for users who are familiar with AutoDesk’s software ecosystem
• Allows for highly customizable workflows 
• Rich with features

Disadvantages

• New users may find Autodesk EAGLE overwhelming as it requires considerable configuration
• No free version

NGSpice 

NGSpice is the official successor to the well-known and beloved circuit simulator SPICE. It was originally released in 1993 and still receives regular updates to this day.

It’s free and open source. Developers who want to contribute to the project or create their own fork can access the codebase from the official GitHub repository.

NGSpice uses Xspice, Spice3f5, and Cider as its foundation. This allows it to support three main analysis types: nonlinear DC analysis, nonlinear transient analyses, and liner AC analyses.

Many of the other entries in this guide are built on or feature NGSpice integration. 

NgSpice download 

Advantages

• Free and open-source
• Versatile
• Features a thriving community
• Available large array of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Features a large library of components and device models
• Delivers high-performance simulation 

Disadvantages

• Because it has no dedicated commercial, you’re forced to rely on the NGSpice community.
• Setting it up to integrate with other tools can be challenging.

Circuit Lab

It is an online circuit simulator which unfortunately isn’t entirely free. However, its excellent features compensate for its non-free state. 

Moreover, it has an accurate digital and analog simulator that makes it effective. Circuit Lab is mostly geared towards students. The website features interactive documentation that shows users how to operate Circuit Lab.

This makes it one of the most beginner-friendly entries on this list. It features an easy-to-use schematic editor that allows you to generate wiring diagrams, plots, and schematics as PDF files.

Advantages

• Easy-to-use
• Completely web-based, enabling users to access it from any device with a web browser
• Allows you to export analysis data as CSV files
• Features templates, pre-designed circuits, and other samples to make it easier to learn about design and simulation

Disadvantages

• Not completely free or open-source
• Devoid of an offline version
• Struggles to handle large and overly busy circuits

TINACloud

TinaCloud is a web-based version of TINA created by DesignSoft. Both current versions of TINA are paid tools.

By purchasing one of the offline versions of TINA, you get instant access to TINACloud. 

Users have two main purchasing options when it comes to the TINA design suite; Professional and Student.

As you may expect, the Student version is the least pricey option. 

TinaCloud download 

Advantages

• Features multi-language support
• Comes in different variations with an assortment of payment options
• Features both an online and offline version
• Wide device and operating system compatibility
• Supports digital, analog, VHDL, Verilog, MCU, and mixed-signal circuit simulations

Disadvantages

• Devoid of a free version
• The user interface and website are slightly outdated

Digital

Digital is an open-source project written in Java by Helmut Neemann. It’s a logic designer and circuit simulator. Since it’s a Java program, it can run on macOS, Linux, and Windows (as long as you’re running the Java Runtime Environment (8)).

It features an integrated schematic capture screen, analyzer, and simulator, which users can access from a single GUI screen. It has a large library of components and device models. Digital also allows users to create and import their own. 

In addition to this, it features an exportation tool that allows you to export JEDEC files and circuit diagrams as SVGs.

Advantages

• Fully free and open-source
• Completely offline 
• Highly customizable 
• Easy to use
• High-performing – can support the simulation of large complex circuits

Disadvantages

• Features very little support – you’ll need to rely on the documentation the developer has written
• It’s best for developers 

DC/AC Virtual Lab

DC/AC Virtual Lab is an interactive online circuit simulator mainly designed to encourage students to pursue careers in STEM. Proportionally, the user interface contains heavy visual elements. A fully rendered 3D icon accompanies each component on the menu. 

It offers a highly interactive workflow for circuit creation and simulation. Users can create their circuits by selecting a component from the menu and then dragging and dropping it onto the main screen. It’s almost video-game-like in its approach to building and simulation.

DC/AC Virtual Lab requires no accounts and or downloads to get started. The design and simulation environment is completely web-based. 

Advantages

• Easy to set up and get started
• Features a varied collection of predesigns to experiment with
• Offers an immersive design and simulation experience
• Free
• Eases and encourages collaboration between users. 

Disadvantages

• Can sometimes be laggy
• Limited in its schematic capture and analysis features
• The component menu is overly busy and feels disorganized
• Not the best tools for professionals 

DC/AC Virtual Lab

How to Choose the Right Circuit Simulator for Your Needs

The tools in the above list all come with a set of unique strengths and weaknesses. When deciding on your circuit simulator, you must first create an inventory of your own resources and requirements.

• For instance, consider your budget. Commercial tools aren’t free, but they tend to offer more incentives, such as additional features, access to other products, and customer support.

• Some tools are more suited for educational purposes, while others are more appropriate for professionals such as designers and engineers. Tools that fall under the latter category tend to have a higher learning curve and a more robust set of features.

• It’s also important to research how long your candidate tool has been around and if development on it is still active. Some tools may still be available to download or use online but are no longer supported or development on them has stopped. This means it will be harder to find support for any bugs or errors. 

With that being said, let’s take a look at how all the tools in this guide compare.

Circuit Simulator Comparison Table

Depending on your affordability and skill level, it’s always best to try the free options first to see if they suit your needs. If you need more features or support, you can move on to the paid version. Many paid versions offer trial periods that give you full access to all premium features.    

Conclusion

For anyone interested in electronics and physical sciences, circuit simulators are a great way to expand your knowledge. They’re also indispensable tools for engineers, circuit designers, and other professionals. What makes selecting a circuit simulation software challenging is not the lack of options but instead, an overabundance.

However, this increases the likelihood of there being a circuit simulator that fits all your needs perfectly. The above guide covers thirteen of the best.

If you want to go further and take the next step in your PCB design and manufacturing journey, contact us today. One of our consultants will gladly show you how you can bring your virtual designs to life.