Same browser-based category, two different ideas of what a camera plan is for. We are EU-hosted, ship in 33 languages, add a full 3D site view with a per-camera walkthrough, do a full DXF roundtrip and give you 6 cameras free instead of 3. Every line below is sourced and dated, so check the numbers.
Free tier · No credit card · Open in your browser
Same category, so nobody switches over the feature list. What moves people is the job that would not fit: the fourth camera on a free-tier project, the tender that asks where the data sits, the crew that does not read English, the contractor waiting on a DXF.
CCTVplanner's Free plan covers 2 projects with up to 6 cameras each, bill of materials and quote included, PDF watermarked. CCTV Design Tool's free Starter is capped at 3 cameras and 3 devices per project with a 3-page report. Real small-site jobs fit the free plan here; there they push you to Premium on day one.
Installer is €4.17/mo (€50/yr) with unlimited projects; their Premium is $6/mo ($72/yr). Business, with white-label PDF and full DXF export, is €100/yr. The gap that matters is not the price though: it is that the entry plan already carries the cabling engine and the compliance documents in every PDF.
CCTVplanner ships with full UI in 33 languages including RTL Arabic, Hindi, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Ukrainian. CCTV Design Tool is primarily English with limited localisation. If your team or your tender lives outside English, this materially changes adoption.
DEFENSAR — 100% Engineered and Hosted in EU. GDPR-aligned with auto-generated DPIA worksheet (Art. 35) inside every PDF. For EU public-sector, defence, finance and critical-infrastructure tenders, EU origin and data residency is increasingly non-negotiable.
EN 62676 series, EN 50130-4/5, EN 62305 lightning, IEC 60529/62262, ISO/IEC 11801, IEEE 802.3 PoE, ONVIF, NDAA §889, GDPR, BS 8418, AS/NZS 4806, Garante 2010 — cited where they apply and held in place by 5,600+ automated tests. A standard named in a feature list is marketing; a standard you can point an auditor at is a deliverable.
Including 100+ datasheet-verified flagship models with bitrate, lux, IP/IK, ONVIF, NDAA and environmental class metadata. New models land within weeks of public datasheet release.
Verified from public https://www.cctvdesigntool.com (/pricing, /features, /privacy-policy) on 2026-09-10
| CCTVplanner | CCTV Design Tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier limits | 2 projects, 6 cameras each, BOM and quote, watermarked PDF | 3 cameras, 3 devices, 3-page report |
| Paid plan (yearly) | €50/yr Installer · €100/yr Business | $72/yr Premium ($12/mo billed monthly) |
| UI languages | 33 (incl. RTL Arabic) | 19 languages |
| Origin / data residency | EU — DEFENSAR, GDPR-clean | TECHMAGIC UK LTD, London (their privacy policy) |
| Camera catalog size | 66,489 cameras, 100+ datasheet-verified flagships | 31,800+ cameras, 150+ brands (their figure) |
| DXF in + out | Full — BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH, DIMENSION | DXF export on Premium, file contents not published |
Detect, Observe, Recognise, Identify at 25 / 62.5 / 125 / 250 px/m — same standard your AHJ expects, plus the new OODPCVS ladder (7 levels) for tenders that demand it.
Stack multiple floor plans, route cabling between them, project the full topology graph (cameras, NVRs, switches, WAPs, multi-closet daisy-chains) into one BOM.
Design outdoor sites on real satellite imagery — parking lots, perimeters, gas stations. Address search, OSM building outlines, IFOV-aware ANPR placement.
Import the architect's DXF — BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved. Export your finished design as DXF for the electrical contractor.
Cover, floor plan, camera schedule, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, cost estimate, auto-generated GDPR DPIA worksheet (Art. 35).
Open your project from any device — laptop, tablet, phone — same canvas, same BOM. PWA caches the app for offline use after first load.
Export the floor plan as PDF or JPG, their export formats. If you have the source CAD, that works too, skip to step 2.
Open CCTVplanner in your browser, click New Project, drop the DXF / PDF / PNG / JPG. Full DXF geometry import — BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved. Calibrate scale once.
Pick the same models from our 66,489-camera catalog, drop them on the plan, set mounting height and tilt. DORI rings, FOV cones and obstacle shadows render in real time. Typical 20-camera site: 15-30 minutes.
Generate a multi-page PDF with floor plan, BOM, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views and DPIA worksheet. Export DXF for the electrical contractor.
Once your next project is in CCTVplanner and your team is comfortable, drop the renewal. Their free Starter (3 cameras / 3 devices) stays available as a safety net for old projects.
Everything below is in the product today, on the free tier, and none of it needs an install. Open it in a browser and check it against CCTV Design Tool on a job you already know.
No install and no workstation. Walk the site from any camera point of view, with DORI silhouettes standing at the Detect, Observe, Recognize and Identify distances so the customer sees what the camera sees. Sun and shadow study for the time of day that matters, and one-click 3D PDF export for the people who will never open a design tool.
Every cone is computed from the sensor, resolution and focal length at the mounting height (1 to 20 m) and tilt you set, then clipped by buildings, fences and real ground elevation on satellite imagery. On a flat indoor floor a 2D tool agrees with us. On a sloped yard or a sunken loading dock it does not, and that gap is exactly where the blind spots are.
Racking, containers, concrete blocks, scaffolding, solar panels, trees, and the machinery a live construction site actually parks in the shot: excavators, cranes, concrete mixers, bulldozers, vans and pickups. Each one carries real dimensions and a vertical range, and the field of view clips against it with the shadow drawn on the plan.
Stack ground floor, mezzanine, plant room and roof as separate levels. Draw walls, close rooms and read the floor area back in square metres. Cabling routes between levels, the topology graph carries across them, and each floor exports as its own DXF sheet and PDF page.
Predictive coverage for access points using ITU-R P.2040 wall transmission and a P.1238 margin, drawn as a heatmap over the same plan the cameras sit on. Point-to-point links are checked for line of sight against the buildings and terrain, so the wireless leg of the design fails on screen rather than on site.
51 specified cable types with PoE budget from loop resistance, DC voltage drop, fibre loss budget with splice and connector allowances, coax attenuation per format, speaker line loading and conduit fill. Route length is measured on the drawn route and carries straight into the bill of materials, the cable schedule and the customer offer.
The plan is validated while you draw it: DORI shortfall, blind spots, perimeter gaps, PoE budget and class escalation, cable length and category headroom, conduit bundling, fibre loss, thermal lens and pairing, EMC and environmental class, lightning protection zones, ONVIF profile mixing, NDAA compliance, bandwidth headroom and switch port capacity.
CAD-grade DXF (AutoCAD R2018 / AC1021) on named layers with BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved, inside an ISO 5457 sheet frame with an ISO 7200 title block. Multi-page PDF with bill of materials, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, coverage analysis, acceptance test protocol, maintenance schedule and the GDPR Article 35 DPIA worksheet.
Really free. The Free plan is permanent: 2 projects, 6 cameras each, no credit card, no expiry. Enough to design a real small site, render a real PDF with a bill of materials and verify the math against your own datasheets. Installer is €4.17/mo billed yearly when you outgrow it.
CCTV Design Tool's Starter is capped at 3 cameras and 3 devices per project with a 3-page report. CCTVplanner's Free plan covers 2 projects with up to 6 cameras each: full DORI calculation, full canvas, bill of materials, quote, watermarked PDF. The 6-camera ceiling typically fits a small retail unit, an apartment-block stairwell or a two-bay garage; theirs forces an upgrade on day one.
There is no project-file import between the two tools; neither publishes a project format the other one reads. What works in practice: export the floor plan from their tool as PDF or JPG, import it into CCTVplanner, then re-place the cameras using our 66,489-camera catalog. For a typical 20-camera site, plan on 15-30 minutes. The migration guide above covers it.
The category is the same; the priorities differ. CCTVplanner emphasises EU hosting, full standards compliance (23 cited + validated), 33 UI languages including RTL, full DXF roundtrip, and a permanent free tier that covers real small sites. CCTV Design Tool emphasises polished UX, mature community and an established brand. If your priorities are EU/GDPR, multilingual, and budget-conscious, the math favours CCTVplanner. If you value brand maturity and slower release cadence, theirs is the safer pick.
Inside the European Union. CCTVplanner is operated by DEFENSAR — 100% Engineered and Hosted in EU. Core account and project data is stored on EU servers; any sub-processors (payments, analytics, email) are covered by GDPR transfer safeguards (SCCs / EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework). GDPR-aligned by default, with a built-in DPIA worksheet (Art. 35) for your customer deliverables.
Yes. 64 verified thermal camera models with datasheet DRI tables, Johnson Criteria (NATO STANAG 4347) implementation, dual-spectrum FOV cone rendering. Long-range thermal SKUs (Hikvision HM-TD2638 at 450m, DS-2TD8 at 1500m+) supported natively in the designer.
Once the app has loaded once, the PWA caches it for offline use — useful in basements, remote sites, on long flights. Cloud sync resumes automatically when you reconnect.
Keep your CCTV Design Tool account active during transition — their Free Starter never expires, so old projects remain accessible. Move new projects into CCTVplanner as they come in. After 1-2 months your team will be in CCTVplanner muscle memory and the paid renewal becomes unnecessary.
Open the browser. Drop a floor plan. Place a camera. See your first DORI ring in under 60 seconds.
Also explore: CCTVplanner vs CCTVDesignTool (side-by-side) · JVSG alternative · IPVM alternative · Free CCTV design tool · Best free CCTV design software 2026
CCTV Design Tool is a trademark of its respective owner. This page contains nominative-fair-use references for honest comparison under EU Comparative Advertising Directive 2006/114/EC.
