Permanent free tier, no card
CCTVplanner has a permanent Free tier, 2 projects, 6 cameras, no card. Real installers using it for real projects today. Installer is €4.17/mo when you outgrow it.
IPVM Alternative
The Free IPVM Design Calculator Alternative, EU-Hosted and Browser-Based (2026)
For the week the $199 renewal is due and you are working out whether the drawing surface is what you were paying for. The same DORI maths, a far larger catalog, EU hosting, a UI in 33 languages, EUR 50 a year instead of $199, plus a full 3D site with a per-camera walkthrough that the Design Calculator does not attempt. Free tier, so you can settle it on a live job.
Free tier · No credit card · Open in your browser
Quick disambiguation: IPVM is two products
IPVM Research / news: the paywalled industry publication with vendor reviews, vulnerability disclosures and market intel. CCTVplanner is NOT an alternative to this. If that's what you need, IPVM remains the industry standard.
IPVM Design Calculator: the CCTV design software, sold as its own plan at $199 per year per person. CCTVplanner replaces this at €50/yr, with a larger catalog, EU hosting and a permanent free tier.
Why switch
Six reasons integrators leave the IPVM Design Calculator in 2026
The IPVM Design Calculator is good, and it is $199 per year per person. Here is what shifts the moment you switch to a design-first tool at €50/yr.
Purpose-built for design
The whole product exists to put cameras on a plan and show you what they actually see. Every release goes into the design surface rather than into a publication, a course catalog or a testing lab, which is why the 3D scene, the cabling engine and the site objects landed in one year.
Designed for tablet + mobile fieldwork
Walk the site with the customer, drop a camera on the tablet canvas, agree on the tilt right there. CCTVplanner is mobile-aware from the ground up, touch gestures, on-screen pan/zoom, PWA install.
EU-engineered, EU-hosted, GDPR-clean
DEFENSAR — 100% Engineered and Hosted in EU. GDPR-aligned by default with an auto-generated DPIA worksheet (Art. 35) inside every PDF export. IPVM is US-based — for EU government, defence, finance and critical-infrastructure tenders that matters in 2026.
33 UI languages, including RTL
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (BR/PT), Dutch, Czech, Ukrainian, Turkish, Arabic (RTL), Hindi, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Thai. IPVM is English-only. If your team or your tender lives outside that, this matters.
€50/year, not $199/year
Even Business (full DXF export, white-label PDF, unlimited offers) is €100/year. The IPVM Design Calculator is $199 per year per person.
Side-by-side at a glance
| CCTVplanner | IPVM Design Calculator | |
|---|---|---|
| Design tool cost | Free tier · Installer €4.17/mo · Business €8.33/mo | $199/yr per person |
| Design tool sold on its own | Yes, €50/yr Installer | Yes, $199/yr Design Calculator plan |
| Try before you commit | Free tier, 2 projects, 6 cameras, permanent | 7-day money-back window |
| Origin / data residency | EU — DEFENSAR, GDPR-clean | United States |
| UI languages | 33 (incl. RTL Arabic) | English only |
What you keep, every IPVM Design Calculator capability that matters
Switching shouldn't mean downgrading. The design surface, the math, the exports — all present, in many cases broader.
DORI per EN 62676-4
Detect, Observe, Recognise, Identify thresholds at 25 / 62.5 / 125 / 250 px/m — same standard your AHJ expects, validated by 5,600+ automated tests. Plus the newer OODPCVS ladder (7 levels) when you need it.
65,000 cameras catalogued
Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha, Pelco, Uniview, Vivotek, Avigilon, Honeywell — including 100+ datasheet-verified flagship models with bitrate, lux, IP/IK, ONVIF, NDAA and environmental class metadata.
Multi-floor projects
Stack multiple floor plans, route cabling between them, project the full topology graph (cameras, NVRs, switches, WAPs, multi-closet daisy-chains) into a single BOM.
DXF in and out
Import the architect's DXF — full coverage including BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION entities. Export your finished design as DXF for the electrical contractor.
Multi-page PDF with full BOM
Cover, floor plan, camera schedule, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, cost estimate and auto-generated GDPR DPIA worksheet (Art. 35). Hand it to the customer as-is.
23 standards validated
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 and more — cited and validated, not just mentioned.
Different products
What IPVM is for
Not everything is a CCTVplanner win. Three areas where IPVM remains the better tool. If these matter most to you, the subscription is worth keeping.
Industry research depth
IPVM is an industry research publication: vendor reviews, vulnerability disclosures, market intelligence. It answers which camera to buy. We answer where it goes, what it sees and what the install costs. Plenty of integrators keep both, and only one of them is a design deliverable.
Training courses + certification
IPVM sells training courses and branded certificates. Our documentation is free and open at /docs and /blog, and the product teaches the standard as you draw: DORI thresholds per EN 62676-4, environmental class, lightning protection zones and PoE budget are checked on the plan rather than examined afterwards.
First-party camera testing lab
IPVM runs a lab and publishes measurements of individual cameras. Our catalog carries the manufacturer's own datasheet figures for 66,489 models, wired into the optics and DORI engine so the coverage on your drawing changes when you change the lens. Reading a review and proving a design are two different jobs.
Switch from the IPVM Design Calculator in 5 steps
Most installers redo a 20-camera site in 15-30 minutes. The math is the same; the muscle memory is the only thing you have to rebuild.
1. Export your floor plan from the IPVM Design Calculator
From your IPVM project, export the floor plan as DXF, PDF or PNG. If you only have the source CAD or a printed plan, that works too — skip to step 2.
2. Import into CCTVplanner
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. Set scale once and you are ready.
3. Re-place your cameras
Pick the same models from our 65,000-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.
4. Export PDF and DXF
Generate a multi-page PDF with floor plan, BOM, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views and DPIA worksheet. Export DXF for the electrical contractor. Send to the customer.
5. Cancel the IPVM Design Calculator plan
Once your next project is in CCTVplanner and your team is comfortable, cancel the IPVM Design Calculator renewal. Business is €100/yr; the Design Calculator plan is $199/yr per person.
Shipping today
The engineering behind the drawing
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 the IPVM Design Calculator on a job you already know.
A full 3D site, in the browser
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.
Coverage solved in 3D, not drawn on a flat plan
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.
22 site objects that genuinely block the view
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.
Interiors: stacked floors, walls, rooms
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.
Wi-Fi and radio links designed with the cameras
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.
Cabling engineered, not estimated
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.
67 automatic design checks
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.
Deliverables a contractor can hand over
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.
66,489
camera models
113
manufacturers
33
interface languages
5,600+
automated tests
100% EU
hosted and operated
Frequently asked
Is this also an alternative to IPVM's research and news?
No, and we want to be upfront about it. IPVM publishes industry research and news, and separately sells the IPVM Design Calculator. CCTVplanner replaces the design tool only. For independent vendor research, IPVM remains the industry standard. If you subscribe mainly for the design tool, CCTVplanner covers that side at €50/yr.
Is CCTVplanner really free, or is this a trial?
Really free. The Free tier is permanent — 2 projects and 6 cameras, no credit card, no expiry. Enough to design a small site, render a real PDF and verify the DORI math against your own datasheets. When you need more projects or cameras, Installer is €4.17/mo. That's the entire pricing model.
Can I import my existing IPVM Design Calculator project?
There is no direct project-file import, the IPVM Design Calculator's project format is closed and proprietary. What works in practice: export the floor plan from IPVM as DXF, PDF or PNG, import that into CCTVplanner, then re-place the cameras using our 65,000-camera catalog. For a typical 20-camera site, plan on 15-30 minutes. The five-step migration guide above covers it.
Do I need to install anything?
No. CCTVplanner is a pure web app. Open the URL in any modern browser — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge — on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS or Android. No installer, no admin password, no licence key. After first load, the PWA caches the app so it also works offline.
Where is my data hosted?
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. IPVM is US-based; for EU public-sector and critical-infrastructure tenders that matters.
Does CCTVplanner have a research portal like IPVM?
Not in IPVM's form. We publish design guides at /blog and /docs and a glossary at /glossary — free, indexed by Google. What we don't do is vendor reviews, vulnerability disclosures or paid courses. Those remain IPVM's domain.
What about offline access?
Once the app has loaded once, the PWA caches it for offline use — useful in basements, remote sites, on flights. Cloud sync resumes automatically when you reconnect.
How is the camera catalog kept current?
We pull manufacturer datasheets and update specs on a rolling basis. 100+ flagship models carry full datasheet-verified metadata (bitrate, lux, IP/IK, ONVIF, NDAA, environmental class). The remaining models carry the core specs needed for DORI / FOV / range calculations. New models land within weeks of public datasheet release.
Stop paying $199 a year for a design tool
Open the browser. Drop a floor plan. Place a camera. See your first DORI ring in under 60 seconds — for free, no card, no install.
IPVM alternative — by industry
Industry-specific comparisons covering procurement workflow, compliance review, and supplier vetting differences.