Cheapest Eagle now $500 per year?!

[ebastler]

I got a marketing email from Autodesk today. Going forward, EAGLE will only be available as part of Fusion 360, if I get their drift:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/eagle/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-EAGLE-now-included-with-Fusion-360.html

If I understand it correctly: If you currently have an Eagle subscription, there is a short-term benefit -- you get access to Fusion 360 at no extra cost. But if you want to buy a new subscription now -- your only option will be to subscribe to Fusion 360, at a cost of $495 per year.

How can I subscribe to EAGLE after January 7, 2020?
After January 7th, 2020, you'll need to subscribe to Fusion 360 which includes EAGLE Premium. EAGLE Standard will no longer be available for new purchases. However, if you own a current EAGLE Standard subscription, you can renew at the end of your subscription term.

Time for me to finally learn KiCAD...

[alexwhittemore]

Looks like you've got it right. Although to be fair, the "cheapest" option is still free.

If you already had an Eagle Standard or Eagle Premium license, you now get F360 for free.

And for my money, I'm very excited about EDA in the F360 environment instead of Eagle - Eagle's interface has always sucked and is only just now tolerable because of all the work Autodesk put in.

But yeah. I'd be happy about getting a Fusion 360 commercial license for $15/mo if I didn't literally-right-now need to switch to Premium.

[level6]

Looks like you've got it right. Although to be fair, the "cheapest" option is still free.

If you already had an Eagle Standard or Eagle Premium license, you now get F360 for free.

And for my money, I'm very excited about EDA in the F360 environment instead of Eagle - Eagle's interface has always sucked and is only just now tolerable because of all the work Autodesk put in.

But yeah. I'd be happy about getting a Fusion 360 commercial license for $15/mo if I didn't literally-right-now need to switch to Premium.

Yeah, I'm happy with this too. I already have an Eagle Standard subscription and now have Fusion 360 Commercial added to my license. That will be the case as long as I maintain my subscription.

[alexwhittemore]

FYI for those in the same grandfathered Eagle Standard situation since I'm fighting through this right now:

The benefit is F360 commercial gets added on for free, which is a total steal.

The disadvantage is, well, if I need Eagle Premium for a project, how? I used to have Eagle Standard monthly, so I could switch to Eagle Premium on a whim when projects called for that.

The answer is, you can have an arbitrary number of licenses tied to your account at any given time, and you just have to do some hoop jumping to assign them.

So for instance, I need Eagle Premium right now, temporarily. While not touching my $15/mo "F360 with Eagle Standard" subscription, I can simply ADD a $60/mo F360 subscription for 1mo. which comes with Eagle Premium.

I was told this would "automatically" apply the Premium entitlement, but Eagle's pretty bad about fetching new licenses - I'm not sure if it simply won't "automatically" do that, or if it'll just take a stupid amount of time before it takes.

In the mean time, I went into my control panel on Autodesk and went to User Management. I unassigned both entitlements from my user account, and about 15min later verified that Eagle would pull a "Free" license on logout/login. I then assigned only the license seat including Eagle Premium. Another ~15m or maybe 30m later, I now have Eagle Premium for the next month.

[gooligumelec]

Damn!

Missed out by this -> |---| much! 

I'm a long time Eagle user, have a perpetual v7 standard licence.  I've just last month bailed out of paid employment (as an engineer who occasionally used Altium on the job...) to do my own thing, and had decided to bite the bullet and take out an Eagle subscription.  Standard, because I design small boards and 4 layers has been fine so far.  I was looking at the pricing online just last week - came so close to clicking the button to subscribe....

So because I hesitated, I've missed out of free F360, and if I want Eagle it's now $590/year!  Aarrgh!

What to do?  I do want to learn F360, and the integration looks really nice.  And I'm serious about running a business/consultancy that makes money, I shouldn't baulk at paying $590 for professional tools.

But kicad is free.  But I liked Eagle, still own it, have projects and libraries in it.  Even liked the old interface, after I'd learned it.  And I did want to get into F360.  And integrated ecad/mcad is the way of the future.  But $590/year vs free...   

Oh well!

[alexwhittemore]

$490 a year. And having used it in exactly that capacity for about 2 years, the price is still a STEAL. The terms of their "startup" license were permissive enough that we reasonably qualified, which is why I've been freeloading for two years, but I was absolutely prepared to start paying in due time because it's definitely worth it.

In the mean time, I say, go ahead and learn KiCad because it's only getting better (it's on my list), but come time for a paid job, stick with eagle and just drop the $ for a license. Maybe as a trial run, get the $60/1mo subscription first to re-familiarize yourself with it, since a BUNCH has changed. Or don't, since you can still get the 2-layer non-commercial version for free to do that job

As for F360, until you're actually using it for client work, you CAN still get that totally free. Feel free to download it and get started with it, then pay when terms dictate you must.

FWIW, I literally can't imagine a better licensing scheme than F360s and nobody in the market comes close. As someone who isn't 100% productivity committed to a particular package, F360's most direct competition is SolidWorks and frankly you'd be INSANE to pick SW over Fusion. I guess Onshape also, and there are good reasons you might go that route, but I still think I like F360 better for sub-half the cost.

[ebastler]

$490 a year. And having used it in exactly that capacity for about 2 years, the price is still a STEAL.

If you need Fusion360 and Eagle Premium, then yes, the price seems fine. And even if you just need Eagle Premium, it's probably OK.

My beef is essentially that they dropped the Standard license option. That leaves a massive gap, price and functionality-wise, between the free and the premium version. Eagle has no valid offer for amateurs any more.

[alexwhittemore]

Ahh, yes - that I DO totally agree with. The reason it doesn’t really bother me, besides that I have a locked in Standard license, is mostly that Fusion’s licensing scheme makes a LOT of room for the hobbyist, basically giving away free licenses right up until the very sharp edge that it becomes a no brainer to pay. Like, you can even use fusion to make stuff you sell, as long as you’re not making enough money that “come on man now you’re making money, we need to make money too.”

Since Eagle is very soon to be absorbed into that product, I can only assume the licensing will also morph. I imagine by the time Eagle is a fully embedded Fusion design space, the licensing will be effectively equivalent to “everyone gets premium, and we just ask that anyone using it to make a real living pays appropriately.

The fact that they offer a not-terribly-expensive monthly licensing option makes the license structure that much more reasonable too - at the end of the day, it’s basically “you get all this whole pile of goodness completely for free to use and learn, and all you have to do is pay us in the months that you’re using it for profit.

Anyway, until all of that comes to fruition for Eagle, it IS kind of a bummer they let the middle ground get totally lost in the shuffle. But I don’t think it’ll last that long.

[macegr]

Some of you may be able to stick with Standard pricing for now, we'll see how long that lasts.

The Linux question is an issue. If they don't have Fusion360 on Linux, then Eagle users on Linux get the stubby end of the stick. At least until the announcement that they're getting the sharp end of the axe.

Matt announced this Fusion360 integration with a teaser for "something I'm not allowed to talk about yet" which means another big announcement is coming soon. Historically these announcements tend to be great for Autodesk and not so great for users, but we'll see.

[alexwhittemore]

If they don't have Fusion360 on Linux, then Eagle users on Linux get the stubby end of the stick. At least until the announcement that they're getting the sharp end of the axe.

This I'm a little worried about. I mean, I don't use desktop linux so it's not a huge deal personally, but when Eagle finally does make it all the way into Fusion I can only assume Linux will get totally left behind. Chatter on twitter doesn't leave me hopeful that there's much capital behind a linux version of Fusion to save the Linux Eagle users.

Matt announced this Fusion360 integration with a teaser for "something I'm not allowed to talk about yet"

I THINK this might be a reference to stuff he's already talked about, but perhaps late retracted. I've seen screenshots from his personal account of the EDA environment running in Fusion, which is obviously completely unreleased and unannounced. But I can't find it now, so I wonder if that stuff was scrubbed due to prematurity.

[nigelwright7557]

$500 a year is a lot for use of a PCBCAD package.
What is that Eagle does different to other cheaper/free packages ?

I have used a PCBCAD package that cost £5 total for 10 years now and designed 250 pcb's with very few problems.
Some were pretty big pcb's.

[alexwhittemore]

$500 a year is a lot for use of a PCBCAD package.
What is that Eagle does different to other cheaper/free packages ?

I have used a PCBCAD package that cost £5 total for 10 years now and designed 250 pcb's with very few problems.
Some were pretty big pcb's.

I'm not so sure it IS a lot for a PCB package. I haven't used many of the cheap packages and certainly not recently, so I can't say for sure, but there's a reason people pay $8k a seat for Altium, and it's not to get past pin count limitations. It's for a myriad of individual features, all of which are necessary to get the job done quickly. I've had boards I did in Altium that would have taken 5 times as long in Eagle, perhaps worse. A general truism is, any EDA package right down to black vinyl, a transparency sheet, and a knife will get the job done. It's just a question of how painful it is to get there. It's an interesting point though. Maybe I should try doing a "Cheap to free" EDA shootout just for funsies, to figure out where they'd break down for various degrees of difficulty I work on.

One such feature Eagle does damn well is MCAD<>ECAD interoperability. I could argue that nobody else sells a product that actually does this as well right now, although some are competitive and others are scrambling to keep up.

Anyway as far as Eagle commanding $500/yr - for one, that's a price DROP for the feature set. It used to be more even from Autodesk, and a license back in Cadsoft days could stretch up into the thousands depending on which features you bought, and at what time.

But for two, I think current Eagle has a lot of PROMISE, more than a lot of current capability. Eagle is absolutely not Altium, but in the hands of a serious professional company investing lots of development effort, it maybe could be. It might take a ground-up rewrite... but that's also what they're literally working on.

[MarkL]

...
Anyway as far as Eagle commanding $500/yr - for one, that's a price DROP for the feature set. It used to be more even from Autodesk, and a license back in Cadsoft days could stretch up into the thousands depending on which features you bought, and at what time.
...

It's not the case it was "thousands".  All options, unlimited, single-user Cadsoft Eagle Professional pricing was USD $1640, with major release upgrade costs about a third of that.

Detail posted here:

  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eagle/eagle-will-be-part-of-fusion360/msg2862984/#msg2862984

[ebastler]

To my surprise, Eagle Standard is still available at the moment. Annual license, with automatic extension unless you cancel it in time. Eagle told me this is a "time limited offer". So there is a last chance to get a foot in the door before the "Premium only" policy kicks in.

US version, $100: https://autode.sk/EAGLEUS
European version, €110 plus tax: https://autode.sk/EAGLEDE

Edit: The shopping process asks for your address (and might check it against the one registered with your payment provider).
The "EAGLEDE" version lets you select most European countries, but the lower-cost "EAGLEUS" version only seems to be available to US residents.

I just took the plunge. The "Digital River" shopping process is surprisingly awkward: You don't get an activated license and download right away, but your order needs to be approved by a human apparently, which took a day in my case. In the meantime, the account link they sent with the initial response email did not work yet, unannounced, which made me slightly nervous. And I never got a "first steps" email, although it was announced in two separate other emails, but had to figure out where to find the download on the account page (once access was granted to the account, silently, a day later). But it did work eventually; got Eagle 9.5.2 Standard working now.

[janoc]

This I'm a little worried about. I mean, I don't use desktop linux so it's not a huge deal personally, but when Eagle finally does make it all the way into Fusion I can only assume Linux will get totally left behind. Chatter on twitter doesn't leave me hopeful that there's much capital behind a linux version of Fusion to save the Linux Eagle users.

There is no Linux version of Fusion and it is very unlikely there ever will be one - Autodesk couldn't care less about Linux users. The issue has been raised multiple times and pretty much either ignored or they just straight said no, even though there aren't really technical reasons for it per se, AFAIK, only business ones.

Autodesk's only Linux products were those that they "inherited" by acquiring other companies, such as Alias Wavefront (there was Maya for Linux and SGI for a while) and CadSoft (Eagle).

Some people have managed to get Fusion run under Wine but it is a bugfest, with a ton of glitches and problems. And, of course, totally unsupported.

If you want mechanical CAD in Linux and FreeCAD can't do the job, then OnShape works really well - but then it runs completely in the browser + their SaaS backend for complex stuff, such as data translation. Also the user interface in OnShape seems more logical and less buggy to me than Fusion, especially SolidWorks users will be likely right at home (OnShape was founded by former SolidWorks people).

[gooligumelec]

To my surprise, Eagle Standard is still available at the moment. Annual license, with automatic extension unless you cancel it in time. Eagle told me this is a "time limited offer". So there is a last chance to get a foot in the door before the "Premium only" policy kicks in.

US version, $100: https://autode.sk/EAGLEUS
European version, €110 plus tax: https://autode.sk/EAGLEDE

Good news for those of us in Australia: Eagle Standard, bundled with Fusion 360, is now available for AUD $140 from https://autode.sk/EAGLEAUS

It seems to be available only for those in Australia and the Pacific Islands (PNG, Tonga, Samoa, etc.).  Oddly, I didn't see NZ in the list.

According to the email I received from Autodesk, the offer is available to 31 Jan.  I assume that applies to the EU and US versions as well.

I happily snapped it up.  Eagle and F360 combined for A$140/year is pretty good.  Beats $500 odd.  Sure, not as good as $0, but still, I jumped at it.

[purfield]

I pulled the trigger on the deal too.  If the normal pricing was $100/year for Eagle + Fusion 360, that would be awesome.  As it is, I'll stick with Eagle for another year and reevaluate my options when it comes time for renewal.

[ve7xen]

This I'm a little worried about. I mean, I don't use desktop linux so it's not a huge deal personally, but when Eagle finally does make it all the way into Fusion I can only assume Linux will get totally left behind. Chatter on twitter doesn't leave me hopeful that there's much capital behind a linux version of Fusion to save the Linux Eagle users.

There is no Linux version of Fusion and it is very unlikely there ever will be one - Autodesk couldn't care less about Linux users. The issue has been raised multiple times and pretty much either ignored or they just straight said no, even though there aren't really technical reasons for it per se, AFAIK, only business ones.

And on top of that, I'd expect most full-time Linux users probably moved over to KiCad a few years ago once it became a viable option for most, as most other Linux folks I encounter choose to use the open source option when one exists. As much as I'd love to see Fusion on Linux, I doubt it will happen. AutoDesk gives zero fucks, even if it'd be trivial for them to produce a Linux build, and despite there not being any good low-cost MCAD options on the platform. Since there is actually viable EDA in KiCad, integrating Eagle doesn't seem likely to change their perspective.

Luckily I am one of those who got on the KiCad bandwagon early . But FreeCAD is pretty bad. OnShape is pretty decent, but their fairly recent licensing change scares me a bit.

[janoc]

What sort of licensing change did OnShape do? For hobbyists and non-profits it is still free, just your documents are public (as was always the case) and they made it explicit that anyone has the right to use them. Haven't followed the pro licensing, there it gets pretty expensive (starting at $1500/year/seat) fast and Fusion360 could be a bargain compared to an OnShape license.

FreeCAD is actually quite decent and now has a pretty solid integration with KiCAD too - export the board into FreeCAD for enclosure design, create part models for KiCAD in FreeCAD, etc. - see https://kicad-pcb.org/external-tools/stepup/

Of course, FreeCAD can't compete with Fusion360, OnShape or any major CAD system which have teams of developers and a ton of resources behind them. That said, it is still a fairly capable program, albeit some bugs and idiosyncrasies could drive one nuts.

[ve7xen]

What sort of licensing change did OnShape do? For hobbyists and non-profits it is still free, just your documents are public (as was always the case) and they made it explicit that anyone has the right to use them. Haven't followed the pro licensing, there it gets pretty expensive (starting at $1500/year/seat) fast and Fusion360 could be a bargain compared to an OnShape license.

They previously permitted a limited number of private designs on free accounts (I think it was 10?). This is now removed. And their ToS includes a clause that basically has you placing your public designs in the public domain, not just publicly accessible. I don't have (too much) of a problem with making my designs public, not that anyone would be interested in them, but completely giving up any rights to my work is unacceptable.

From the Terms of Use:

For any new Public Document owned by a Free user created on or after August 7, 2018, or any Public Document created prior to that date without a LICENSE tab, Customer grants a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to any End User or third party accessing the Public Document to use the intellectual property contained in Customer’s Public Document without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Document, and to permit persons to whom the Document is made available to do the same.

I have been using FreeCAD lately, and while it isn't completely terrible and useless, and has improved quite a lot in the last couple of years, I still find it to be quite crashy and the UI is a bit clumsy and weird sometimes. But yes, since OnShape gave me the finger it's what I've been using. I think Fusion is much stronger competition for FreeCAD than Eagle is for KiCad, basically. I see no reason to use Eagle, but I'd seriously consider giving Fusion a burl.

[janoc]

Ah that thing with the private designs is not recent at all - that's a year or two old, at least. I have certainly never had the option to have a private design on my free account and I have one for some time now.

The public domain thing - well, yes, from that point of view you are right. On the other hand, once something is public a people can open and reuse it, they will, regardless of the license you slap on it (how many people ask for permission before taking an image off the web somewhere?). So OnShape made it explicit that this is the case and now they don't have to deal with enforcing people's copyright and lawsuits alleging IP theft. Especially given that this concerns only users who aren't paying them a dime and are using their resources for free.

So I can kinda understand their position and don't have an issue with it - those 3D printer bits and PCB standoffs I have there I don't really care about and once I will have something that I will want to sell or keep the rights on, I won't design it with OnShape anyway (their ToS doesn't allow that with the free version and the paid license is waaay out of my budget).

Re Fusion - I have been using Fusion too, but since I am 99% of time a Linux user Fusion is a no-go for me because it doesn't work in Linux and dualbooting constantly is not really practical. So it is either FreeCAD (for simple stuff) or OnShape (for complicated/assemblies). Or OpenSCAD in some cases. Also, I really do hate how slow Fusion360 interface feels. Heck, OnShape feels faster and more responsive and that is running in a browser. But given that I have seen some of the guts of Fusion (I have been developing export tools for it at work), I am not surprised at all ...

[KC0PPH]

Fusion 360 Plus Eagle Standard $100 USD annual price. Was told it would not go up in the future. Not sure if i can share this but i already took advantage of it so have at it.

https://store.autodesk.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=adskeren&id=QuickBuyCartPage

[gooligumelec]

Fusion 360 Plus Eagle Standard $100 USD annual price. Was told it would not go up in the future.

Excellent news!  It seems that sanity has prevailed.  That's good value.

[ebastler]

Fusion 360 Plus Eagle Standard $100 USD annual price. Was told it would not go up in the future.

Excellent news!  It seems that sanity has prevailed.  That's good value.

Hmm... two disclaimers:

(a) Sanity only prevails until January 31st, when this time-limited offer will end. No more new Eagle Standard licenses will be available afterwards. And we have to trust Autodesk that existing subscriptions will continue to be extended under the current terms in the future.

(b) Sanity only prevails for US customers and, at 20% higher cost, for Europeans. You will need to register and provide payment details, and the input form limits the choice of countries. -- Edit: The offer has been extended to Australia, it seems, via https://autode.sk/EAGLEAUS