# Altium Designer

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Altium Designer and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Professional PCB design software that people use for complex and high-end boards, with routing and support praised. The most common caveat is its high price and a clunky, buggy interface.

## Why people recommend it

- Capable for professional boards (3 comments): "Altium's ActiveRoute routing is the perfect blend between manual routing and autorouting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596342)) "Pretty much every high end board is designed under Altium." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614027)) "the price is right for its capability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139484))
- Well made, well supported software (3 comments): "a well made piece of professional software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46726800)) "it's well supported by Altium" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46592532)) "it's been working very well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47979596))

## What people warn about

- Expensive for what it offers (3 comments): "For the price, Altium/Protel has always been a poor deal for what you get software wise." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613945)) "expensive overengineered (for normal boards) tools like Altium" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50053876)) "or being unaffordable (Altium)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45974696))
- Crashes, bugs and poor quality (3 comments): "Altium has to be some of the worst software in existence." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46817611)) "the only thing they really want is fewer crashes and bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45982389)) "has now officially gone to shit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395178))
- Hard GUI and outdated docs (2 comments): "Why does Altium or anything by Xilinx always have outdated docs that refer to menus that dont exist anymore?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479621)) "the GUI (used Altium, Allegro and Kicad professionally) gets in the way" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954351))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [KiCad](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kicad.md): 99 recommend
- [EasyEDA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/easyeda.md): 8 recommend
- [EAGLE PCB design software](https://hackerapproved.com/p/eagle.md): 6 recommend
- [Copperhead](https://hackerapproved.com/p/copperhead.md): 6 recommend
- [KiCadRoutingTools](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kicadroutingtools.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.altium.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Altium Designer", https://hackerapproved.com/p/altium/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).