KiCad PCB Design Service
KiCad has become a genuinely professional tool. We design production hardware in it and deliver native projects your team can maintain without paying for a seat.
Why teams choose KiCad for production work
KiCad is no longer a hobbyist compromise. Modern releases handle differential pairs, length tuning, custom design rules, and impedance-aware stackups well enough for the large majority of commercial hardware. For a startup shipping a 4-layer STM32 or ESP32 product, the practical difference against a commercial tool is small — and the licence cost difference is not.
- No per-seat licence cost, so your whole team can open the design
- Plain-text project files that version-control properly in Git
- Strong ecosystem support from JLCPCB and PCBWay for fabrication output
- No vendor lock-in — you are never one lapsed subscription away from losing access to your own hardware
What a professional KiCad project looks like
The gap between a hobby KiCad project and a production one is discipline, not features. Ours ship with the same rigour we apply to Altium work.
Project-local libraries
Symbols and footprints live in the project, not in a designer's global library. The project opens correctly on any machine, forever.
Custom design rules
KiCad's custom rule syntax is used to enforce net-class clearances, impedance-relevant widths, and manufacturing constraints — not just the global defaults.
Git-friendly structure
Projects are organised so that diffs are meaningful and multiple engineers can work without stepping on each other.
Verified fabrication output
Gerbers are re-imported and inspected before release, and the JLCPCB or PCBWay output profile is validated against the fabricator's current capability sheet.
KiCad or Altium for your project
| Consideration | KiCad | Altium Designer |
|---|---|---|
| Licence cost | Free | Significant per-seat annual cost |
| Version control | Excellent — plain text | Workable, but binary-heavy |
| High-speed tooling | Good for most designs | Stronger for DDR and complex matching |
| Design variants | Limited | First-class support |
| Supply-chain integration | Manual or plugin-based | Built in via ActiveBOM |
| Best fit | Startups, 2–6 layer products, open hardware | Complex, high-layer-count, multi-variant products |
We are happy to recommend against the more expensive option when your design does not need it. If you are already invested in Altium, our Altium Designer PCB design service covers that side.
Common questions
Is KiCad suitable for a commercial product?
For the majority of commercial hardware, yes. We ship production designs in KiCad regularly. The cases where we recommend Altium instead are complex multi-variant products and designs with demanding high-speed matching requirements such as DDR memory.
Can you convert my Altium project to KiCad?
Yes. We do the conversion with manual verification of footprints, design rules, and net classes rather than relying purely on the automated importer, and we give you a written report of anything that needed judgement.
Which KiCad version do you use?
We work in current stable releases and will match whatever version your team runs so the project opens without a forced upgrade.
Send us your design.
Schematic, block diagram, or a description of what you need built — you get a fixed-price quote with defined deliverables, usually within one business day.
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Last reviewed 2026-08-03 by Niloy Mondal, IPC CID+ certified PCB designer.