Start with the disclosure, because it is unusually load-bearing here: Scout Data is our product, and it is not a design or proposal tool. We do not compete with anything in the table below. If you came here to replace Aurora, the answer is one of the platforms listed, not us. The second half of this page makes a different argument, and it is clearly marked.
Aurora is the reference platform for remote solar design — LIDAR-assisted modelling, shade analysis a lender will accept, and proposals a rep can build on a tablet at a kitchen table. Teams that shop for alternatives are usually not complaining about the designs. They are looking at a per-seat invoice and asking whether every person who has a licence needs one.
What Aurora publicly advertises
| Plan | Advertised price | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $159 per user/month, or $135 billed annually | One user, 50 projects a month, HD imagery and proposals |
| Premium | $259 per user/month, or $220 billed annually | Adds LIDAR-assisted modelling, bankable shade reports, battery modelling |
| Enterprise | Custom, per project | Unlimited users, AI-assisted site models, APIs, dealer configurations |
The structural detail worth noticing is the Enterprise row. Basic and Premium meter seats; Enterprise meters projects. That is the vendor telling you, in pricing, that above a certain size the honest unit of consumption is designs produced rather than people employed — which is also the observation the rest of this page runs on.
Every figure above is what Aurora Solar publicly advertised on its own pricing page at the time of writing, and rate cards move. Confirm current pricing with the vendor directly.
The alternatives, by why you are leaving
| Platform | Shape | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|
| OpenSolar | Free to installers; monetised via partners | Small residential teams where a per-seat design licence is hard to justify at all |
| Solargraf | Subscription; owned by Enphase | Speed to proposal is the priority and you are already in the Enphase ecosystem |
| HelioScope | Subscription | Your work skews commercial and you need engineering-grade array modelling more than a homeowner-facing proposal |
| Scanifly | Subscription; drone-capture led | You already fly drones and want as-built site capture to be the differentiator |
| PVsyst | Licence | Simulation and yield analysis for engineering sign-off, not sales proposals |
Pricing shapes above reflect publicly advertised information at the time of writing and vary by plan, region and volume. Confirm current terms directly with each vendor.
Choosing between them takes one afternoon
Design platforms are unusually easy to evaluate, because the output is objective. Pick five real addresses you have already installed — one simple gable, one complex hip with dormers, one heavily shaded, one low-slope, one you remember arguing about. Model all five on every platform on your shortlist. Compare the modelled production against what those systems actually produced.
Then time it. A platform that is ten minutes faster per design is worth real money at fifty designs a month, and the difference between platforms on complex roofs is much larger than on the easy ones. Most teams discover their shortlist collapses to two after the third address.
The cost the design market cannot price
Here is the part that no design vendor will put on their comparison page, ours included in reverse. Every platform above prices the same unit: a design you have already decided to produce. None of them touches the number that actually drives your cost per sale, which is how many designs you produced to close one deal.
Run it on your own numbers rather than ours. Take last quarter’s completed designs, divide by systems sold, and you have designs per sale. Multiply that by your fully loaded cost per design — the licence share plus the designer’s hour — and you have the real number. For most residential teams it is several multiples of the seat price, because the majority of designs are produced for households that were never going to sign: the roof had four years left, the household was renting, the credit was never there, the system was replaced last spring by an installer nobody checked for.
Moving from a $259 seat to a $135 seat cuts one side of that equation. Producing a third fewer designs cuts it too — and unlike the vendor switch, it also gives your designers their afternoons back.
Where Scout Data fits, precisely
We are the filter in front of your design spend, and nothing else. List Builder and Scout use live property signals — more than a million new permits a week, storm footprints mapped within hours, roof and system age, ownership changes — to say which addresses are worth a rep’s visit and a designer’s hour. You still need Aurora, OpenSolar or Solargraf to model the array and produce the proposal.
Two signals in particular are worth knowing about because they are invisible from a design tool. Solar permits that were pulled and never completed identify households that already wanted this and stalled — we published the numbers on how many. And systems whose original installer is no longer trading leave orphaned systems with owners who have a service problem and no one to call. Neither household looks any different from the street, and both are worth a design.
If the doors rather than the designs are your bottleneck, start instead with how to get solar leads.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a genuinely free alternative to Aurora Solar?
OpenSolar is the one that advertises a free-to-installer core platform, monetised through hardware and finance partners rather than seat licences. It is a real option, particularly for small residential teams. Read the add-on and integration terms carefully before assuming free means free at your volume — that is where the model earns.
How much does Aurora Solar cost?
As publicly advertised at the time of writing, Aurora lists Basic at $159 per user per month billed monthly or $135 billed annually, and Premium at $259 monthly or $220 annually — both for one user with 50 projects a month. Enterprise is quoted per project. Annual plans carry a one-year commitment; monthly plans advertise none.
Does Scout Data do solar design or proposals?
No. We do not produce shade reports, string layouts, production estimates or customer-facing proposals, and nothing on this site replaces a design platform. We answer the question one step earlier — which roofs are worth designing — and expect you to keep whichever design tool you land on.