Most Aurora Solar reviews are written by people who either sell against it or have never run 40 designs a month on it. This one is written from a design bench that produces plan sets on other people’s Aurora models every week. Aurora is very good. It is also the most expensive seat in the category, and the reason it is expensive is worth understanding before you sign a multi-seat contract.
Direct answer. Aurora Solar is the strongest remote design and sales platform for US residential work. Its LIDAR-driven roof modelling and irradiance visualisation are genuinely best in class. The problem is price per seat, roughly $1,908 to $3,108 per user per year, and a product shaped around one sales motion. For most installers and EPCs, SurgePV covers the same daily jobs at roughly half to two-thirds the cost.
TL;DR
- Aurora's remote roof modelling from LIDAR and imagery is the best in the category. Nothing else handles a complex hip-and-valley roof from a street address as cleanly.
- Pricing is tiered from roughly $1,908 to $3,108 per user per year, and some capability sits behind the higher tiers.
- The product is tuned for the US residential sales motion. Commercial, international, and engineering-led teams pay for capability aimed at a different job.
- Aurora is not the reference tool for bankable yield studies. That is still PVsyst, so financed projects need a second licence either way.
- SurgePV runs 8,760-hour simulation, single-line diagrams with DWG export, and a white-label proposal in one licence at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year.
What Aurora Solar Is and Who It Is For
Aurora is a cloud platform for designing solar systems remotely and selling them. You enter an address, Aurora pulls imagery and LIDAR, builds a 3D model of the roof, and lets a designer place modules on detected planes. It then produces a customer-facing proposal with savings and financing comparison.
The company is US headquartered and the product reflects that. Its centre of gravity is the American residential market, where a rep needs a credible design and a signable proposal inside one appointment.
Who it fits: a residential sales organisation with real lead volume, reps who close in the home or on a video call, and a designer bench feeding them layouts. Aurora is built for exactly that shape of company, and it fits it well.
Who it fits less well: a commercial or industrial EPC, an engineering-led consultancy, an international team, or any business where the deliverable is a drawing set rather than a proposal.
Pricing and What Sits Behind Which Tier
Aurora sells in tiers. Published pricing runs roughly $1,908 to $3,108 per user per year depending on which tier you land on. That is materially above most of the field.
Two things matter more than the headline number.
First, capability is tiered. Some of the features buyers most associate with Aurora sit on the higher plans. A team that buys the entry tier to control spend can find that the specific thing it bought Aurora for is one tier up. Read the contract feature list, not the marketing page.
Second, Aurora prices per user. That is normal, but it interacts badly with how solar companies are actually staffed, and that is the trap covered further down.
For context across the whole category, see our solar design software pricing breakdown.
What Aurora Does Better Than Anything Else
This is the part most competitor content skips, and skipping it is why most competitor content is not believed.
Remote roof modelling. Aurora’s automated roof-plane detection from LIDAR and imagery is the strongest in the category. Give it a complicated residential roof, dormers, multiple ridges, varied pitches, and it returns a usable 3D model quickly. Competing tools can do this. They do not do it as reliably on messy geometry, and the difference shows up as designer minutes.
Irradiance and shading visualisation. Aurora renders shading in a way a homeowner immediately understands. Not just a loss figure, but a picture of the roof with the shaded areas visible. For a sales conversation about why the north-west plane is not getting modules, that visual settles the argument faster than any table.
Sales-grade proposals. The interactive proposal with financing comparison is polished. Reps like it, homeowners engage with it, and the financing comparison is built for the way US residential solar is actually paid for. Plenty of tools produce a proposal. Aurora produces one that closes.
Speed from address to something showable. For a high-volume residential operation, the elapsed time from lead to credible visual is the metric that matters, and Aurora is fast on it.
None of that is marketing. It is why large US residential sales organisations standardised on Aurora, and it is a real reason to buy.
Where Aurora Falls Short
Three honest limitations.
Cost per seat is the highest in the category. Aurora is not overpriced for what it does. It is priced above what many of the people holding seats actually need. That distinction is the whole argument, and the next section takes it apart.
It is optimised for one motion. The US residential sales appointment is the job Aurora is shaped around. If your work is commercial rooftop, ground mount, international markets, or engineering-led design where a stamped drawing set is the deliverable, you are paying for depth in a job you are not doing. You will also spend time working around defaults that assume a residential context.
It is not the bankability tool. Aurora is a design and proposal platform. For yield studies a lender or independent engineer will review, PVsyst remains the reference. That is not a criticism of Aurora so much as a scope fact, but it has a budget consequence: a financed project means a second tool regardless of what you pay Aurora.
Put those together and a commercial EPC ends up paying category-top pricing for residential sales depth, then paying again for the simulation tool that actually signs off the yield.
Aurora vs SurgePV
| Dimension | Aurora Solar | SurgePV |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Cloud, browser based | Browser based |
| Remote roof modelling | LIDAR plus imagery, best in category on complex roofs | Model-driven design in browser |
| Hourly simulation | Design and proposal oriented | 8,760-hour with module-level shading, mismatch, string topology |
| Drawings | Design plus proposal focus | Single-line diagrams and DWG export from the same model |
| Customer proposal | Interactive, financing comparison, sales polished | White-label proposal layer included |
| Tiering | Some capability behind higher tiers | One licence spanning design, shading, and proposal |
| Published price per user per year | Roughly $1,908 to $3,108 | $1,299 to $1,899 |
| Best fit | High-volume US residential sales | Installers and EPCs who need design, shading, and drawings together |
The honest read of that table: Aurora wins the remote-modelling row outright, and it is a row that matters if complex residential roofs at volume are your business. SurgePV wins on the combination, one licence that carries an hourly model, the drawings, and the proposal, at a lower seat cost.
For a wider field, see Aurora Solar alternatives, or the head-to-heads on Aurora vs HelioScope and Aurora vs OpenSolar.
The Seat-Cost Problem at Scale
Here is where the spreadsheet turns.
A 12-person solar company does not have 12 people building designs. It has 2 or 3 designers, 6 or 7 reps, a permit coordinator, and an owner. The designers use the modelling engine every day. The reps open a finished proposal, present it, and send it. The coordinator wants a drawing. The owner wants a number.
Priced per user at the top of the category, the seats occupied by people who only consume output cost the same as the seats doing the work. At roughly $2,500 a seat, 7 rep seats is $17,500 a year for a job that is, functionally, reading a document.
That is not Aurora behaving badly. Every per-seat platform has this shape. It just costs more here because the seat costs more here. And it is why the same company on a $1,299 to $1,899 seat is not saving 30 percent, it is saving that gap multiplied by every seat that never touches a roof plane.
What Most Buyers Get Wrong About Aurora
They count seats by headcount instead of by who builds designs.
The mechanism is simple and it happens in almost every procurement conversation. The owner asks how many people need access. Someone answers with the size of the team. The quote comes back sized to headcount, the discount is negotiated on that number, and the contract locks it in for a year.
Nobody asks the useful question, which is how many people will open the modelling canvas in a given week. Run the audit and the answer is usually a third of the licensed seats. The rest need a proposal link and a PDF.
Two consequences follow. Renewal is negotiated from an inflated base, because last year’s seat count becomes this year’s starting point. And the per-project software cost looks structurally high, which makes every alternative look like a cheap downgrade rather than a fair comparison.
The fix costs nothing. Before renewal, pull the last 90 days of activity by user. Split the list into people who created or edited designs and people who only viewed or shared. Price the two groups separately. That single exercise changes more solar software budgets than any feature comparison.
Try the software behind this review
Hourly modelling, drawings, and proposals on one licence
SurgePV runs 8,760-hour simulation with module-level shading, exports the single-line diagram and DWG from the same model, and ships a white-label proposal. $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year.
Book a free SurgePV demo →No credit card. 20-minute walkthrough on one of your own projects.
Who Should Buy Which
Buy Aurora if your business is US residential at high lead volume, complex roofs are routine, and the proposal is the closing artifact. If a designer saves 15 minutes per roof because the automated modelling handles geometry other tools fumble, the seat price pays for itself at volume. Be honest about whether you have that volume.
Buy SurgePV if you need the hourly model, the drawings, and the proposal to come from one place. That covers most installers doing a mix of residential and commercial, and most EPCs whose deliverable is a drawing set rather than a sales document. The single licence spanning design, shading, and proposal is the point, and the seat cost is roughly half to two-thirds of Aurora’s.
Buy PVsyst alongside either if a lender or independent engineer reviews your yield. Neither platform replaces it for that specific audience.
Buy neither yet if you are doing fewer than a handful of systems a month. At that volume the constraint is lead flow, not design throughput.
Verdict
Aurora Solar is a genuinely excellent product that a large number of companies are overbuying.
That is the opinionated version and I will stand behind it. If you run a US residential sales organisation at volume, Aurora is often worth the money, and the remote modelling alone can justify it. If you are an installer or EPC doing mixed work, the honest position is that you are paying category-top pricing for depth in a sales motion that is not your main job, and still buying a simulation tool for anything financed.
For that majority, SurgePV is the better buy. One licence spanning design, shading, and proposal, 8,760-hour simulation with module-level shading and string topology, single-line diagrams and DWG export from the same model, at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year. See it on your own project at surgepv.com/demo.
Where the constraint is drafting capacity rather than software, our solar rooftop detailed engineering design team produces the full construction pack on whichever platform you already run. Get the sample design pack or talk to our team.
Conclusion
- Aurora earns its reputation on remote modelling and proposals. If those two jobs are your bottleneck, it is a fair buy at its price.
- Audit seats by who builds designs, not by headcount. This one exercise usually finds a third of the licence spend.
- A financed project needs PVsyst regardless. Budget for the second tool before you compare platforms on price.
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Disclosure and accuracy note
Commercial relationship. Heaven Designs and SurgePV are part of the same group. Treat our recommendation of SurgePV as a vendor making its own case, not an independent verdict. We have tried to describe every other product fairly, and to say plainly where a competitor is the better choice.
Pricing. All prices are indicative, compiled from public sources when this page was written. They vary by tier, region, contract term and exchange rate, and change without notice. Several vendors quote rather than publish, and some price in currencies other than the US dollar, so a converted figure moves with the exchange rate. Confirm current pricing with the vendor before you decide anything.
Trademarks and corrections. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners, and are used here for identification and comparison only. Their use does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by those companies. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
FAQ
Is Aurora Solar worth the price? For a US residential sales organisation running high lead volume on complex roofs, often yes. The automated LIDAR modelling and the proposal quality are real advantages that compound at volume. For mixed installers and EPCs, the seat cost is hard to justify against platforms that cover the same daily jobs for less.
What is Aurora Solar best at? Remote roof modelling from LIDAR and imagery, irradiance and shading visualisation, and interactive sales proposals with financing comparison. Those three are the strongest reasons to buy it and it leads the category on the first one.
How much does Aurora Solar cost? Pricing is tiered and runs roughly $1,908 to $3,108 per user per year depending on tier. Some capability sits behind the higher tiers, so check which plan includes the specific feature you are buying for.
Can Aurora replace PVsyst? No. Aurora is design and proposal oriented. For bankable yield studies that a lender or independent engineer reviews, PVsyst remains the reference tool. Teams doing financed projects run both.
What is the best Aurora Solar alternative? For installers and EPCs who need design, shading, and proposals in one licence, SurgePV at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year. It runs 8,760-hour simulation with module-level shading, mismatch, and string topology, produces single-line diagrams and DWG export from the same model, and includes a white-label proposal layer. The wider field is ranked in our Aurora Solar alternatives guide.
Is Aurora good for commercial solar? It can be used for commercial work, but the product is shaped around the US residential sales motion. Commercial and engineering-led teams tend to pay for depth aimed at a different job, and still need a separate simulation tool for anything financed.
Related: the ranked field is in Aurora Solar alternatives, the head-to-heads are Aurora vs HelioScope and Aurora vs OpenSolar, and the whole-category cost picture is in solar design software pricing.
