A US solar proposal has a harder job than a proposal in any other market. It has to model a 30% federal tax credit the homeowner may or may not be able to use, a utility rate schedule that might be a time-of-use tariff with a 4pm to 9pm peak, a net metering regime that changed recently and differs by state, and three or four financing paths with different monthly payments. Get any of those wrong and you have not just lost the deal, you have created a compliance problem.
Most proposal tools are evaluated on how the PDF looks. That is the wrong test. Here is the right one.
Direct answer. The best solar proposal software in the USA depends on the sale you are running. Aurora Solar leads for high-volume residential teams that need LIDAR-accurate roofs and deep financing integration. SurgePV is the strongest choice when the same license also has to produce the design and the permit set, at $1,299 to $1,899 per seat per year. OpenSolar is the best zero-license option, and Solo is the pick for teams that want proposal generation decoupled from design.
TL;DR
- The US differentiator is financial modelling accuracy, not visual polish. Utility rate libraries and ITC treatment are where proposals go wrong.
- NEM 3.0 in California broke every proposal template built on retail-rate export credit. Check how any tool handles export compensation before you buy.
- Interactive web proposals beat PDF on close rate. If your tool only emits PDF, you are competing with one hand tied.
- Buying a proposal tool separately from a design tool means paying twice to model the same roof. Consolidation is worth real money above roughly 30 proposals a month.
- Never let a proposal tool state a tax credit as a guaranteed saving. That is a tax position, not a product feature, and it carries liability.
What the United States Actually Changes About Proposal Software
The Investment Tax Credit is a modelling trap. The federal residential clean energy credit covers 30% of the system cost, but it is a non-refundable credit against tax liability. A retired homeowner with low taxable income may not capture the full amount in year one. A proposal that shows the full 30% as an immediate saving is, at best, incomplete. The better tools model carryforward. The weaker ones subtract 30% and move on.
Utility rate structures decide the savings number. The savings figure on a US proposal is almost entirely a function of the rate schedule. A flat 14 cent per kWh schedule and a time-of-use schedule with a 45 cent peak produce completely different economics for the same array. Any tool worth buying maintains a live utility rate database and lets you select the specific schedule, not an average.
Net metering is no longer one thing. California’s NEM 3.0 moved residential export compensation to an avoided-cost basis, which cut export value substantially and made battery attachment central to the economics. Other states have their own regimes and their own trajectories. A proposal tool with a stale export-credit assumption produces confidently wrong numbers.
Financing is the product. Cash, loan, lease, and power purchase agreement all produce different monthly numbers and different customer decisions. The tools that win in US residential are the ones wired into the actual lender and third-party-ownership platforms, so the payment shown is the payment the customer gets.
The US installed 50 GW of solar in 2024, according to SEIA and Wood Mackenzie (2025), and residential is the segment where proposal quality most directly moves revenue.
The 7 Platforms Ranked for the US Market
| Platform | Best for | Utility rate database | Financing integration | Interactive web proposal | Price per seat per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora Solar | High-volume residential | Deep | Extensive | Yes | $1,908 to $3,108 |
| SurgePV | Teams wanting design plus proposal in one | Yes | Yes | Yes, white-label | $1,299 to $1,899 |
| OpenSolar | Zero license cost | Yes | Yes | Yes | $0 plus transaction fees |
| Solo | Proposal-only, design-agnostic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Quote-based |
| Enerflo | Process orchestration across tools | Via integrations | Extensive | Via integrations | Quote-based |
| Sighten | Financing-led sales | Yes | Extensive | Yes | Quote-based |
| Pylon | Lower-cost residential | Yes | Growing | Yes | ~$1,000 |
Aurora Solar
The most complete US residential proposal product available, and it should be, at the price. LIDAR-derived roof geometry, a strong utility rate engine, and the broadest set of lender and third-party-ownership integrations. If your business is high-volume residential sales and the proposal is the product, it is defensible.
The argument against is cost stacking. The list price is per user per month and the capability you actually want frequently sits in a higher tier or an add-on. Our Aurora Solar pricing breakdown works through the real all-in number, and Aurora Solar alternatives covers the substitutes.
SurgePV
The consolidation play. One license produces the 3D roof model, the shading study, the single-line diagram, the AutoCAD DWG for permitting, and a white-label interactive proposal the customer can sign. For an installer whose sales and operations teams currently model the same roof twice in two different tools, that duplication is the cost being removed.
Where it does not win: if your entire business is residential lead conversion and you never touch a permit set, you are paying for design depth you will not use.
OpenSolar
Genuinely free at the seat. The proposal builder is good, the customer-facing experience is credible, and the utility rate handling is solid. It is funded by hardware and financing transaction economics, which means the cost is real but variable. Above roughly 200 systems a year the transaction take typically exceeds what a flat license would have cost. The math is in OpenSolar pricing.
Solo
Proposal generation as a service, deliberately decoupled from whatever design tool you already run. Useful for teams that like their design stack and want a better customer-facing document without switching everything. Turnaround-based rather than seat-based in practice.
Enerflo
Not really a proposal tool. An orchestration layer that sits across proposal, design, financing, and installation workflow. The right answer for a larger installer with an existing tool set and a process problem rather than a document problem.
Sighten
Financing-first. Strongest where the sale is fundamentally a financial product sale and the array is the mechanism. Worth evaluating if your close rate is limited by financing options rather than by the design.
Pylon
The value option in US residential, with a growing feature set and a materially lower price point than Aurora. Less depth on rate structures and integrations, which matters more in complex-tariff states than in flat-rate ones.
Try the software behind this guide
Send a branded proposal, then permit the same design
SurgePV turns a street address into a 3D layout, a P50 and P90 yield number, an interactive white-label proposal, and an NEC single-line diagram. One license, no double modelling.
Book a free SurgePV demo →No credit card. 20-minute walkthrough on one of your own projects.
What a US Proposal Has to Contain
A proposal that survives a sophisticated homeowner, a competing bid, and a later dispute carries:
- System specification. Module make, model, count, and wattage. Inverter make, model, and topology. Total DC and AC capacity.
- Production estimate with the modelling basis stated, ideally P50 with the weather data source named.
- Shading analysis showing the losses that were modelled, not just a clean render.
- Rate schedule named explicitly, with the current and post-solar bill modelled against it.
- Export compensation basis stated. Under NEM 3.0 or an equivalent successor tariff, say so.
- Financing terms with the actual lender product, rate, term, and monthly payment.
- Incentive treatment that separates the federal credit from state and utility incentives, and states plainly that the tax credit depends on the customer’s tax liability.
- Assumptions and escalation covering utility rate escalation and degradation, both of which materially change a 25-year savings number.
Item 8 is where most proposals quietly overstate. A 4% annual utility escalation assumption compounds into a very different headline number than 2.5%, and both are defensible, which is exactly the problem. Ask any vendor what their default is.
Real Cost of the Proposal Stack
| Stack | Annual cost per seat | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| OpenSolar only | $0 plus transaction fees | Cost scales with volume |
| Pylon only | ~$1,000 | Thinner on complex tariffs |
| Aurora only | $1,908 to $3,108 | Add-ons push the real number higher |
| SurgePV, design plus proposal | $1,299 to $1,899 | Removes the second modelling pass |
| Aurora plus a separate design tool | $3,900 to $5,100 | Two tools, same roof modelled twice |
The consolidation argument is not ideological. If your sales team models a roof in a proposal tool and your operations team remodels it in a design tool, you are paying two licenses and one duplicated hour per project. At 40 projects a month that duplicated hour is close to a full-time equivalent.
What Most US Installers Get Wrong
They optimise the proposal document and ignore the proposal math.
Design polish converts, but a homeowner who compares three bids will notice that yours shows $58,000 of 25-year savings while a competitor shows $41,000 on the same roof. One of you has a 4% escalation assumption and the other has 2.5%. The customer cannot see that, and the installer whose number was honest loses the deal. The way out is to state the assumption on the proposal, visibly. Teams that do this report fewer late-stage renegotiations, because the customer had the real number from the start.
The second mistake is presenting the federal tax credit as a discount. It is not a discount, it is a credit against tax liability. Presenting it as a guaranteed saving is a liability exposure, and consumer protection scrutiny of solar sales practices has been increasing.
When Proposal Software Is Not the Constraint
If your close rate is fine and your problem is that signed deals stall for weeks waiting on a permit set, proposal software will not help. That is a design and engineering throughput problem.
That is the work our solar permit design service handles, delivering PE-stamped NEC-compliant plan sets in 4 to 7 business days across all 50 states, and our solar 3D pre-design service which turns a site into a sales-stage 3D and shading model in 48 hours. Several US installers run a lightweight proposal tool in front and route the engineering to a bench behind it, which keeps the software bill small and the throughput high. The sample deliverable pack shows what comes back.
Conclusion
- Test the math, not the template. Ask every vendor for their default utility escalation rate and how they model an ITC the customer cannot fully use in year one.
- Check the export compensation model. If a tool still assumes retail-rate net metering by default, it will produce wrong California numbers and eventually wrong numbers elsewhere.
- Count the modelling passes. If sales and operations each model the same roof, consolidating design and proposal into one license is worth more than the license price difference.
In this country series: solar software in the USA, best solar design software in the USA, shading analysis software in the USA, Pvsol review. Tool deep dives: Pvcase review, Pvsyst review.
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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
What is the best solar proposal software in the USA? Aurora Solar for high-volume residential sales teams, SurgePV when the same license also has to produce the design and permit set, and OpenSolar when license cost has to be zero. The right answer depends on whether you are buying a sales tool or a production tool.
How much does solar proposal software cost in the USA? From $0 with OpenSolar’s transaction-based model to roughly $3,100 per user per year for Aurora’s higher tiers. SurgePV sits at $1,299 to $1,899 and includes the design side. Full cross-platform math is in our solar design software pricing breakdown.
Does solar proposal software handle NEM 3.0? The major platforms updated for California’s successor tariff, but defaults vary and some smaller tools still assume retail-rate export credit. Ask the vendor to run a California address and show you the export compensation basis explicitly.
Should the proposal show the 30% tax credit as savings? Show it, but label it as a federal tax credit subject to the customer’s tax liability, not as a discount. It is a non-refundable credit, and a customer with insufficient liability will not capture it all in year one.
Can one tool do both solar design and proposals? Yes. SurgePV and, to a lesser extent, Aurora and OpenSolar cover both. The consolidation is worth real money once you are past roughly 30 projects a month, because it removes a duplicated roof-modelling pass.
Do interactive proposals actually close better than PDFs? In US residential, consistently yes. An interactive proposal lets the customer change the financing option and see the payment move, which handles the most common objection without a second sales call.
What about the design software decision separately? Covered in our companion ranking, best solar design software in the USA.
