Most Solargraf reviews are written either by people selling against it or by people who have never watched a rep use it at a kitchen table. This one comes from a design bench that produces plan sets on other people’s Solargraf models. Solargraf is quick, it is priced below the premium sales platforms, and for the job it targets it works. It also has a shape, and knowing that shape is the difference between a good purchase and an expensive detour.
Direct answer. Solargraf is a cloud solar design and proposal platform owned by Enphase, aimed at residential sales. It is fast, easy for reps, and cheaper than the premium sales tools. It is sales-first, so engineering depth is shallower than tools built for design, and it is not a bankable simulation tool. For teams doing commercial work or needing drawings, SurgePV covers design, shading, and proposals on one licence.
TL;DR
- Solargraf is genuinely fast for residential quoting. A rep can go from address to a signable proposal quickly, and that is the product working as designed.
- Pricing is subscription and tiered, generally below the premium sales platforms. Cost is rarely the reason teams leave it.
- It is sales-first. Engineering depth is shallower than tools built around design, and it is not the reference for bankable yield studies.
- Enphase owns it. That is a neutral fact worth knowing when you think about product direction over a multi-year contract.
- SurgePV runs 8,760-hour simulation with module-level shading, single-line diagrams with DWG export, and a white-label proposal on one licence at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year.
What Solargraf Is and Who It Is For
Solargraf is a cloud-based solar design and proposal platform. A user enters an address, lays out a system on the roof, and produces a customer-facing proposal with savings and financing. E-signature is built in, and permit-package support exists in some markets. The company is owned by Enphase.
The target user is a residential sales rep. Everything about the product reflects that: the number of clicks to a quote, the way the proposal reads on a phone, the emphasis on getting to a signature inside one visit.
Who it fits: a residential sales organisation with reps closing in the home or on a video call, where the deliverable is a proposal and the constraint is time per lead.
Who it fits less well: a commercial or industrial EPC, an engineering-led consultancy, or any business where the deliverable is a drawing set that an engineer will sign.
Pricing and What You Are Actually Buying
Solargraf sells on subscription with tiers. Published pricing sits generally below the premium sales platforms in the category. For a small residential team, it is one of the cheaper credible ways to get proposals out the door.
Two notes on how to read that.
First, a low seat price is only a low total cost if one tool does the whole job. If the team ends up running a second tool for anything the first one cannot carry, the comparison is the combined number, not the sticker.
Second, tiering matters. Confirm which plan carries the specific capability you are buying for, in the contract rather than the marketing page. That advice applies to every platform here, Solargraf included.
For the whole-category picture, see our solar design software pricing breakdown.
What Solargraf Does Well
This is the part competitor content usually skips, and skipping it is why competitor content is not believed.
Speed. Solargraf is fast. Address to a presentable proposal takes very little time relative to heavier design tools. For a sales team where the metric is quotes per rep per week, that speed is the product.
Ease of use for non-engineers. A rep with no design background can be productive quickly. The learning curve is short, which matters when you hire seasonally and cannot afford two weeks of training per head.
Proposal and close workflow. The proposal, the financing presentation, and e-signature sit together. The rep does not leave the tool to close, and the homeowner does not receive a PDF that needs printing and scanning.
Field suitability. It works well for people who are not sitting at a desk. That sounds minor until you have watched a rep try to run a heavy modelling tool on a laptop in a driveway.
Permit-package support in some markets. Useful where it is available, and it removes a handoff for straightforward residential jobs.
None of that is charity. It is why residential teams pick Solargraf and stay on it, and it is a real reason to buy.
Where Solargraf Falls Short
Three honest limits, all of them the flip side of the strengths above.
It is sales-first, so engineering depth is shallower. A tool optimised for a fast residential quote is not optimised for interrogating a design. If your questions are about string topology, mismatch, or how a specific array behaves hour by hour across a year, you are asking a sales tool to do an engineering job.
It is not a bankable simulation tool. For yield studies a lender or independent engineer will review, PVsyst remains the reference. That is a scope fact rather than a fault, but it has a budget consequence. A financed project means a second tool regardless of what you pay Solargraf.
The drawing deliverable is not its centre of gravity. If your output is a construction or permit set that an engineer signs, expect that work to happen elsewhere or with support. Our permit design software versus service comparison covers that choice properly.
Worth stating neutrally: Enphase owns the product. That is not an accusation about bias or restriction, and I will not make one. It is simply relevant context when you are forecasting where a product invests over the life of a multi-year contract, and you should ask the vendor directly rather than guess.
Solargraf vs SurgePV
| Dimension | Solargraf | SurgePV |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Cloud, browser based | Browser based |
| Primary job | Residential sales quoting and close | Design, shading, and proposal together |
| Speed to a proposal | Very fast, a core strength | Design-led, proposal from the same model |
| Hourly simulation | Sales-oriented, not a bankable simulation tool | 8,760-hour with module-level shading, mismatch, string topology |
| Drawings | Not the product centre of gravity | Single-line diagrams and DWG export from the same model |
| Customer proposal | Proposal, financing, e-signature built in | White-label proposal layer included |
| Ownership | Owned by Enphase | Independent |
| Published price per user per year | Subscription, tiered, generally below premium sales platforms | $1,299 to $1,899 |
| Best fit | Residential sales teams | Installers and EPCs needing design, shading, and drawings together |
The honest read: Solargraf wins the speed row, and speed is the row that decides a residential sales purchase. SurgePV wins the combination row, one licence carrying an hourly module-level model, the drawings, and the proposal. Those are different products for different companies, not a better and a worse one.
For a ranked field, see Solargraf alternatives.
The Residential Ceiling and the Transition Point
Every residential-shaped tool has a ceiling. Solargraf’s is not a defect. It is the boundary of the job it was built for.
The transition point is recognisable. It usually arrives as a single inquiry: a warehouse roof, a carport, a small ground mount, something with mixed orientations and a client who wants a yield figure they can take to a bank. The rep opens the tool that has served them well for two years and it does not stretch.
What happens next is the expensive part. Most teams do not switch. They add. The sales tool stays for residential, a second tool arrives for the commercial job, and now two subscriptions cover overlapping ground. The model gets rebuilt in the second tool because it cannot move across, so the design work is done twice.
The signal to act is not the first commercial inquiry. It is the third, when the pattern is clear and the double-entry has become routine.
What Most Buyers Get Wrong About Solargraf
They evaluate it on the demo project instead of the awkward project.
Here is the mechanism, and it is remarkably consistent. Procurement runs a trial. Someone picks a clean gable roof on a familiar street because it is quick to set up and shows the tool at its best. Every candidate platform handles it. The trial therefore measures the thing that does not differentiate, which is speed on easy work, and misses the thing that does, which is behaviour on hard work.
Two consequences follow. The team buys on click count and proposal polish, which Solargraf wins fairly. Then, six months later, the awkward project arrives and the tool’s real boundary is discovered in front of a customer rather than in a trial.
The fix is free. Pull the three ugliest jobs from your last twelve months. The heavily shaded one, the one with four roof orientations, the one where the customer asked a question about yield you could not confidently answer. Run those three through every platform on your shortlist. If a tool is comfortable on all three, buy it. If your ugly jobs are all clean residential roofs, Solargraf is very likely the right answer and you can stop shopping.
Try the software behind this review
When the residential tool stops stretching, one licence covers the rest
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 Solargraf if you are a residential sales operation and intend to stay one. Your reps need speed, a proposal that closes, and a tool they can learn in an afternoon. Solargraf does that job at a price below the premium sales platforms. Do not switch out of anxiety about capability you are not going to use.
Buy SurgePV if you need the hourly model, the drawings, and the proposal to come from one place. That is most installers running a mix of residential and commercial, and most EPCs whose deliverable is a drawing set. One licence spans design, shading, and proposal at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year.
Buy PVsyst alongside either if a lender or independent engineer reviews your yield numbers. Neither platform replaces it for that audience.
Buy nothing new yet if you are doing a handful of systems a month. At that volume the constraint is lead flow, not software.
Verdict
Solargraf is a good tool that a lot of companies outgrow without noticing, and a lot of others should never leave.
That is the opinionated version and I will stand behind both halves. If you sell residential and only residential, Solargraf is a sensible, affordable choice and the speed is real. The moment your book includes commercial work, or a client asks for a yield study someone else will review, you have crossed into a job the tool was not built for. Adding a second subscription is the default response and it is usually the wrong one, because you then pay twice and model twice.
For that second group, SurgePV is the better buy. One licence spanning design, shading, and proposal, 8,760-hour simulation with module-level shading, mismatch, and string topology, single-line diagrams and DWG export from the same model. See it on your own project at surgepv.com/demo.
Where the constraint is drafting capacity rather than software, our solar permit design and solar rooftop detailed engineering design teams produce the full pack on whichever platform you already run. Get the sample design pack or talk to our team.
Conclusion
- Solargraf is fast and easy, and that is a real advantage. For a residential sales team, it does the job it was built for.
- Test on your three ugliest projects, not a clean roof. Trials that only measure easy work measure nothing that differentiates.
- A financed project needs PVsyst regardless. Budget the second tool before you compare platforms on sticker 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 Solargraf good software? Yes, for residential sales. It is fast, reps learn it quickly, and the proposal and e-signature flow supports the close. It is sales-first, so engineering depth is shallower than tools built around design, and it is not the reference for bankable yield studies.
How much does Solargraf cost? Pricing is subscription and tiered, generally lower than the premium sales platforms in the category. Confirm which tier carries the specific capability you need before signing, since tiering varies across the market.
Is Solargraf owned by Enphase? Yes. Enphase owns Solargraf. That is worth knowing as context when you assess product direction across a multi-year contract. Ask the vendor directly about roadmap rather than inferring it.
Can Solargraf replace PVsyst? No. Solargraf is a sales-first design and proposal platform. For bankable yield studies that a lender or independent engineer reviews, PVsyst remains the reference tool. Teams doing financed projects run both.
Is Solargraf good for commercial solar? It is aimed primarily at residential. Teams with a meaningful commercial book generally need something with more engineering depth alongside it, which means two subscriptions and duplicated modelling work.
What is the best Solargraf 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 Solargraf alternatives guide.
Related: the ranked field is in Solargraf alternatives, the cost picture across the category is in solar design software pricing, and the build-versus-outsource question is in solar permit design software vs service.
