Free alternative to Ekahau, Hamina & NetSpot

See WiFi dead zones before you drill the holes.

A free, browser-based predictive WiFi heatmap tool. Draw your walls by material, drop access points from any vendor, and the COST-231 multi-wall path-loss model renders predicted signal across the floor — recomputed live as you move things. No walk-around survey, no download, no signup.

Plan my WiFi — free How the model works
Ground floor
Coverage ≥ −67 dBm
—
Weakest point
—
Solve time
—
drywall 4 dB glass 3 dB brick 11 dB concrete 20 dB −67 dBm usable edge

Not a screenshot — this is the real solver running in your browser. Drag an access point.

1,100+
people have used the editor
300+
heatmaps exported
±6–10 dB
typical model accuracy

Everything runs client-side. Your floor plan is never uploaded to our server.

How it works

Floor plan to heatmap in under five minutes

No survey kit, no site visit, no install. Three steps, all of them in the browser tab you already have open.

  1. 5 m PNG

    Step 01

    Upload or sketch the plan

    Drop in a PNG or JPG — an estate-agent floor plan, a screenshot, a phone photo of a drawing. Set the scale once by telling it how many pixels make a metre. No plan handy? Draw the outline yourself.

  2. Step 02

    Trace the walls, drop the APs

    Click-drag each wall and pick its material — drywall, glass, brick or concrete. Then place access points from a preset library of real models, or type in Tx power and antenna gain for anything not listed.

  3. Step 03

    Read the coverage, then move things

    Predicted dBm renders as you go, with a −67 dBm usable-coverage contour and a live percentage. Hover any point for its exact value. Find the placement that kills the dead zone — then drill.

The model

It is a physics model, not a pretty gradient

Coverage is computed with the COST-231 multi-wall path-loss model — free-space loss plus the measured attenuation of every wall the signal crosses on its way to each point. It is the same approach commercial planners use at their entry tier.

path loss, in dB

PL = 20·log10(d) + 20·log10(f) − 27.55 + Σ ni·Li

d
distance, metres
f
frequency, MHz
ni
walls of type i crossed
Li
loss per wall, dB

Received strength is then Tx power + antenna gain − PL, capped at −25 dBm because no real radio reports better. Every point on the map is the strongest signal it can hear from any access point — the same roaming decision a client makes.

Worked example

UniFi U6 Pro at 20 dBm, 5 GHz · 8 m away · through one brick wall and one drywall partition

Free-space loss
65.3 dB

20·log₁₀(8) + 20·log₁₀(5500) − 27.55

Wall loss
11.0 dB

brick 8 dB + drywall 3 dB

Transmit power + antenna gain
23.0 dBm

20 dBm + 3 dBi

Predicted signal
−53 dBm Excellent

Wall attenuation

Typical values, ITU-R P.2040

2.4 GHz 5 GHz
Drywall
3 4 dB
Wood
4 6 dB
Glass
2 3 dB
Coated / low-E glass
20 25 dB
Brick
8 11 dB
Concrete
15 20 dB
Metal
25 30 dB

Floor / ceiling attenuation

Multi-floor plans, ITU-R P.1238

Wood joist
5 7 dB
Concrete
18 23 dB
Reinforced concrete
25 32 dB
Steel deck
32 38 dB

Every material is tabulated per band — the same wall costs you more at 5 GHz than at 2.4, and more again at 6. Tools that carry one number per material get tri-band plans wrong.

±6–10 dB typical error

What it does not model: furniture, people, multipath and reflections, metal shelving and appliances, or the exact radiation pattern of your antenna. Predictions are for deciding where things go; validate with a phone-based walk-around once the APs are up. Anyone claiming better than this from a floor plan alone is selling you something.

Read the full accuracy notes

The landscape

Every free planner has a catch. Ours is five access points.

The paid tools are excellent, and cost more than the hardware you are planning. The free ones are capped, locked to one vendor, or drop the predictive heatmap — the part you actually came for. Hamina's free tier is the closest thing to a real rival — genuinely browser-based and genuinely good — and it stops at three access points behind a sign-up.

Predictive WiFi planning tools compared by price, whether they predict coverage without a survey, whether they support access points from any vendor, and whether they run in a browser.
Tool Price Predictive Any vendor Browser The catch
Ekahau AI Pro Industry standard $5,995+ licence, sales-led Enterprise pricing; the browser edition is a separate licence
iBwave Design Telecom-grade from $513 per month, Wi-Fi plan Enterprise pricing and survey workflow
Hamina Wireless Modern Ekahau alternative Free / $590+ paid tier, per 6 months Free tier caps at 3 APs and needs an account
Acrylic Wi-Fi Heatmaps Windows survey suite from €129 per month Windows-only; monthly or perpetual, per seat
UniFi Design Center Ubiquiti's free planner Free Locked to Ubiquiti hardware
Deconflict Free open-source planner Free Reports relative signal bands, not dBm
Ekahau HeatMapper The legacy free option Free Windows-only, survey-based, last built 2017
NetSpot Free Free tier of a paid tool Free No prediction in the free tier
TamoGraph trial Time-limited demo Free 30-day trial Watermarked, 30 days, cannot save projects
WiFi Heatmap You are here No account, no card, no time limit Free €29/yr — or €39 once Five APs on the free tier

Competitor pricing and capabilities checked 30 August 2026. To be clear about where we stop: for enterprise WLAN with hundreds of APs across large multi-storey buildings, Ekahau or Hamina remain the right answer — they have survey hardware integration, AP-on-a-stick workflows and reporting we do not. WiFi Heatmap covers homes, home labs, and small 1–3 floor offices, with 2.5D cross-floor signal in Pro.

Hardware

Works with any vendor's access points

41 access points from 11 vendors, each with the transmit power and antenna gain read off the manufacturer's own datasheet — per radio, so a tri-band AP carries different figures on 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz. Anything not on the list, type the numbers in yourself. Mix vendors freely — unlike UniFi Design Center or Cambium's planner there is nothing here to lock you in.

Open the preset library

Figures shown are each model's 5 GHz radio, taken from the vendor datasheet linked in our catalogue and last checked 2026-08-30. Every value is editable per access point.

Pricing

Free for most homes. Cheap for the rest.

No account, no card, no trial clock on the free tier. Pay only when you outgrow five access points or need the watermark gone from a plan you are handing to a client.

Free

Try the whole editor.

€0 forever

  • Up to 5 access points per plan
  • One floor
  • Live predictive heatmap (COST-231)
  • PNG export (watermarked)
  • No signup, no card
Open the editor

Project Pass

One space, one weekend.

€9 once · 7 days

  • Everything unlocked for 7 days
  • Unlimited access points
  • Multi-floor with 2.5D cross-floor signal
  • Watermark-free export
See the pass
Best value

Perpetual

Own it. Never renews.

€39 once

  • Everything in Project Pass, permanently
  • Unlimited access points and floors
  • Watermark-free, client-ready export
  • No subscription, no expiry
Buy once

Annual

Lowest price up front.

€29 per year

  • Everything in Perpetual, plus:
  • Every feature shipped during your year
  • Cancel in one click, anytime
See the plan

Perpetual costs €10 more than one year of Annual and is cheaper from year two onward — it just never renews. Full comparison and bulk licensing →

Also — mesh mode

Not just WiFi. Your smart-home mesh too.

The same floor plan and the same physics predict Zigbee, Thread (Matter) and Z-Wave coverage — so you can see where a sensor will drop before you buy another repeater.

Zigbee

Coordinator and router placement for Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, Hue and Aqara — plus WiFi channel coexistence.

Plan Zigbee

Thread & Matter

Border-router placement for Apple TV, HomePod mini and Nest Hub. See why that Matter sensor keeps going unresponsive.

Plan Thread

Z-Wave

Sub-GHz physics at 868/908 MHz, the 4-hop rule, and which mains devices actually repeat the signal.

Plan Z-Wave

Don't drill 'til you've drawn.

Five minutes in a browser tab beats an afternoon of moving an access point around and re-testing on your phone.

Open the editor — free See pricing

no signup · no download · nothing uploaded

FAQ

Questions people actually ask

Taken from the searches and assistant queries that bring people here. If yours is not answered, the editor is one click away and costs nothing to try.

Open the editor
What's the best free Ekahau alternative?

WiFi Heatmap is the closest free alternative to Ekahau for typical homes, home labs, and small offices. It uses the COST-231 multi-wall path-loss model (the same approach Ekahau's entry tier uses) and runs entirely in your browser. The free tier supports 5 access points across 1 floor and exports a watermarked PNG; the paid tiers remove both caps and unlocks unlimited floors with 2.5D cross-floor signal (concrete/wood ceiling attenuation factored in). The remaining gap vs Ekahau is enterprise-scale survey workflows for hundreds of APs.

Is there a free alternative to NetSpot or TamoGraph?

Yes — WiFi Heatmap is fully free for up to 5 APs, with no time limit and no signup. NetSpot Free strips out the predictive heatmap (you only get walk-around survey mode) and TamoGraph's free trial is watermarked and time-limited. WiFi Heatmap keeps the predictive heatmap in the free tier and never expires.

Can I plan WiFi coverage without doing a walk-around survey?

Yes — that's exactly what predictive WiFi tools are for. Upload a floorplan PNG, draw the walls per material (drywall, brick, glass, concrete), drop your APs, and we predict the dBm at every point using the COST-231 multi-wall model. You should still validate with a phone-based survey after install because furniture, multipath, and floor/ceiling reflections aren't modeled, but the predictive heatmap gets the placement decision right.

Does this work with UniFi, TP-Link Omada, Aruba, or MikroTik APs?

Yes — WiFi Heatmap is vendor-neutral. 41 models are built in across 11 vendors: Ubiquiti UniFi, TP-Link Omada, Aruba, Cisco Meraki and Catalyst, Ruckus, Zyxel, EnGenius, Cambium, MikroTik and Netgear business APs. Each carries the transmit power and antenna gain from the manufacturer's datasheet, per radio. Anything not listed, enter Tx power and antenna gain by hand. Unlike UniFi Design Center (Ubiquiti-only) or Cambium WiFi Designer (Cambium-only), there's no vendor lock-in — mix vendors freely.

How accurate are the predictions?

We use the COST-231 multi-wall model — the same approach as commercial tools at the entry tier. Expect ±6–10 dB for typical homes and small offices. Big metal / concrete structures, 3D ceiling effects, multipath, and furniture aren't modeled. Treat predictions as guidance for placement decisions, and validate with a walking survey on a phone after install.

Is my floorplan data private?

Yes. Floorplans, walls, and AP placements live entirely in your browser (localStorage). Nothing uploads to our server. We log only anonymous usage counters for product analytics — IP, operation type, AP count.

Will it work for my home lab?

Yes — that's the primary use case. Plan UniFi, Aruba Instant On, TP-Link Omada, MikroTik or any vendor's APs before installation. Works on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Multi-floor planning (with concrete or wood ceiling attenuation) is included in Pro for 2-storey homes and small offices. WiFi 6E / 7 (6 GHz) coming soon.

Is it actually free?

The core tool is free, no signup, no card. The free tier supports up to 5 access points per floorplan and exports a watermarked PNG. Pro lifts the cap and removes the watermark: €9 for a 7-day project pass, €29/year to subscribe, or €39 once for a perpetual licence that never renews.

Why not just use Ekahau or Hamina?

For enterprise WLAN with hundreds of APs across large multi-storey buildings, Ekahau or Hamina are still the right answer — Hamina in particular is browser-based and excellent, and its paid plans start around $590 per 6-month term. WiFi Heatmap covers homes, home labs, and small 1–3 floor offices — with 2.5D cross-floor signal in Pro — at a fraction of the price tag and zero of the survey-workflow overhead.