Free Ekahau Alternatives in 2026 — What Actually Works

What "free" usually means

Most paid WiFi planners ship a free tier as a lead magnet for the $1k–$6k/year SKU above it. That's not a complaint — it's just how the market works. But it means you need to check three things before downloading anything:

• •Predictive vs. survey-only. Predictive means you draw walls and APs and the tool simulates coverage. Survey means you have to walk around the building with a laptop and a wireless adapter. They are completely different workflows.
• •Vendor lock. "Free" planners from Ubiquiti, Cambium, Aruba, etc. are great if your bill of materials is already locked. Useless if you're mixing.
• •Export limits. Time-limited trials and watermarked PNGs are common. A planner you can't share a report from isn't really free.

The 2026 lineup

Here's the honest scorecard. The column to watch is "Predictive" — it's what people actually mean when they say "Ekahau alternative".

Ekahau HeatMapper

The original "Ekahau, but free" tool. It's a Windows utility that lets you walk a floorplan and drop ping markers — survey-based, not predictive. It hasn't seen a meaningful release in years, and Ekahau's own product page now points at Sidekick instead. If your goal is "validate after install on a Windows laptop", it still works. If your goal is "plan before I drill", it's the wrong category.

When it fits: never, in 2026. Use a modern phone survey tool like WiFiman or the built-in survey in your AP controller.

NetSpot Free

NetSpot is a survey-first product that does predictive planning in its Pro and Enterprise SKUs. The free tier is survey-only and limited to two snapshots per zone. It's a perfectly reasonable phone/laptop survey tool, but the predictive heatmap — the thing people are searching for when they Google "free Ekahau alternative" — is not in the free tier.

When it fits: you already have APs installed and want to do a quick site survey on a MacBook before paying for a longer engagement.

TamoGraph Trial

TamoGraph is genuinely capable — it does predictive heatmaps, survey, and reports — and the 30-day trial is fully featured. After 30 days it stops working. Exports are also watermarked during the trial. As a free option this is honest: it's a real demo, not a crippled tier.

When it fits: you have one well-scoped project and you can finish it inside the trial window. After that, you're paying $999+.

UniFi Design Center

Ubiquiti's free predictive planner. Genuinely good, runs in the browser, lets you place any UniFi AP and see predicted coverage. It is also entirely locked to UniFi hardware — you cannot model an Aruba Instant On, a MikroTik cAP, or even a generic third-party radio. Wall material picker is also coarser than dedicated tools (basic concrete/drywall, no glass differentiation in the public version we tested).

When it fits: 100% UniFi BoM, no mixed vendors, no future migration risk. For a homelab where you've already standardised on UniFi, this is probably the right first stop.

Cambium WiFi Designer & Aruba Instant On Planner

Same story as UniFi Design Center, with the same trade-off. Cambium's tool is solid for cnPilot / XV-series. Aruba's Instant On planner is fine if you've committed to AP11 / AP22 / AP25. Both require account signup. Neither will let you model another vendor's AP.

When it fits: your BoM is already vendor-committed and you don't need cross-vendor what-if analysis.

Hamina Free

Hamina is the modern, browser-native challenger to Ekahau, and they offer a free tier. The free tier is one project, requires an account, and you get periodic emails from sales. Quality is excellent — better than ours for large multi-floor enterprise sites because Hamina models 3D propagation properly. It's also genuinely browser-based.

When it fits: you're scoping a one-off serious project, you don't mind a sales conversation, and you want enterprise-grade RF math.

WiFi Heatmap (us)

We built this because the existing free tier landscape has a hole in it: predictive, browser-based, cross-vendor, no signup, no sales call. That combination didn't exist. Under the hood we use the same COST-231 multi-wall path-loss model that Ekahau and Hamina use at their entry tier, with ITU-R P.2040 wall attenuation values for drywall, glass, brick, and concrete. Vendor presets for UniFi, TP-Link Omada, Aruba Instant On, MikroTik, ASUS, and FRITZ!Box ship out of the box, or you can enter Tx power / antenna gain manually.

Limits I want to be upfront about: 2.4 and 5 GHz only (6 GHz coming), omnidirectional antennas (no directional patterns yet), no channel-interference from neighbouring networks, and ±6–10 dB accuracy in typical homes. We don't model multipath, diffraction, or furniture. (Multi-floor IS supported in Pro — true 2.5D cross-floor signal with per-material ceiling loss.) For a 100 m² apartment with two APs this gets the placement decision right. For a 50,000 m² warehouse with metal shelving, it doesn't, and you should pay Ekahau or Hamina.

Free tier is 5 APs and a watermarked export — enough for a typical home or small office. A €9 project pass or €29 lifetime removes both. Nothing uploads to our server — floorplans and walls live in localStorage.

So which one should you actually use?

• →Pure UniFi shop: UniFi Design Center. You're not using anything else's antenna pattern anyway.
• →Mixed-vendor home lab, 1–5 APs: WiFi Heatmap. The whole point.
• →One-off serious project, willing to do a sales call: Hamina free tier.
• →Multi-floor enterprise WLAN, 50+ APs: pay for Ekahau or Hamina. The COST-231 free tools are not the right tool for that job.
• →Post-install validation only: a phone-based survey app (WiFiman, AirPort Utility on iOS). You don't need a planner.