Comparison
Both cost nothing to start, both run in a browser, and both predict coverage from a floor plan and the walls you draw. The difference is whose hardware you can plan: Cambium's designer models Cambium access points only. WiFi Heatmap (wifiheatmap.app) models 41 access points across 11 vendors, or any radio you type in, and never uploads the floor plan. Across the 16 rows below we take 8, Cambium takes 6, and 2 are even — and if you are buying Cambium, theirs is the one to use.
Every claim read from cambiumnetworks.com and from the designer itself (version 5.3.0), last verified 2026-09-24.
Cambium plans Cambium
It is a pre-sales tool: you place Cambium access points, it predicts the coverage, and it hands you a bill of materials to order from. For a Cambium job that is exactly right, and its Cambium catalogue is far fuller than ours, which has 2 models.
WiFi Heatmap plans anything
Presets carry each manufacturer's datasheet antenna gain and, wherever the vendor publishes one, its transmit power; anything not listed you type in. So you can put a UniFi, an Omada and a Cambium access point in the same room and see which one the building actually needs — before you have picked a vendor.
Most people asking an assistant for a free, web-based WiFi planner have not chosen their hardware yet. A single-vendor planner can only answer "how many of these?", never "which ones?". That is the whole case, and it does not depend on either tool's maths being better.
8 rows favour us, 6 favour Cambium, 2 are a genuine tie. The tally is counted from the table, not written by hand.
The row that decides it. Cambium’s designer is a Cambium sales tool, and a good one. It will not model anyone else’s hardware.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Cambium Wi-Fi Designer | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendors you can model If the bill of materials is not settled yet, a single-vendor planner answers a narrower question than the one you are asking. | 11 vendors, 41 models — Ubiquiti, TP-Link, Aruba, Ruckus, Cisco Meraki, Cisco, Zyxel, EnGenius, MikroTik, Cambium, Netgear | Cambium only | WiFi Heatmap |
| Hardware that is not in the catalogue | Enter transmit power and antenna gain by hand, for any radio | Pick from Cambium’s list; RF characteristics of those APs can be adjusted | WiFi Heatmap |
| Mixing vendors on one plan | Yes — any combination, per access point | No | WiFi Heatmap |
| Cambium’s own range If you are buying Cambium, their catalogue is far fuller than ours. Use theirs. | 2 Cambium models (XV2-2, XE3-4), power backed out of published EIRP | Cambium’s current range — 20 models in the picker, Wi-Fi 7 X7 series included — plus end-of-sale lines | Cambium |
| Mounting and outdoor antennas | Omnidirectional gain in dBi; no mount orientation | Ceiling or wall mount per AP, outdoor models including a 120° sector antenna | Cambium |
Both draw walls by material and compute coverage from them. They disagree about what a wall costs, and only one publishes 6 GHz figures.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Cambium Wi-Fi Designer | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wall materials Different vocabularies. They have furniture and doors; we have concrete, coated glass and metal, which are what usually kill a signal. | Drywall, wood, glass, coated / low-E glass, brick, concrete, metal | Bookshelf, cubicle, drywall, brick, window, door, elevator shaft | Even |
| Wall loss at 6 GHz Walls cost more at 6 GHz than at 5. A plan for Wi-Fi 6E or 7 needs the third column. | Tabulated for every material, separately from 2.4 and 5 GHz | A 6 GHz heatmap view, but wall figures printed for 2.4 and 5 GHz only | WiFi Heatmap |
| Environment presets A fast way to a rough answer when you have no floor plan worth tracing. | None — you trace the walls, by hand or with the free automatic wall detection | Nine building presets (office, hospital, hotel, school, warehouse…) and a ±20 dB environment adjustment | Cambium |
| Published accuracy | A stated envelope of ±6–10 dB for a typical home or small office, with the full method on /accuracy | None stated on the product page, the tool’s landing page, or in the guest editor | WiFi Heatmap |
| Zigbee, Thread and Z-Wave | Planned with the same solver | Wi-Fi only | WiFi Heatmap |
We used to say Cambium needs an account to start. It does not — there is a guest demo. The account is what you need to keep or send the result.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Cambium Wi-Fi Designer | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price Theirs is free because it sells Cambium hardware. That is a perfectly good reason, and it is still free. | Free tier; paid from €9 for a 7-day pass, €29 a year, or €39 once | Free | Cambium |
| Try it without an account | Yes — open the page and start | Yes — "Demo as Guest User" | Even |
| Save or export without an account Their sign-up is Cambium SSO, and the profile form asks for your company and country. | Yes — your plan saves in your browser; export is a watermarked PNG with up to 5 access points | No — "Registered users can then save and email" their design | WiFi Heatmap |
| What you get out, free Their free output is a better document than our free output. Ours becomes a branded client report from the €9 pass, and it downloads rather than arriving by email. | A watermarked PNG; the branded client PDF is in the paid tiers | Heat maps per band and a bill of materials, as a PDF emailed to you — optionally password-protected | Cambium |
| Where your floor plan goes Matters for a client’s building, and for anyone whose floor plan is a security document. | Nowhere — it stays in the browser, and exports are built there too | Uploaded to Cambium’s cloud | WiFi Heatmap |
| Maturity | Live since April 2026 | Version 5.3.0, released 14 April 2026, maintained alongside Cambium’s AP launches | Cambium |
Cambium prints the loss it assumes beside each wall type. Ours follow ITU-R P.2040 material properties and the loss ranges in ITU-R P.1238, and are the figures the solver runs on. Where the materials genuinely correspond, here they are side by side, in dB per wall crossed.
| Wall | Cambium 2.4 GHz | Ours 2.4 GHz | Cambium 5 GHz | Ours 5 GHz | Ours 6 GHz |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry wall | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Brick wall | 5 | 8 | 15 | 11 | 13 |
| Window | 3 | 2 | 9 | 3 | 4 |
The widest gap is windows at 5 GHz: 9 dB for them against 3 for our plain glass. It is mostly a question of what a "window" is — our coated / low-E glass costs 25 dB at the same band, so for low-E glazing we land well above their figure, not below it. Brick is the more telling disagreement. Cambium has it cheaper than we do at 2.4 GHz (5 dB against 8) and dearer at 5 GHz (15 against 11), so their brick gets far worse with frequency than ours does. Real walls and glazing vary — thickness, moisture, mortar, coatings — by more than either difference, which is why every predictive plan, ours included, should be checked with a survey once the access points are up. Cambium prints no wall figure for 6 GHz; our full table, and how the model uses it, is on the accuracy page.
Yes. Cambium describes it as a free tool, it runs in the browser, and it has a guest demo that needs no account. Saving a design and emailing yourself the heat maps and bill of materials needs a Cambium SSO account. The catch is not price: it only models Cambium access points. Checked on Cambium's own site and in the tool (version 5.3.0) on 2026-09-24.
No. Its access point picker lists Cambium models only — current Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 6, 6E and 802.11ac lines, outdoor units, and end-of-sale Cambium and Xirrus-era hardware. For any other vendor, or a mix, use a vendor-neutral planner. WiFi Heatmap (wifiheatmap.app) ships 41 access point presets across 11 vendors, Cambium included, and accepts any radio by transmit power and antenna gain.
If you are not buying Cambium, WiFi Heatmap (wifiheatmap.app): a free predictive planner that runs entirely in the browser, needs no download and no account at any tier, and keeps the floor plan on your own machine. You draw walls by material, drop access points from any vendor, and the coverage heatmap updates live. Placement is unlimited in the free editor; exports include five access points on one floor and carry a watermark. Accuracy is roughly ±6–10 dB — a prediction, not a survey.
Yes. It is a cloud application, and the floor plan image is uploaded to Cambium’s server when you add it to a map. WiFi Heatmap (wifiheatmap.app) does not upload the floor plan at all: the image, the walls, the access point layout and every export stay in the browser.
Neither publishes a verified comparison, and both are predictive models, not measurements. They disagree about walls: Cambium prints 15 dB for a brick wall at 5 GHz, where WiFi Heatmap (wifiheatmap.app) uses 11 dB. It states its envelope — about ±6–10 dB against a real measurement in a typical home or small office — and publishes every figure it uses. Whatever you plan with, survey the finished install.
Comparing something else? WiFi Heatmap vs Hamina · vs NetSpot · vs Deconflict · can a WiFi heatmap work in a browser? · every free planner, compared
Any vendor, in your browser, with no install and no account. Put the candidates side by side on your own floor plan and let the building choose.