Comparison
Start with the part most comparison pages bury: across the 23 rows below, Hamina takes 14 and we take 5, with 4 even. It is the more capable planner and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is also from $590 per 6 or 12 months, needs an account, and keeps your client's floor plan on its servers. This page is about when that trade is worth making — and when five access points, no account and nothing uploaded finishes the job instead.
Every claim read from hamina.com/planner and their pricing page, last verified 2026-09-11.
Hamina Planner
A seat licence for a professional design tool, renewed while you need it. For a consultancy that is a rounding error against one project. For one small office it is the largest line on the job.
WiFi Heatmap
The free tier is not a trial — no clock, no account, no card. Pro is a one-off if you want it: €9 covers a single project for a week, €39 buys it outright and never renews.
There is a second difference that does not show up in a price: Hamina is a cloud planner and we are not. Their projects live on their servers, which is exactly what makes their sharing, collaboration and live-network integration work. Ours never leave your browser — the image, the walls, the access points and the generated PDF are all local. If the floor plan belongs to a client who would rather it stayed put, that is not a feature comparison, it is the answer.
5 rows favour us, 14 favour Hamina, 4 are a genuine tie. The tally is counted from the table, not written by hand.
The first thing anyone comparing these two actually needs. Both have a free tier; they are very different sizes, and the paid tiers are not in the same market.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Hamina | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier cap Three access points covers a flat. Five covers a house, which is where most of this tool’s free use happens. | 5 access points, 1 floor, full COST-231 engine | 3 access points, 1 switch, 5 AI runs | WiFi Heatmap |
| Account to start A sign-up is not a big ask. It is still the step at which most people planning one room give up. | None. Open the editor and draw | Sign-up required for the free tier | WiFi Heatmap |
| Paid price Their price is aimed at someone billing clients for wireless design full time. Ours is aimed at the job in front of you. | €9 for a 7-day pass, €39 once, or €29 a year | From $590 per 6 or 12 months, excluding VAT | WiFi Heatmap |
| Where the plan lives Cloud storage is what makes their sharing and collaboration work. It is also a client floor plan on somebody else’s server. Which way this cuts depends entirely on the job. | Your browser only — the floor plan is never uploaded | Cloud project, stored on their servers | Even |
Hamina wins this section, and it is not close. Their modelling is a tier above ours.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Hamina | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Propagation model Ours treats each access point as radiating evenly at a fixed height. Theirs models the actual antenna pattern, its height and its downtilt. | COST-231 multi-wall in 2D, plus 2.5D ceiling loss between floors | 3D propagation with full 3D antenna pattern models | Hamina |
| Antenna height and downtilt | Not modelled | Adjustable per access point | Hamina |
| Building model | 2D floors you draw, stacked, with ceiling attenuation between them | 3D, switchable 2D/3D view, signal bleed between stacked floors | Hamina |
| Sloped and raised floors Stadiums, auditoriums, loading docks. Not the buildings this tool is for. | Not supported | Planner Plus | Hamina |
| Published assumptions You cannot argue with a number you cannot see. Ours are on /accuracy and in every exported report. | Every wall and ceiling attenuation figure is published, per band, with the error envelope | Described as "top-notch wireless science"; the figures are not published | WiFi Heatmap |
Their automation is the reason people switch to them from Ekahau. We make you draw.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Hamina | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wall detection | Assisted detection from an uploaded image; you correct it | One-click building constructor with wall material, scope and scale detection | Hamina |
| Floor plan formats If you are handed a DWG, that is the whole comparison. | PNG, JPEG, WEBP | CAD (DWG/DXF), PDF, PNG, JPEG, WEBP, with wall extraction from vector files | Hamina |
| Access-point placement | You place them; Pro optimises the positions you chose | Planned with AI assistance | Hamina |
| Channel planning | Conflict detection free; one-click non-overlapping assignment in Pro | Optimised instantly as access points are added or moved | Hamina |
| Time to a first heatmap A narrow win and an honest one: the only step between us is the account. | Seconds, with no account and no upload | Seconds, after signing up | WiFi Heatmap |
The rows where the two products stop overlapping at all.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Hamina | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private cellular / IoT | Wi-Fi, plus Zigbee, Thread and Z-Wave mesh planning | Wi-Fi 6E, BLE, EnOcean, and private cellular 450 MHz–6 GHz in Planner Plus | Hamina |
| Live network integration | None — this is a planning tool only | API import/export with Meraki, Mist, Aruba, Extreme, Ruckus, Arista; Live View in Plus | Hamina |
| Switching and cabling | Not modelled | Switches, IDFs, PoE and port budget, cable lengths | Hamina |
| Client roaming simulation | Not modelled | Client View simulates roaming for common handsets | Hamina |
| Capacity by room Both do it. Theirs is the paid tier of a professional tool and will go deeper than ours. | Device load per room from the room types you set | Capacity analysis in Planner Plus | Hamina |
Both produce a document. They are aimed at different readers.
| Dimension | WiFi Heatmap | Hamina | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Report format An interactive 3D report the client opens without an account is a better artefact than a PDF. Ours is a PDF, and it is a good one. | Branded A4 PDF: cover, a page per floor, device schedule, methodology | Interactive browser report with pan, zoom and 3D, plus a PDF download | Hamina |
| Your branding on it We have not been able to verify how far their branding goes without a paid account, so this is not scored either way. | Your logo and company name on the cover, in every paid tier including the €9 pass | Reporting described as "highly customizable" | Even |
| Signal units | dBm at every point, on the map and in the report | dBm — it is a professional design tool | Even |
| Bill of materials | Quantities by model, then every access point with radio settings and position in metres | Equipment listed in the report, plus PoE and cabling | Even |
Stated plainly, because you will find it out in ten minutes anyway and it is better you hear it here. None of this is on a roadmap.
No 3D
We model flat floors with a ceiling attenuation between them. Hamina models the building in three dimensions, with real antenna patterns, heights and downtilt.
No CAD import
PNG, JPEG and WEBP only. If your floor plans arrive as DWG or DXF, Hamina imports them and extracts the walls for you.
No automatic modelling
We assist wall detection off an image and you correct it. Their one-click constructor detects walls, materials, scope and scale.
No live network
This is a planning tool with no integration to anything. Hamina imports from and pushes back to the major cloud-managed platforms.
What we do have is a full COST-231 engine with no cap on the physics, the actual attenuation figures published per band, a branded client report in every paid tier, and a free tier that asks you for nothing. For a house, a homelab or a small office, that is the whole job.
Yes, and Hamina has a free tier of its own — Hamina Planner Lite, capped at 3 access points and requiring a sign-up. WiFi Heatmap's free tier is five access points on one floor with the full COST-231 propagation engine, no account, no card, and nothing uploaded: the floor plan stays in your browser. If five access points on one floor covers your building, that is the whole tool, free. Pro is €9 for a seven-day pass, €39 once, or €29 a year, against Hamina Planner's $590 per six or twelve months.
Hamina, on features, and it is not close — it takes 14 of the 23 rows in the comparison below to our 5. It models propagation in 3D with real antenna patterns, builds the model off your floor plan automatically, imports CAD, plans private cellular and pushes designs into Meraki, Mist, Aruba, Extreme, Ruckus and Arista. WiFi Heatmap does none of that. The question is not which tool is better, it is whether you need those things: if you are planning a house, a homelab or a single small office, you are paying a professional consultancy's licence fee for capability you will not open.
Four things, concretely. Its free tier is five access points to Hamina’s three. It needs no account at all, where Hamina’s free tier is a sign-up. It runs entirely in your browser, so a client floor plan is never uploaded to anyone’s server, where Hamina is a cloud product. And it publishes the actual numbers behind the prediction — every wall and ceiling attenuation figure per band, and the ±6–10 dB error envelope — in the exported report and on the accuracy page, where Hamina describes its modelling but does not publish the figures.
If you design wireless networks for a living, almost certainly — a licence that saves an hour a week pays for itself, and the automatic building modelling, CAD import and vendor API integration save considerably more than that. If you are planning your own house, a homelab, or one small office you will not open again for two years, you would be buying a professional tool for a job that a free one finishes.
No. The image, the walls and the access-point positions live in your browser’s local storage and are never sent to our server. The PDF report is generated in the browser too. We log anonymous usage counters — operation type, access-point count, IP — and nothing else. Hamina is a cloud planner by design, which is what makes its sharing and collaboration work; whether that trade suits you depends on whose floor plan it is.
No. It accepts PNG, JPEG and WEBP images, and helps you trace the walls. Hamina imports CAD (DWG/DXF) and PDF and extracts walls from vector files automatically. If your floor plans arrive as CAD, that difference alone decides it.
Comparing something else? WiFi Heatmap vs NetSpot · vs Deconflict · every free planner, compared
Five access points on one floor with the full physics engine, no account and no card. That is enough to see whether you need a professional design suite for this job or not.