Aurora Solar Pricing 2026: $135-$220/User/Mo Explained

If you have searched for Aurora Solar pricing in 2026, the good news is that the numbers are now on Aurora’s own site. Aurora publishes two self-serve tiers plus a custom Enterprise quote, so you no longer need a discovery call to build a budget. The 2026 reality on aurorasolar.com/pricing is that Basic is $135 per user per month billed annually ($159 if you pay monthly) and Premium is $220 per user per month annually ($259 monthly), each covering one user and 50 projects a month, with Enterprise quoted case by case. What the sticker price does not cover is the service layer: plan sets are bought separately, and on-demand site models start at $9.99 each. A 5-person team on Premium lands at roughly $13,200 per year in licence fees. The platform that gets you the same workflow for less at team scale is SurgePV at $1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, or $6,495 all-in, roughly 2x cheaper per seat per year.

Direct answer. Aurora Solar pricing in 2026 is published: $135/user/month (Basic) and $220/user/month (Premium) on annual billing, or $159 and $259 respectively on monthly billing, with Enterprise on a custom quote. Both self-serve tiers cover 1 user and 50 projects a month. LIDAR-assisted modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling are Premium features. Plan sets are a separately priced service. A 5-person team spends about $8,100 (Basic) or $13,200 (Premium) per year. SurgePV’s 5-User Team plan at $1,299/user/year ($6,495 total) delivers the same address-to-proposal workflow with AI 3D, 8,760-hour shading, and proposals bundled.

This guide is written for solar installers, EPC firms, and in-house design teams who want a complete read on Aurora Solar pricing. We cover the published plans, the costs that sit outside them (plan sets, on-demand site models, training time), the realistic cost stack a typical 5-person installer team should budget, and where SurgePV wins and where it does not. You can compare SurgePV pricing directly, or book a free SurgePV demo and bring two real Aurora projects to the call.

How Aurora Solar Prices Its Plans in 2026

Aurora used to route every buyer through a sales call before quoting. That changed: Aurora now lists plan prices publicly, and older articles quoting Grow, Scale and Run tiers are describing a plan structure Aurora no longer sells. The current lineup is Basic, Premium and Enterprise.

Basic is $135 per user per month on annual billing, or $159 if you pay monthly. Premium is $220 per user per month on annual billing, or $259 monthly. Aurora shows the annual saving as $288 a year on Basic and $468 a year on Premium. Enterprise is a custom quote with unlimited users. Both Basic and Premium are single-user subscriptions capped at 50 projects a month, which matters more than most buyers expect: a five-designer team buys five subscriptions, and there is no team discount on the published page.

The second thing to read carefully is the feature split. Basic covers core design, industry-leading design accuracy, HD imagery, on-demand site models and tablet-friendly sales proposals. Premium is where LIDAR-assisted modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling (backup, self-consumption, arbitrage) start. If a lender wants a bankable shade report, you are on Premium, not Basic. Enterprise adds AI-assisted site models, unlimited users, API and integration access, advanced permissions, SSO and webhooks, plus access to Aurora’s premium services.

The third is the service layer sitting outside every plan. Plan sets and engineering stamps are not bundled into a subscription at all; they are professional services Aurora prices separately. On-demand site models start at $9.99 each. Neither shows up in a per-seat comparison, and both are real spend for a team shipping permit packages. SurgePV’s pricing page shows three published plans with the design and proposal stack bundled in, though SurgePV does not offer plan-set drafting as a service the way Aurora does.

The Stats: Aurora Solar Pricing in 2026

Here is the cost picture for a 5-person installer team on Aurora in 2026, normalised to a full annual budget. Plan prices are taken directly from Aurora’s published pricing page.

The headline stat is that SurgePV is roughly 2x cheaper than Aurora Premium on a 5-seat team basis, per seat per year: $1,299 against $2,640. The reason is structural. Aurora prices per user per month with no team discount on the published page. SurgePV prices per user per year, with the per-seat number falling as you add seats, and ships every feature on every paid plan. A 1-person team picks SurgePV Individual at $1,899 a year. A 3-person team picks the 3-User Team at $1,499 per user per year ($4,497). A 5-person team picks the 5-User Team at $1,299 per user per year ($6,495).

One case cuts the other way and it is worth stating plainly. A solo designer who only needs Basic pays Aurora $1,620 a year, against $1,899 for SurgePV Individual. On sticker price alone Aurora is the cheaper single-seat buy, and no amount of feature framing changes that. The SurgePV case at one seat rests on what Basic does not include, not on price.

The picture shifts once you add seats or need Premium-only capability. For an EPC running commercial solar and residential solar work in parallel, bankable shade reports mean Premium for every designer, so five seats is $13,200 a year, and permit-ready plan sets are billed on top as a service. IRENA tracks software cost as one of the rising soft-cost line items in installer P&Ls through 2026.

The 4-Point Heaven Green Design-Tool Bench Test

This is the named framework we use internally at Heaven Green Energy to evaluate every solar design platform we deploy across our solar EPC workflow. We score each tool from 1 to 10 on four criteria and refuse to standardise on anything under 32 of 40.

1. Engineering rigour. Does it run 8,760-hour, module-level shading? P50/P75/P90 yield reports lenders accept? Soiling, snow, albedo, temperature coefficient? Aurora scores 9 of 10 on this axis at Premium and above. The catch: LIDAR-assisted modelling and bankable shade reports are Premium features, so the effective score on Basic is 6.
2. Full workflow coverage. Can one designer go from address to signed branded proposal inside the platform? Single-line diagram (SLD), BOQ, DXF/DWG AutoCAD export? Aurora scores 8 of 10 on workflow at Premium, with proposals included, though plan sets are a paid service rather than a plan feature. SurgePV’s solar designing workflow hub scores 10, with proposals, SLD, and AutoCAD export at every tier.
3. Total cost of ownership. Annual seat license plus add-ons plus onboarding plus extra-tool contracts across a 5-person team. Aurora scores 5 of 10 at Premium because of the $13,200 line item plus separately billed plan sets. SurgePV scores 10 at $6,495 bundled. At a single seat the gap closes and Aurora Basic is the cheaper option.
4. Global code coverage. NEC for US, IEC for EU, IS for India, AS/NZS for Australia, plus built-in tariff structures (net metering, PM Surya Ghar, FiT, ToU). Aurora’s strength is US. On our bench it scores 5 of 10 outside the US, because the country code libraries we exercised were thinner and we did not find native Indian net metering or PM Surya Ghar tariff blocks in the version we tested. For a deeper look at platforms built for the Indian market, see our solar design software for India guide.

When we run this 4-point bench on Aurora, Aurora scores 33 of 40 at Premium and SurgePV scores 38. Both are deployable. The deciding factor at team scale is cost: SurgePV ships the same realistic workflow at roughly half the bill on five seats. For Indian installers, the global-coverage gap pushes Aurora down further. For a solo US residential designer, Aurora Basic is the cheaper buy and the bench gap narrows to features rather than price.

Verdict. Aurora Solar is a strong product and its pricing is now transparent, which removes the biggest old complaint. What remains is single-user subscriptions with no published team discount, Premium-gated bankable shade reports, separately billed plan sets, and US-first defaults.

Aurora Solar Plan-by-Plan Pricing Breakdown

This is the plan breakdown for Aurora Solar in 2026, taken from Aurora’s own pricing page. Enterprise is quoted case by case and Aurora does not publish a figure for it.

The decision point is Basic against Premium. Basic at $135 a seat per month is a genuine working plan for residential design and sales proposals. What it does not ship is the bankable shade report a lender asks for, LIDAR-assisted modelling, or battery modelling. The moment a C&I project needs a bankable yield report you are on Premium, and the seat cost rises about 63%.

The second thing to budget for is the service layer. Plan sets are not a plan feature at any tier; Aurora sells them as a professional service, alongside engineering stamps, with access to those services listed under Enterprise. On-demand site models start at $9.99. Neither figure appears in a per-seat comparison, and for a team shipping permit packages every week they are real money.

The third is the single-user structure. Basic and Premium each cover one user and 50 projects a month. There is no published team or volume discount, so a five-designer team multiplies the seat price by five with no break. SurgePV’s pricing moves the other way, dropping the per-seat rate as the team grows.

Hidden Costs of Aurora Solar Beyond the Headline Plan

The published Aurora plan price is not the full bill. Five hidden costs catch most installer teams.

Plan sets and engineering stamps. These are professional services, not plan features. Aurora prices them separately and does not publish a rate card, so budget for them as a per-project line item you have to ask about.

On-demand site models. Aurora lists these as starting at $9.99. A team pulling several site models a day should model this as recurring usage spend rather than a one-off.

Bankable shade reports are Premium only. The bankable shade report a lender asks for is a Premium feature. If you are on Basic, every C&I project that needs one requires either an upgrade to Premium or a second tool like HelioScope at $159 a month or PVsyst at CHF 700 a year, each carrying its own separate licence cost.

Training and onboarding payroll. In the installer teams we have onboarded, new designers have typically needed 2 to 3 weeks before they were productive on Aurora. At average Indian designer salary of ₹60,000 a month, that is ₹30,000 to ₹45,000 in payroll per hire. Our own SurgePV onboarding averages 1 day.

Hardware headroom. Aurora is a browser-based 3D application, and in our own testing large rooftop designs ran noticeably better on machines with 16 GB of RAM or more. If your designers are on lighter laptops, budget for a possible refresh at roughly $1,500 to $2,500 per designer rather than assuming the seat fee is the whole cost. Check current requirements with Aurora before you buy hardware on our say-so.

Support response time. Support responsiveness is worth asking about on any plan you are quoted, because it is a real cost when a sales engineer is sitting in front of a customer. Ask Aurora for its published response targets on the tier you are considering. On our side, SurgePV ships chat support with an under 5-minute median response on every paid plan.

Adding it up: a realistic Aurora Premium 5-seat team budget in 2026 is $13,200 licence + plan sets and site models billed separately + ~$10,000 onboarding payroll year 1 + ~$10,000 hardware refresh year 1 = comfortably north of $33,000 in year 1. The same SurgePV 5-User Team budget is $6,495 license + ~$2,500 onboarding + no add-ons + no hardware refresh = ~$9,000 in year 1. The 3x to 4x delta is the real story at five seats.

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SurgePV vs Aurora Solar on Pricing: Side-by-Side

The four Aurora pricing pains map cleanly to four bundled SurgePV features. This is the side-by-side our designers use when they switch.

Published price, one tier shows the whole stack. SurgePV’s 5-User Team plan is $1,299 per user per year. Published on the site. No sales call required to see the number. The plan includes AI 3D roof, Clara AI, 8,760-hour shading, financial modeling, branded proposals, SLD, BOQ, DXF/DWG export, and a 70,000+ module / 12,000+ inverter database. Aurora’s nearest equivalent is Premium at $220 per seat per month on annual billing, with plan sets billed separately on top.

AI 3D roof modeling, included. You enter an address. SurgePV pulls satellite imagery and builds a 3D roof model with obstructions detected automatically in under 60 seconds. Accuracy is within ±3% of LIDAR ground truth. Aurora ships on-demand site models on Basic and Premium, priced from $9.99 each, and reserves AI-assisted site models for Enterprise. SurgePV’s equivalent is the AI 3D solar design module on every paid plan. For a broader roundup of address-to-3D-model tools, see our 3D solar design software comparison.

8,760-hour shading on every plan. SurgePV’s solar shading analysis software runs the same hour-by-hour, year-long simulation behind the bankable shade reports Aurora gates to Premium. Module-level and string-level results land in under 30 seconds for residential, under 5 minutes for a 1 MW C&I roof. The cost difference for a single missed lender requirement on a 500 kW project can run several lakhs of rupees, which is why we treat unrestricted access as non-negotiable on our industrial solar work.

Bankable yield and financial reports. SurgePV’s generation and financial tool covers cashflow, IRR, NPV, payback, country-specific tariffs including PM Surya Ghar, plus loan, lease, and PPA modeling. Carbon offset reports are built in. Aurora’s financial module is similar in capability but priced through tier upgrades.

Branded proposals in 5 minutes. SurgePV’s solar proposal software ships PDF and interactive web proposals with shareable URLs and e-signature. Multilingual support spans 9 languages. Pair with QuickEstimate, the sister-brand solar CRM, for lead routing, PM Surya Ghar paperwork, and follow-up automation. SurgePV plus QuickEstimate replaces Aurora plus HubSpot plus a separate proposal customisation tool, for less than Aurora’s seat fee alone.

Clara AI, natural-language design assistant. Clara takes plain English commands and executes design changes visually. Aurora’s published plan pages list AI-assisted site models under Enterprise, so on the tiers below that the AI feature set is narrower; check Aurora’s current plan page for what your tier includes. Industry analysts at pv magazine flagged natural-language design as the biggest workflow shift in 2026.

Common Mistakes Buyers Make With Aurora Solar Pricing

We have helped multiple installer partners audit their Aurora bill. These are the five pricing mistakes that cost the most, scored by frequency.

1. 1
   Signing on Basic because of the $135 headline. Basic does not include bankable shade reports, LIDAR modelling or battery modelling. Teams doing any C&I work upgrade to Premium, so the real budget is $220 a seat, not $135, from month one.
2. 2
   Assuming plan sets come with the subscription. They do not. Aurora sells plan sets and engineering stamps as separately priced professional services at every tier, so ask for that rate card before you sign.
3. 3
   Paying monthly out of habit. Aurora's published annual rate saves $288 a year on Basic and $468 a year on Premium against monthly billing. On five Premium seats that is $2,340 a year left on the table.
4. 4
   Ignoring onboarding payroll cost. 2 to 3 weeks of designer time per hire is real money. A 5-person team hiring 2 new designers a year burns 4 to 6 weeks of payroll on Aurora training alone.
5. 5
   Not running a SurgePV pilot before renewal. SurgePV's free trial has no credit card. Run a 30-day pilot in parallel with Aurora and compare time-to-proposal on the same project. The decision becomes obvious.

The same pattern of buying-mistake shows up in our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar. The discipline is the same: model real annual cost, not the marketing headline.

How the Migration From Aurora to SurgePV Works (5 Steps)

The cutover from Aurora to SurgePV takes about 5 working days for a 5-person team. Run it in this order.

1. Start a free SurgePV trial. Go to surgepv.com, click “Start free trial”. No credit card. Full access to design, AI 3D roof, 8,760-hour shading, proposals.
2. Export Aurora’s active projects. Export in-progress designs as DXF/DWG and proposals as PDF. SurgePV’s importer ingests DXF for roof geometry.
3. Book the SurgePV onboarding call. Book a free SurgePV demo and bring two real Aurora projects, one residential and one C&I. The team walks designers through the full address-to-proposal workflow on your actual designs.
4. Re-create your proposal template. Re-build the Aurora-equivalent template inside SurgePV’s white-label editor (about 90 minutes). Pair with QuickEstimate for CRM and PM Surya Ghar paperwork.
5. Cancel Aurora at renewal. Once each designer has shipped 2 to 3 SurgePV projects (typically within 5 working days), cancel Aurora on its next renewal. The cost saving lands in month two.

Aurora vs SurgePV: Pricing Table for a 5-Seat Team

This is the table most installer teams should bookmark. All figures are 2026, annualised for a 5-person team, taken from Aurora’s published pricing page and SurgePV’s published pricing.

SurgePV at $6,495 per year for a 5-seat team beats Aurora Premium at $13,200 by $6,705 a year, before counting plan sets, site model usage, onboarding payroll, and hardware refresh. Over a 3-year horizon the savings exceed $20,000 per team. At one seat the result flips: Aurora Basic at $1,620 a year is cheaper than SurgePV Individual at $1,899, and the case for SurgePV there rests on bundled features rather than price. For broader context, see our solar design software pricing comparison, our Aurora Solar alternative guide, our best solar design software ranking, and our solar proposal software guide.

Who Should Stay on Aurora (Honest Pros and Cons)

We recommend the SurgePV switch for most teams, but the honest pros and cons matter. Here is the side-by-side.

In every scenario except the first edge case, SurgePV wins on price. The Indian market specifically, where Mercom India projects 25 GW of new rooftop installations through 2027 and IEA tracks India as the third-largest solar market globally, rewards installers who can ship cheaper and faster.

How Heaven Green Energy Helps

Heaven Green Energy is a top-3 EPC in Gujarat with 200+ MW of installed solar across residential, commercial, and industrial segments. Our 12-person engineering and design team uses SurgePV internally because it gives us bankable rigour in one license at less than half the Aurora bill we ran two years ago. We recommend SurgePV to channel partners and installer customers when they ask which platform to standardise on.

If you are a homeowner or business owner trying to figure out what size system makes sense before you talk to any installer, the fastest path is our solar calculator. It gives you a subsidy estimate, payback period, and recommended kW size in 60 seconds. If you want an actual engineered design, site survey, and turnkey installation, here is what we offer:

• Residential Solar: 1 to 10 kW rooftop systems with PM Surya Ghar subsidy handled end-to-end and SurgePV-generated yield reports in the P50/P75/P90 format lenders typically ask for.
• Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with custom ROI modelling, AD tax planning, and SurgePV-generated financial models.
• Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW+ turnkey projects with performance guarantees, solar EPC workflow built around SurgePV.
• Solar Calculator: see your subsidy plus 25-year savings in 60 seconds.

For installer partners and EPC firms looking to standardise their design stack, see SurgePV for solar installers, explore the solar designing workflow, or book a free SurgePV demo and bring two real Aurora projects to the call. Engineers who care about solar simulation depth and AutoCAD-compatible DXF/DWG export will find both wired in. For switch-intent reading, see our HelioScope alternative, PVsyst alternative, OpenSolar alternative, solar design software guide, and 2026 top solar inverter companies in India.

Related Solar Design Software Guides

• AI Solar Design 2026: How AI Is Changing Design Workflow
• AI Solar Design Software 2026: Top Tools (SurgePV)
• Aurora vs HelioScope 2026: Price and Feature Verdict
• Aurora vs OpenSolar 2026: Which Wins (+ SurgePV)
• Cloud Solar Design Software 2026: 6 Browser Tools

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Aurora Solar cost in 2026?

Aurora Solar publishes its pricing in 2026. Basic is $135 per user per month billed annually and Premium is $220 per user per month billed annually, or $159 and $259 respectively on monthly billing, with Enterprise on a custom quote. Both self-serve tiers cover one user and 50 projects a month, so a 5-person installer team pays about $8,100 a year on Basic or $13,200 on Premium. Plan sets and engineering stamps are billed separately as services, and on-demand site models start at $9.99. SurgePV’s published 5-User Team plan at $1,299 per user per year ($6,495 total) ships the same workflow at roughly half the Premium cost.

Does Aurora Solar publish pricing on its website?

Yes. Aurora lists Basic at $135 per user per month and Premium at $220 per user per month on annual billing, with monthly rates of $159 and $259, on its pricing page. Enterprise remains a custom quote and Aurora does not publish a figure for it. Older guides describing Grow, Scale and Run tiers, including earlier versions of this page, are out of date. SurgePV publishes its three plans ($1,899, $1,499, $1,299 per user per year) on the site as well.

Is Aurora Solar worth $220 per user per month?

Aurora Premium at $220 is worth the price if you are a US residential and small-C&I shop that needs bankable shade reports, LIDAR-assisted modelling and battery modelling in one tool. For a larger team the seat maths gets expensive fast, because each subscription covers one user with no published team discount. SurgePV at $1,299 per user per year (5-User Team) ships AI 3D roof, 8,760-hour shading, bankable yield and branded proposals bundled at less than half that seat cost. If you are a single designer who does not need Premium features, Aurora Basic at $1,620 a year is cheaper than SurgePV Individual at $1,899.

What are the hidden costs of Aurora Solar?

Five costs sit outside the seat price. Plan sets and engineering stamps, which Aurora sells as separately priced professional services at every tier. On-demand site models, starting at $9.99 each. Bankable shade reports restricted to Premium, which forces an upgrade or a second tool if you bought Basic. Training payroll of 2 to 3 weeks per new designer. Possible hardware refresh, since a browser-based 3D design tool runs better on 16 GB+ RAM machines and in our testing that mattered on large C&I designs. Total realistic year-1 cost on a 5-seat Premium plan runs well past the $13,200 licence headline.

How does Aurora Solar pricing compare to SurgePV?

Aurora Premium at $220 per user per month on annual billing equals $2,640 per user per year. SurgePV’s 5-User Team plan is $1,299 per user per year, roughly 2x cheaper per seat per year. For a 5-person team, Aurora Premium lands at $13,200 a year against SurgePV at $6,495, a $6,705 annual saving before plan sets and site model usage. At a single seat Aurora Basic at $1,620 a year undercuts SurgePV Individual at $1,899. Both platforms ship AI 3D roof modelling, hour-by-hour shading, financial modelling and branded proposals; SurgePV bundles them on every plan, Aurora splits them across Basic, Premium and paid services.

Can I get a free trial of Aurora Solar?

As of August 2026, Aurora’s site routes trial interest through a guided product walkthrough rather than advertising a self-serve free trial, so plan on a sales conversation and confirm the current options with Aurora directly. SurgePV offers a free trial at surgepv.com with no credit card and full access to design, AI 3D roof, 8,760-hour shading, and proposals. You can design and export real projects during the trial. In our own experience most teams reach a decision within a week of trying it on their own pipeline, and time to first proposal is the benchmark we suggest you measure on both tools.

What is the cheapest Aurora Solar plan?

The cheapest published Aurora plan is Basic at $135 per user per month on annual billing, which is $1,620 per user per year, or $159 per month if you pay monthly. It excludes bankable shade reports, LIDAR-assisted modelling and battery modelling, and it covers one user with 50 projects a month. For solo or 2-person US residential installers it is workable and, at $1,620 a year, it is cheaper than SurgePV’s Individual plan at $1,899. For anyone running C&I work where a lender wants a bankable shade report, Basic forces an upgrade to Premium at $220 a seat.

How does Aurora price site models and plan sets?

Aurora lists on-demand site models as starting at $9.99 each, available on Basic and Premium, and reserves AI-assisted site models for Enterprise. Plan sets and engineering stamps are not plan features at all: Aurora sells them as professional services and does not publish a rate card for them, so ask for one before signing. SurgePV’s equivalent design capability is AI 3D roof modeling plus Clara AI, both included in every paid plan at no extra cost, though SurgePV does not sell plan-set drafting as a service.