Best Solar Proposal Software Ireland: Top 10 in 2026

📘 Regulation note

MCS, the Smart Export Guarantee, Ofgem and the G98 and G99 forms are British institutions with no Irish equivalent. In the Republic the installation is certified to I.S. 10101 by a registered electrical contractor under Safe Electric, the connection is notified to ESB Networks on an NC6 or applied for on an NC7, the grant comes from SEAI and the export payment comes from the customer's own supplier under the Clean Export Guarantee. A proposal template citing British schemes is not slightly off, it is citing the wrong country.

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The 5-Point Irish Net-Price Bench

This is our own scoring frame, and you can run it on any platform during a free trial. Five axes, 1 to 10 each, out of 50. Nothing below 38 goes on a live pipeline in our own solar EPC work.

1. Grant arithmetic. Does the tool taper the SEAI grant correctly at EUR 700 then EUR 200 per kWp with the EUR 1,800 cap, show it as a post-completion payment rather than a discount, and make the marginal grant on the fifth kilowatt visibly zero?
2. Export realism. Per-supplier CEG rates, the EUR 400 tax-free microgeneration threshold shown separately, and self-consumption valued distinctly from export.
3. Timeline honesty. NC6 versus NC7 flagged at 6 kVA single phase and 11 kVA three phase, with the NC7 assessment window written into the schedule the customer signs.
4. Yield credibility. 8,760-hour module-level shading with a proper diffuse split, and an estimate presented as an estimate rather than a promise.
5. Cost per signed proposal in euros. Licence plus add-ons divided by realistic monthly volume, not by the vendor’s demo volume.

Axis two is where most tools fail quietly, and axis one is where they fail loudly. A percentage-based grant model produces a wrong net price on the first line of the first page, which is the worst possible place to be wrong.

Top 10 Solar Proposal Software Platforms in Ireland

Pricing is 2026, annualised, with dollar-denominated products converted at roughly EUR 0.91 per US dollar. Treat converted figures as planning numbers rather than quotes.

#	Platform	Indicative EUR price	Key capability	Best for
1	SurgePV	EUR 1,180/user/yr (5-user team)	SEAI taper, per-supplier CEG, NC6 fork and 8,760-hr shading in one document	Installers and EPCs sending 5+ proposals a month
2	OpenSolar	Free core platform; API Access and Connectors chargeable from 16 Apr 2026, rates not published	Fast residential proposals with no licence commitment	Solo and two-van domestic installers
3	Aurora Solar	USD $135/user/mo Basic, $220 Premium, billed annually (~EUR 123 to EUR 200)	The most polished customer-facing sales document	Larger firms arriving with Aurora process
4	Solargraf	USD $2,799/yr Starter (2 users, 240 projects) up to $12,999 Enterprise (~EUR 2,547 to EUR 11,829)	Same-day quoting with e-signature	Volume residential sales teams
5	Enact	USD $279/mo for 2 users on annual (~EUR 254/mo)	Finance and lifetime savings storytelling	Teams selling on monthly payment
6	SolarPlus	USD $135 to $450/mo by tier on annual pre-pay (~EUR 123 to EUR 410)	Tariff and battery dispatch inside the quote	Battery-led residential shops
7	Pylon	Per project: USD $4.00 Standard, $10.00 Pro (~EUR 3.64 to EUR 9.10)	Quote and hardware procurement together	Installers reconciling BOM against stock
8	Easy PV	Free Basic, GBP 35/mo Pro (~EUR 41)	Fast layouts and sign-off packs	Firms taking Northern Ireland subcontract work
9	PV*SOL premium	EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT	Technical annex for a commercial proposal	Consultancies attaching an engineering report
10	Sunbase	From USD $59/user/mo (~EUR 54); higher tiers not published	CRM-first pipeline with basic proposals	Sales-led firms designing elsewhere

Two honest observations before the detail. Positions one through five are genuine contenders for an Irish installer; six through ten each solve one problem and hand the rest back. And Easy PV sits at eight here rather than near the top where it lands on our UK proposal ranking, for one reason: its strongest features are MCS performance estimates and DNO form generation, and neither exists in the Republic.

1. SurgePV

What it does best. SurgePV builds the design and the proposal in one browser licence, which matters in Ireland because the numbers that sell the job come out of the simulation rather than out of a template. Four behaviours earn it the top spot. The SEAI grant is modelled as the real two-step taper, so a customer comparing 4 kWp and 6 kWp sees on the page that the extra two kilowatts attract no additional grant at all, which is a much easier conversation to have during the sale than after it. The CEG rate is selected per supplier, so a quote built on a 25c export tariff and one built on a 15c tariff produce different, defensible cash flows, with the EUR 400 tax-free microgeneration threshold shown as its own line rather than buried in a twenty-year total. Domestic jobs default to zero VAT and commercial jobs to 23 percent, without anyone remembering to change a field. And the 6 kVA fork is raised on the canvas as inverter AC output crosses it, so the proposal carries an NC7 timeline when an NC7 is required.

Behind the document sits an 8,760-hour module-level simulation with P50 and P90 output and a diffuse-weighted sky, which is not a detail in a country where most annual irradiance arrives as diffuse rather than direct light. The shadow analysis module is on every plan rather than a higher tier. Proposals export as white-label PDF and as an interactive web link with e-signature.

Pricing. About EUR 1,180 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so EUR 5,900 for five seats. Individual seats run near EUR 1,730 per year. Free trial, no card.

Who it suits. SEAI registered installers sending five or more proposals a month, particularly those quoting domestic alongside commercial rooftop where the VAT and connection paths diverge.

Honest limitations. Four, and they are real. The CEG rate table is configurable per supplier but it is not a maintained subscription feed, so when a supplier moves its export rate mid-year your team updates the figure, and nobody at SurgePV pushes that change to you. It does not submit the NC6 or NC7 to the ESB Networks portal, it prepares the data and a person uploads it, so the connection admin is unchanged. It produces no Safe Electric completion certificate; that stays with your registered electrical contractor. And brand recognition in Ireland is thin, which matters twice: a commercial customer’s funder has never seen the report format, and a designer you hire from another installer probably learned on OpenSolar. For a firm doing four domestic jobs a year the licence is not defensible, and we would say so on a call.

2. OpenSolar

What it does best. A free core proposal and design product funded by hardware referral margin, with a residential template library deep enough that a new Irish entrant can be sending competent quotes in a week. For a two-person domestic outfit this is genuinely the right answer, and the fact that we sell a competing product does not change that.

Pricing. The core platform is free, for any number of users. OpenSolar has said that API Access, charged per project on creation, and Connectors, charged as a flat monthly fee, become chargeable from 16 April 2026, but it has not published those rates and they vary by geography. So the honest position is that a five-seat Irish team pays nothing today and cannot yet be quoted a 2026 add-on figure. Nothing else on this list is cheaper.

Who it suits. Solo installers, small shops and anyone whose volume does not justify a licence.

Honest limitations. The Irish layer is thin. Grant taper and CEG rates go in by hand and stay correct only while somebody maintains them, and the person who maintains them usually leaves. No NC6 or NC7 logic. Commercial work exposes the ceiling quickly, and once the add-ons stack the free headline stops being true. Our OpenSolar alternative comparison covers the crossover point.

3. Aurora Solar

What it does best. The most polished customer-facing document in the category, with strong automated design, good storage modelling and a workflow refined against very large US residential volume. If you are losing deals on presentation quality alone, Aurora fixes that.

Pricing. Aurora publishes US dollar prices: Basic US$135 per user per month billed annually and Premium US$220, which is about EUR 123 and EUR 200 at EUR 0.91 per dollar. Five Premium seats come to US$13,200 a year, roughly EUR 12,012, and five Basic seats to US$8,100, roughly EUR 7,371. Plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling sit on Premium. Worth stating plainly: Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year per user is cheaper than a single SurgePV Individual seat at US$1,899, and if all you need is a polished residential document, that is a real saving.

Who it suits. Larger Irish residential firms, especially any already running Aurora in another market.

Honest limitations. The Irish financial layer is absent. No SEAI taper, no CEG supplier library, no VAT split, no NC6 flag, and a savings model built around US net metering and tax credit mechanics that do not exist here. Your team rebuilds Irish economics inside a template and then owns the maintenance forever. See our Aurora Solar alternative breakdown.

Get an independent second opinion. Send us one Irish proposal and our engineers will check the system size, the export assumption and the payback within 48 hours, at no cost. Request a review →

4. Solargraf

What it does best. Speed. A remote site becomes a layout and a signable quote inside an hour, with e-signature built in and a learning curve short enough that a new salesperson is productive in days.

Pricing. Solargraf prices by plan rather than by seat, in US dollars: Starter US$2,799 a year covering 240 projects and 2 users, rising to Enterprise US$12,999 for 1,500 projects. API access is US$4,000 a year on every plan except Enterprise. At EUR 0.91 per dollar that is roughly EUR 2,547 to EUR 11,829.

Who it suits. Volume residential sales teams where turnaround beats engineering depth.

Honest limitations. Shading and yield modelling are lighter than the engineering-led tools, which is a bigger problem under an Irish sky than a Spanish one. Irish grant and export handling is manual, and the product leans toward one manufacturer’s hardware. Our Solargraf alternative note covers where it stops.

5. Enact

What it does best. Frames the conversation around lifetime savings and monthly payments, which is useful when a homeowner is comparing a solar instalment against their current bill rather than against a cash price.

Pricing. US$279 a month for 2 users on an annual commitment, or US$299 billed monthly, which is about EUR 254 a month for the pair. Commercial projects are capped at 10 a month. Enact’s Asset Management and enterprise tiers are not publicly listed.

Who it suits. Teams selling domestic solar on finance.

Honest limitations. Irish finance product coverage is narrow, CEG modelling is simplistic, and the design engine is not a substitute for a proper shading study on a terrace with a chimney and a neighbouring gable. See the Enact alternative comparison.

6. SolarPlus

What it does best. Tariff modelling and battery dispatch sit inside the design flow rather than beside it, which is the right architecture for a market where a self-consumed unit is worth two to three times an exported one. For a battery-led shop the savings arithmetic is more thorough than most cloud tools at this price.

Pricing. SolarPlus bills in US dollars despite its Australian origin: Starter US$135 a month, Pro US$260 and Complete US$450 on annual pre-pay, or US$150, US$300 and US$520 billed monthly, with Enterprise quote-only. At EUR 0.91 per dollar that is about EUR 123 to EUR 410 a month. Commercial capacity is capped at 900 kW, 2 MW and 3.9 MW by tier.

Who it suits. Residential shops selling solar with storage as the default rather than the upsell.

Honest limitations. Its tariff libraries were built for Australian retail structures, so Irish suppliers and CEG rates are configured by hand. The 3D roof and shading engine are lighter than SurgePV or PV*SOL, and the interface carries visible age.

7. Pylon

What it does best. Quoting and hardware procurement in one place, so the bill of materials you quoted is the one you order at a price you have already seen. For installers spending an evening a week reconciling quotes against distributor stock, that is real time back.

Pricing. Pylon is not a seat licence. It charges per project: US$4.00 on Standard and US$10.00 on Pro, with no monthly minimum, which is about EUR 3.64 and EUR 9.10. eSignature is US$0.80 a project, payments cost 2.50 percent a transaction, and the separate Solar CRM add-on starts at US$49 per user per month. For a low-volume Irish installer this pricing model is dramatically cheaper than any per-seat product here, including ours.

Who it suits. Installers who want quoting and buying inside one system.

Honest limitations. Design depth is modest, the procurement advantage depends on supplier coverage in your region, and Irish distribution coverage is thinner than in larger markets. Commercial work is thin. See our Pylon alternative page.

8. Easy PV

What it does best. Fast residential layouts and a tidy sign-off pack, free at the entry tier, built in Cambridge by a distributor who understands installers. Irish firms that also take Northern Ireland work get genuine value from having it open in a second tab.

Pricing. Basic is free. Pro is GBP 35 a month, about EUR 41 at current rates. The Enterprise tier is not publicly listed.

Who it suits. Firms working both sides of the border.

Honest limitations. Its two best features, the MCS performance estimate and the G98 or G99 form pack, are British and produce paperwork nobody in the Republic wants. No SEAI taper, no CEG library, no NC6 logic. This is the clearest illustration of why an Irish installer should not adopt a British shortlist unedited.

9. PV*SOL premium

What it does best. Detailed 3D shading, thermal behaviour and component-level simulation, with a German engineering pedigree that commercial clients recognise. As a technical annex bolted onto a commercial proposal, the output carries weight in a tender.

Pricing. PVSOL premium is a subscription, not a perpetual licence: EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, with standard PVSOL at EUR 585. Five named users therefore cost EUR 4,225 a year, which is meaningfully less than five SurgePV seats. Licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals on them ended on 1 October 2024.

Who it suits. Consultancies attaching an engineering report to a sales document produced elsewhere.

Honest limitations. Windows desktop, no collaboration, no Irish regulatory content, no CEG or SEAI modelling and no white-label sales proposal. You will pair it with something else. Our PV*SOL alternative guide sets out the trade.

10. Sunbase

What it does best. Leads with CRM: pipeline, lead routing, follow-up sequences and reporting, with proposal generation attached. If your bottleneck is that quotes sit unanswered for a fortnight rather than that they look wrong, that ordering is correct.

Pricing. Sunbase publishes an entry point of US$59 per user per month, about EUR 54, and does not publish its higher tiers.

Who it suits. Sales-led firms that already have a design tool.

Honest limitations. As a proposal engine it is the weakest here on engineering depth and has no Irish compliance content at all. The same pairing logic applies to QuickEstimate’s proposal generator, which is built specifically for solar quoting and follow-up and covers the CRM half of the job properly.

The Grant Taper Is the Line That Decides the Sale

Three arithmetic details separate an Irish proposal that closes from one that gets picked apart at the kitchen table.

The taper is not a percentage. EUR 700 per kWp to 2 kWp, then EUR 200 per kWp to 4 kWp, capped at EUR 1,800. A 4 kWp system attracts the full EUR 1,800. A 6 kWp system attracts the same EUR 1,800. Software that models the grant as a percentage of system cost, which is what most imported tools do, is wrong at every size except by accident, and it hides the fact that the customer pays for the fifth and sixth kilowatt entirely out of pocket. Show the marginal grant, not just the total.

The grant is a reimbursement, not a discount. It is paid after completion, on a compliant application, by an installer on the SEAI register. A proposal that presents the net figure as the amount due on signing creates a cash flow surprise. Present gross price, grant, and net cost of ownership as three separate lines with the timing stated.

Export income is taxable above EUR 400 a year. The first EUR 400 of microgeneration profit is exempt from income tax, USC and PRSI. On a 25c CEG rate that threshold is passed at about 1,600 exported units, which a well-sized 5 kWp array on a low-occupancy house clears comfortably. Twenty years of gross export income with no reference to the threshold overstates the after-tax result for precisely the customers who export most.

Yield Honesty Under a Diffuse Irish Sky

A proposal is a promise about electricity, and Irish light makes that promise harder to keep than most vendors admit. A well-oriented array here typically produces somewhere around 900 to 1,050 kWh per kWp per year, and the majority of the irradiance that produces it arrives as diffuse sky radiation rather than direct beam. Two consequences land directly in the sales document.

First, the east and west penalty is smaller than a customer expects, because diffuse light arrives from the whole sky dome rather than one direction. That is a selling point on a house with no south-facing roof, and a proposal tool that applies a Mediterranean azimuth penalty will talk you out of a job you should have won.

Second, shading losses are easier to understand and to underestimate. When a chimney blocks part of the sky dome it removes diffuse gain across the whole day, not just a moving beam for an hour. A tool without a sky view factor understates the loss on exactly the terraced and semi-detached stock that makes up much of the Irish retrofit market. Our shading loss glossary entry sets out the mechanics, and the difference between a good and a poor diffuse model on the same Dublin roof is routinely several percent of annual yield. Present the figure as an estimate with the assumptions named, and put the monthly shape in the document rather than an annual total, because December in Donegal is where the first complaint call comes from.

Proposal Mistakes That Cost Irish Installers Money

1. 1
   Quoting one national export rate. The CEG rate follows the customer's supplier. Name the supplier and the rate in the document, or the twenty-year export figure is unsupportable.
2. 2
   Modelling the SEAI grant as a percentage. It is a two-step taper capped at EUR 1,800. A percentage model misprices every size and hides where the marginal grant runs out.
3. 3
   Copying a British template. MCS numbers, SEG wording and G99 references on an Irish proposal signal to an informed buyer that you have not done this here before.
4. 4
   Promising an install date past 6 kVA. An NC7 adds a fee, an assessment and a connection offer before energisation. Put the window in the schedule the customer signs.
5. 5
   Applying VAT with one global field. Domestic is zero rated, commercial is not. A mixed pipeline plus one tax setting equals a corrected invoice and an awkward phone call.

The common thread is that the document promised something the arithmetic or the network could not support. Sizing the inverter against the 6 kVA line before the quote goes out catches a surprising share of them, and the string sizing calculator our sister team publishes is a fast way to sanity-check the AC side.

Should an Irish Installer Standardise on One Platform?

At fifty proposals a month a five-seat SurgePV licence works out near EUR 10 per finished proposal, which is less than the diesel for one wasted site visit from Dublin to Wexford. At ten a month it is closer to EUR 49, still defensible if it removes a second licence and a spreadsheet. At three a month the calculation is not close, and the correct answer is OpenSolar’s free tier with hand-maintained grant and CEG figures.

Verdict. SurgePV is the right default for a growing Irish installer because the grant taper, the supplier-level CEG rate and the NC6 fork are inside the document rather than in somebody’s head. OpenSolar is the right answer for a two-person domestic outfit. Aurora wins outright on document polish, SolarPlus on battery dispatch, and PV*SOL on the technical annex, and none of those three will do the Irish arithmetic for you.

How Heaven Green Energy Helps

Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the software we use ourselves rather than buying a seat and hoping. That is why the weaknesses listed above are specific rather than decorative. For Irish teams the useful next steps are:

• Best solar design software in Ireland for the engineering-side ranking, I.S. 10101 drawings and the diffuse simulation question.
• Solar proposal software for the global version of this ranking without the Irish layer.
• Solar design software pillar guide for how the category is structured.
• Best solar proposal software in the USA for how a subsidised, net-metered market changes the same document.
• Payback period for the definition your proposal should be using.
• Commercial solar and industrial solar for how we use these outputs on live projects.
• Rooftop detailed engineering design when a marginal roof needs checking before you quote it.

References worth bookmarking: the SEAI grant page for the current taper, ESB Networks for NC6 and NC7 terms, Revenue for the VAT treatment, the CRU for the Clean Export Guarantee obligation, and IRENA country profiles for benchmarking Irish deployment. Choosing the best solar proposal software in Ireland comes down to one test: does the net price on page one match what the customer will find on the SEAI website tonight. You can compare SurgePV pricing against whatever you run today before committing to a trial.

Compare Other Markets and Tool Categories

• Best solar the full software stack in Ireland
• Best solar proposal software in the Netherlands
• Best solar proposal software in France

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best solar proposal software in Ireland in 2026?

SurgePV ranks first for Irish installers sending five or more proposals a month, at roughly EUR 1,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. It models the SEAI grant as the real two-step taper, carries Clean Export Guarantee rates per supplier rather than one national number, applies zero VAT to domestic jobs only, and flags the ESB Networks NC6 to NC7 fork at 6 kVA before a date is promised. For a two-person domestic outfit, OpenSolar’s free tier remains the rational answer.

Does an Irish solar proposal need to mention MCS?

No. MCS is the British Microgeneration Certification Scheme and it has no standing in the Republic of Ireland. The Irish equivalents are the SEAI registered installer list for grant eligibility and Safe Electric registration for the electrical certification, with the installation carried out to I.S. 10101. A proposal template carrying MCS numbers, Smart Export Guarantee wording or G99 references has been lifted from a British market and not adapted.

How much is the SEAI solar grant and how should a proposal show it?

The SEAI Solar PV Scheme pays EUR 700 per kWp for the first 2 kWp and EUR 200 per kWp between 2 and 4 kWp, capped at EUR 1,800, pro rata on part kilowatts. Systems above 4 kWp receive the same EUR 1,800. Show gross price, grant and net cost as three separate lines, and state that the grant is reimbursed after completion rather than deducted at signing. Also show the marginal grant so the customer sees where additional capacity stops attracting support.

What rate should I use for Clean Export Guarantee income?

The rate your customer’s own supplier pays, named in the document. The CEG obliges suppliers to pay micro-generators for exported units but does not set the price, so 2026 rates run roughly from 15c to 25c per kWh across the market. A blended national figure can be wrong by more than half on lifetime export income. Show the first EUR 400 a year of microgeneration income as tax exempt and anything above it as taxable.

Is VAT charged on domestic solar in Ireland?

Supply and installation of solar panels on private dwellings is zero rated for VAT in Ireland following the 2023 change, later extended to schools. Commercial and industrial installations remain standard rated at 23 percent. Proposal software should apply the correct rate automatically based on project type, because a single global tax field on a mixed residential and commercial pipeline is one of the more common and more expensive quoting errors.

When does an Irish proposal need to allow for an NC7?

Whenever inverter output exceeds 6 kVA single phase or 11 kVA three phase. Below those limits the NC6 is a notification to ESB Networks with no charge and no pre-approval. Above them, NC7 mini-generation requires a paid application, a technical assessment and a connection offer that you accept before energising, which adds weeks to the schedule. Export limiting the inverter to stay inside NC6 is a legitimate design choice worth presenting as an option.

Can free proposal software work for a small Irish installer?

Yes, for a specific profile. An installer doing a handful of straightforward sub 6 kVA domestic jobs a month can work entirely inside OpenSolar’s free tier, provided somebody keeps the grant taper and the CEG rates current. The free route breaks down on commercial rooftop where VAT differs, on NC7 work where the timeline matters, and on complex urban roofs where the shading model has to be better than approximate.

How much does solar proposal software cost in Ireland?

Most vendors here bill in US dollars or euros rather than in an Irish-specific price. SurgePV is US$1,299 per user per year on a five-seat team, about EUR 1,180. Aurora is US$135 per user per month on Basic and US$220 on Premium billed annually. SolarPlus runs US$135 to US$450 a month by tier. Enact is US$279 a month for two users. Solargraf starts at US$2,799 a year for two users and 240 projects. Sunbase starts at US$59 per user per month. Easy PV Pro is GBP 35 a month. PV*SOL premium is EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, so EUR 4,225 for five, which undercuts five SurgePV seats. Pylon does not sell seats at all, charging US$4.00 or US$10.00 per project. OpenSolar’s core platform is free, and its 2026 API and Connector rates are not published.