Easy PV Review 2026: Free UK MCS Tool, Scored 36/50

Easy PV is the rarest thing in solar software: a tool with one job, done properly, given away. It is built by the development team at Midsummer, a UK renewable energy distributor, and its purpose is to take a British installer from a roof outline to an MCS-compliant quotation without the installer having to assemble the compliance evidence by hand. On our bench it scores 36 of 50, which is higher than several products costing twenty times as much, and the reason is entirely about fit rather than firepower. The Basic tier costs nothing. Easy PV Pro is published at £35 per month. This review covers what that money buys, the one output that justifies the tool existing at all, and the exact point where a UK installer outgrows it.

Direct answer. Easy PV is free UK solar design software from Midsummer, with a Pro tier at £35 per month and a quote-only Enterprise tier. It scores 36 of 50 on our bench: outstanding value, strong MCS compliance output including sun path shading and structural loading, shallow simulation depth. Best for MCS-certified UK domestic rooftop installers. Not suitable for financed commercial projects or markets outside the UK and Ireland.

Most software reviews in this category compare feature counts. That is the wrong frame for Easy PV, because it deliberately has fewer features than its rivals and charges accordingly. The right question is whether the small set it does have covers your actual working day.

What Easy PV Is

Easy PV is a browser-based solar PV design and sales tool for UK installers. You draw or model the roof, it specifies the array and mounting, it picks and strings the inverter, it produces the performance and financial numbers, and it emits the customer proposal and the network operator paperwork at the end.

The publisher matters here. Easy PV’s own site states that “Easy PV is developed by the team at Midsummer,” one of the UK’s larger renewable energy distributors. That relationship is the product’s business model rather than an afterthought. The Easy PV feature pages describe linking a Midsummer trade account to pull live pricing and availability straight into the kit list, so the design tool and the wholesaler sit inside one workflow. Software is free or nearly free because the components are where the margin lives.

Three consequences follow, and an honest review names all three:

1. The compliance work is the product. Midsummer’s customers are MCS-certified installers whose paperwork burden is real, so that is what the software automates.
2. The component database is opinionated. A distributor-built tool naturally knows the distributor’s catalogue best.
3. The pricing incentive is different. The software is a channel for hardware, which is a structurally different pricing position from a platform seeking a per-seat return. We are describing the model, not forecasting anyone’s price list.

Midsummer’s own Easy PV FAQ states the tool “has been built from the ground up according to MCS guidelines and Building Regulations.” That is a narrow claim and a true one, and it is the whole positioning.

The 5-Axis Review Bench

This is the Heaven Green 5-Axis Review Bench, the same published frame we apply to every tool on this site. Ten points per axis, fifty total, with the axes stated so you can disagree with a score and still reuse the method.

Axis	What it measures	Easy PV	Notes
Design and simulation depth	Hour-by-hour physics, P50/P75/P90, shading model, thermal and soiling losses	5 / 10	Competent domestic estimating. No bankable confidence bands.
Compliance and documentation output	Compliance reports, structural calculations, network operator forms, handover packs	8 / 10	The strongest axis. MCS-shaped output is native, not bolted on.
Proposal and sales workflow	Branded proposal, pricing calculator, e-signature, CRM	7 / 10	Good, and most of the sales layer sits behind Pro.
Price against value	Total annual cost for the work delivered	10 / 10	A free tier that produces compliant output is difficult to argue with.
Support and onboarding	Documentation, responsiveness, training	6 / 10	Priority support is a Pro feature. Free users queue.
Total		36 / 50

Verdict. Easy PV is not a small version of a big platform. It is a correctly sized tool for one regulated market, and inside that market its score per pound is the best we have measured.

Pricing

Easy PV publishes its pricing, which already puts it ahead of most of this category. The published plan page lists three tiers.

Plan	Published price	What you get
Basic	Free	2D and 3D roof design, PV system design, performance calculations, self consumption estimation, structural analysis, automatic schematic, financial projections, pricing calculator, customer proposal, payment options, automated network operator forms
Pro	£35 / month	Everything in Basic plus unlimited Magic design mode, project sharing and team management, CRM integration, email templates, project status, pre-installation survey, post-install photographic record, e-signing, proposal branding, additional forms and reports, automatic network operator application, priority technical support
Enterprise	Call to discuss	Unlimited users, custom branding, custom forms and reports, user roles, custom CRM integration, dedicated server, two-factor authentication, dedicated support and training

Pricing per Easy PV’s own published plan page, fetched 2 August 2026. Enterprise is not publicly listed and Midsummer’s FAQ states only that “pricing differs depending on the complexity of the development work required.” We have not published an Enterprise figure because there is not one to publish.

Two things to check before you treat the free tier as genuinely free. First, the sales layer that makes a small installer look professional, meaning branding, e-signing and CRM sync, sits behind Pro. Second, priority technical support is a Pro feature, so a free account waits in the ordinary queue when a network operator form will not validate at five o’clock on a Friday.

What Easy PV Does Best

MCS-shaped compliance output. This is the reason the tool exists. Easy PV states it produces “MCS compliant self-consumption modelling” with automated sun path diagrams, usage profiles, import and export analysis and storage utilisation, and it generates MCS-compliant lifetime performance calculations. Under the MCS site survey method, the installer records a shade or horizon line on a sun path diagram and derives a shading factor from it, and that factor has to appear in the customer’s quotation. Very few design tools produce that artefact in the form a UK certification body expects. Most produce a general shading loss percentage and leave the installer to translate it. Easy PV produces the thing itself.

Structural calculations in the same pass. The feature pages describe structural calculations covering “MCS-compliant weight and wind loading estimates.” Weight and wind loading is where a domestic retrofit goes wrong quietly, and having it computed from the same roof geometry that drove the layout removes an entire re-entry step.

Automated network operator paperwork. Automated forms sit in the free tier and automatic application submission sits in Pro. For a two-van installer, that is a genuine hour back per job.

Four design modes. The site describes four modes from a simple roof outline to a full 3D studio. That range matters more than it sounds: a straightforward south-facing pitch does not deserve a 3D model, and a Victorian terrace with three dormers and a neighbour’s chimney does.

The kit list to purchase order path. Linking a Midsummer trade account pulls pricing and live availability into the design. Whether that is a benefit or a lock-in depends entirely on where you already buy, and it is stated here as a benefit first because for Midsummer’s existing customers it plainly is one.

The price. A free tier that emits a compliant quotation is a serious thing to offer. Our free solar design software guide covers the rest of that shelf, and Easy PV sits at the top of it for UK work.

Get a free site assessment. Our engineers visit within 24 hours and send a custom savings proposal in 48 hours, no cost, no obligation. Get your free quote →

Where Easy PV Falls Short

Simulation depth is domestic-grade, and that is the honest headline. Easy PV produces performance calculations suited to a UK domestic quotation. On the published feature pages and in our own use, we did not find a full 8,760-hour, module-level yield model with P50, P75 and P90 confidence bands and itemised thermal, soiling and spectral loss breakdowns. For a 4 kW roof in Norwich that is entirely appropriate. For a 400 kW warehouse roof being financed on modelled yield, it is not, and no amount of goodwill closes that gap. Our solar shading analysis software guide sets out the difference between an estimating shading model and a bankable one, and our shading loss glossary entry defines the term itself.

It is a UK product, and Ireland aside, that is the boundary. The compliance intelligence that makes Easy PV valuable is British compliance intelligence. Take it to Germany, Australia or India and the single most useful thing about it stops applying. We found no PM Surya Ghar subsidy workflow, DISCOM (distribution company) net metering tariff library or AS/NZS documentation described in the published feature set.

Commercial and ground-mount work is thin. The tool is aimed squarely at rooftops. Terrain, row shading between ground-mount tables and utility-scale layout optimisation are outside its scope. See our PVcase review for what that end of the market actually requires.

Drone and as-built capture is not part of the published feature set. Site verification is manual. Our Scanifly review covers the tools built for that job.

The distributor relationship cuts both ways. You are running your design process inside a wholesaler’s product. That is a fair trade for free software and it should be a deliberate choice rather than a discovered one, particularly if you buy competitively across several distributors.

Support tiering on a free product. Reasonable commercially, and still a real constraint. If Easy PV is load-bearing for your quoting, budget the £35.

Who Should Buy Easy PV

The reader for whom Easy PV is the correct purchase, ahead of every other tool on this site including our own sister product:

You are an MCS-certified UK installer doing domestic rooftop retrofits, somewhere between one van and eight, quoting maybe 15 to 60 jobs a month. Your bottleneck is not simulation accuracy. It is the compliance paperwork and the time between the survey and the quote landing in the customer’s inbox. You buy a meaningful share of your kit through Midsummer already. Nobody in your pipeline has ever asked you for a P90 number, and if one ever did you would subcontract that job rather than buy a platform for it.

For that installer, Easy PV at £420 a year is not the cheap option. It is the correct option, and paying £4,000 for a platform whose extra depth you will never invoke would be a worse decision, not a safer one. That reader is real, we are naming them plainly, and this review is not going to pretend otherwise.

A second reader: a new MCS applicant. Learning the scheme’s evidence requirements inside a tool that was built around them is a faster route than learning them from the standards and then hunting for software that produces the right artefacts.

Who Should Not Buy Easy PV

Anyone whose projects are financed on modelled yield. If a bank or a fund specifies the simulation methodology, start with our PVsyst review or the PV*SOL review.

Commercial and industrial EPCs. The design ceiling arrives well before your project size does. The best solar design software roundup ranks the tools that scale.

Anyone working outside the UK and Ireland. The compliance value does not travel. Our UK solar design software guide covers the British market properly, and solar design software India covers ours.

Installers who want distributor neutrality as a policy. A legitimate position, and it rules out a wholesaler-built tool by definition.

Teams that need SLD and BOQ as a first-class deliverable. Easy PV produces an automatic schematic, which is not the same as a full single-line diagram and bill of quantities workflow.

Easy PV vs SurgePV

Disclosure, stated plainly: SurgePV is a sister product of Heaven Green Energy and we run it daily on our own EPC projects. That is first-party operating experience and a commercial interest at the same time. Read the table with both in view.

Axis	Easy PV	SurgePV	Honest read
Published price	Free tier, Pro £35/month	$1,299 per user per year on the 5-user plan	Easy PV, decisively, for a small UK domestic shop.
UK MCS compliance output	Native, including sun path shading factor and structural loading	Not an MCS-specific workflow	Easy PV.
8,760-hour simulation with P50/P75/P90 bands	Not in the published feature set	Every paid plan	SurgePV.
SLD and BOQ	Automatic schematic only	Native auto-generated	SurgePV.
Commercial and ground-mount scale	Rooftop-focused	Designed for it	SurgePV.
India workflow (PM Surya Ghar, DISCOM tariffs)	None	Native	SurgePV.
Multi-market coverage	UK and Ireland	Multi-country	SurgePV.
Distributor independence	Built by a distributor	Independent of any distributor or manufacturer	SurgePV.
Brand track record	Backed by an established UK distributor	Launched 2025, thin brand recognition	Easy PV.
Drone or as-built capture	None	None	Neither.
Structural stamping	Loading estimates, not stamped	Not available	Neither, and Easy PV is closer for domestic loading.
Racking database	Distributor catalogue depth	Thinner than its module and inverter libraries	Easy PV.

SurgePV’s weaknesses are named in that table on purpose. It launched in 2025 and carries far less brand recognition than a product backed by an established UK distributor, it has no drone capture, it does not do structural stamping, and its racking database is thinner than its module and inverter libraries. Against a £35 monthly subscription for a UK domestic installer, SurgePV is also simply more tool than the job needs.

The dividing line is clean. If every project you will touch this year is a British domestic roof, Easy PV wins on cost and on compliance fit, and we would say so to your face. If you work above roughly 100 kW, work outside the UK, or ever need a defensible yield report, one platform that does both jobs costs less than a free one plus the paid one you will buy alongside it. That is the case for SurgePV’s simulation engine sitting under the same proposal.

How Heaven Green Energy Uses This In Practice

We are an EPC before we are a software opinion. Our design team runs SurgePV daily across residential, commercial and industrial work out of Gujarat.

We do not run Easy PV, and the reason is geographic rather than a criticism. Our residential proposals carry PM Surya Ghar subsidy arithmetic and DISCOM-specific net metering tariffs, and roughly a third of our volume by capacity sits above 100 kW where a lender or a corporate finance team names the yield methodology. A tool whose core value is British certification evidence would be carrying none of that weight for us.

What we did take from studying it is the principle. Compliance artefacts should fall out of the design rather than being reassembled afterwards from a spreadsheet. When we specify our own India workflow we ask the same question Easy PV answers for MCS: does the regulator’s required document come out of the tool in the regulator’s own shape, or does an engineer retype it? The International Energy Agency’s renewables analysis is consistent on this point across markets, in that soft costs and administrative time move more slowly than hardware costs, so automating them is where the remaining margin sits.

For engineering work that needs a stamped output rather than an estimate, we point clients at Heaven Designs’ solar permit design service, and for string-level electrical checks the free QBits Energy string sizing calculator is a useful cross-check against any design tool’s automatic stringing.

For readers on the buying side rather than the building side:

• Residential Solar: 1 to 10 kW rooftop with PM Surya Ghar handled start to finish.
• Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with ROI modelling and depreciation planning.
• Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW+ turnkey.
• Solar Calculator: subsidy and 25-year savings in 60 seconds.

Other evaluations in this series: OpenSolar review, Solargraf review and Pylon review. The category overview is our solar design software pillar.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Easy PV cost in 2026?

Easy PV publishes three tiers. Basic is free and includes 2D and 3D roof design, PV system design, performance calculations, structural analysis, an automatic schematic, financial projections, the customer proposal and automated network operator forms. Pro is £35 per month and adds team management, CRM integration, e-signing, proposal branding, automatic network operator applications and priority technical support. Enterprise pricing is not publicly listed and is quoted on request.

Who makes Easy PV?

Easy PV states that it is developed by the team at Midsummer, a UK renewable energy distributor. The software links to a Midsummer trade account so component pricing and live availability feed the kit list directly. The commercial logic is that the design tool supports the hardware business, which is why the software itself is free or inexpensive.

Does Easy PV produce an MCS shading factor?

Easy PV produces MCS-compliant self-consumption modelling with automated sun path diagrams, and it states it was built according to MCS guidelines. Under the MCS site survey method the installer records a shade or horizon line on a sun path diagram and derives a shading factor for the quotation. That is a certification artefact rather than a bankable simulation result, and the two should not be substituted for each other.

Is the free version of Easy PV actually usable?

Yes, for UK domestic work. The free Basic tier covers design, performance, structural analysis, financial projections, the customer proposal and automated network operator forms, which is a complete quoting loop. What sits behind Pro is the professional finish and the team layer: branding, e-signing, CRM sync, shared projects and priority support. A single-operator installer can work entirely on Basic.

Can Easy PV produce bankable yield reports?

Not in our assessment. We did not find a full 8,760-hour, module-level simulation with P50, P75 and P90 confidence bands and itemised soiling, thermal and spectral loss breakdowns in the published feature set as of August 2026. Its performance calculations are built for UK domestic quotations. A financed commercial project needs a dedicated engine such as PVsyst, PV*SOL or SurgePV alongside it or instead of it.

Does Easy PV work outside the UK?

There is an Irish version of the service, and beyond the UK and Ireland the tool loses the thing that makes it valuable. Its compliance intelligence is British, so a user in Germany, Australia or India gets a competent basic design tool with no relevant regulatory workflow. Installers in those markets are better served by tools built for their own certification regime.

Easy PV or SurgePV, which should I choose?

Choose Easy PV if you are an MCS-certified UK installer doing domestic rooftops and your bottleneck is compliance paperwork rather than simulation depth. Choose SurgePV if you need bankable 8,760-hour simulation with P50 to P90 bands, native SLD and BOQ output, commercial scale, or India workflows such as PM Surya Ghar. SurgePV launched in 2025 and has no drone capture or structural stamping.

Is Easy PV good for commercial solar?

Only at the smaller end. The tool is rooftop-focused and aimed at domestic retrofits, so terrain modelling, ground-mount row shading and utility-scale layout optimisation are outside its scope, and the missing bankable simulation becomes a hard blocker as soon as a lender is involved. Commercial and industrial installers generally pair it with an engineering tool or move platform entirely.