Pylon Review 2026: Fast, Cheap, And Honest About Depth

A Pylon review has to start with the pricing model, because it is the most unusual thing about the product and it changes who should buy it. Pylon does not sell seats. It sells projects, at $4 for a Standard project and $10 for a Pro project, with no monthly minimum and five free Standard credits to start. For a two person installer doing six residential jobs a month, that is roughly $24 in software cost. Nothing else in this category prices that way, and it makes Pylon the only serious design and proposal tool a very small installer can run without a subscription decision. The tool itself is fast, modern and pleasant to use, and it is candid about where it stops. Built in 2016 and now used by several thousand solar businesses, mostly across Australia and the United States, it is a residential tool that scales into small commercial and no further.

Direct answer. Pylon is a fast, lightweight solar design and proposal tool priced per project at $4 Standard and $10 Pro, with no monthly fee. Standard covers systems up to 30 kW DC, Pro adds batteries, custom load profiles and larger systems. It scores 37 of 50 on our bench. Best for small residential installers. Wrong above 100 kW or anywhere a lender wants P90 yield.

This is an evaluation, not a switching guide. If you have already decided to leave, our Pylon alternative comparison ranks the replacements and walks the migration. Here we are answering the earlier question: is Pylon any good, and should you buy it.

What Pylon Is

Pylon is a browser based solar design, proposal and CRM platform, founded in 2016 by a solar engineer and a software developer, and now used by several thousand solar businesses with the heaviest concentration in Australia and the United States. It runs on desktop and on iPad, which is not incidental: the iPad support exists because a meaningful share of its users design and present in the customer’s living room.

The design flow is deliberately lightweight. You pull high resolution aerial imagery for the address, place panels on a 2D work surface rather than building and rotating a 3D model, add obstructions and trees, and run a shading analysis. Load profiles, battery sizing on the Pro tier, financial modelling and a proposal all sit in the same file, and the component library runs to more than twenty thousand parts. It also generates a schematic diagram automatically, which is more documentation output than most sales-first tools offer.

The 2D surface deserves a defence, because it looks like a limitation and often is not. On a simple gable or hip roof, panel placement in 2D with tilt and azimuth entered numerically is faster than orbiting a 3D model to check nothing clashes. The 3D approach earns its cost on complex roofs, dormers, multiple levels, awkward setbacks. Pylon made the trade in favour of the common case, which tells you exactly what kind of tool it is. Its 2026 standing among Australian installers, where public user reviews rate it highly, appears to come largely from that speed.

The 5-Axis Review Bench

We score every tool on this site out of 50 on the Heaven Green 5-Axis Review Bench, with the axes published so the score is auditable rather than an opinion.

1. Design and simulation depth. Roof modelling accuracy, and whether yield is a physical simulation or an estimate.
2. Compliance and documentation output. Schematic or single line diagram, bill of quantities, permit plan set, lender grade report.
3. Proposal and sales workflow. Branded customer document, finance math, e-signature, pipeline.
4. Price against value. Cost against capability, including what you still have to buy alongside it.
5. Support and onboarding. Documentation, training, and how quickly a new designer becomes productive.

Pylon is a genuine hybrid rather than a pure sales tool, so unlike a CRM it is fairly measured on all five. It just concentrates its strength in a narrow band.

Verdict. Pylon is a good tool that knows what it is. Thirty seven out of fifty reflects genuine strength in speed, price and proposal quality, held back by engineering depth that stops well before the commercial and lender facing end of the market. Its pricing is set accordingly, which is a point in its favour rather than against it.

Pricing

Pylon’s pricing is published, which already puts it ahead of most of this category, and it is worth reading carefully because the headline is easy to misread.

Two things follow. First, editing or revisiting an existing project costs nothing extra, so the per project fee is a project fee and not a per revision fee, which matters when a customer changes their mind three times. Second, the “no monthly fees” framing holds only if you skip the CRM. Add CRM for three users and you are at $147 a month before a single project, which changes the arithmetic completely.

For how per project pricing compares against per seat licensing across the whole category, our solar design software pricing breakdown does the arithmetic on several team sizes.

What Pylon Does Best

Speed that is real, not marketing. A residential proposal in around two minutes is achievable, not a demo trick, and it comes from three decisions working together: 2D placement instead of 3D modelling, automatic imagery, and a proposal template that generates rather than gets assembled. For an installer quoting from the customer’s kitchen table on an iPad, that speed converts. Sitting there for twenty minutes building a 3D roof loses the room.

Pricing that fits a small business. Per project pricing removes the single biggest barrier for a small installer, which is committing to an annual licence before knowing whether the volume will be there. Five free credits with no card means you can evaluate it on real jobs rather than a sandbox. It also means a seasonal business does not pay for quiet months.

Proposals that look modern. The customer facing output is clean, interactive web or PDF, with financing options presented properly. This is a market where a lot of proposals still look like spreadsheets exported badly, and presentation genuinely closes deals in residential.

Automatic schematic generation. Producing a schematic diagram from the design puts Pylon ahead of the proposal-only tools on our bench, several of which output no electrical drawing at all. It is not a stamped permit set, but it is a real artefact.

Battery and load profile modelling on Pro. Custom load profiles matter more every year as export tariffs fall and self consumption decides the economics. Having battery sizing in the same file as the proposal, rather than in a separate calculator, is the right architecture.

Comparing installers rather than software? Our solar calculator gives you system size, subsidy and 25 year savings in about 60 seconds.

Where Pylon Falls Short

1. 1
   Engineering depth above straightforward residential. Users consistently report it works well below roughly 100 kW and struggles above it. Complex commercial structures, multi level roofs with heavy self shading, and anything needing detailed near shading modelling are outside its comfortable range.
2. 2
   No probabilistic yield. As of August 2026 we found no P50, P75 or P90 output in the product, so the report does not carry the probabilistic bands a lender or a tax equity desk usually asks for. On residential cash sales this rarely comes up. On a financed commercial deal it is often the first question asked.
3. 3
   Imagery coverage is uneven. High resolution aerial imagery is available in selected countries only. In markets where it is thin, the speed advantage largely disappears because you are back to manual roof entry.
4. 4
   Proposal customisation is limited. A recurring theme in user feedback. The templates look good out of the box and resist being bent far from that look, which frustrates companies with strong brand guidelines.
5. 5
   CRM is a separate subscription. The no-monthly-fee framing stops applying the moment you need pipeline management, which is a listed add-on at $49 per user per month.

Who Should Buy Pylon

The reader for whom Pylon beats SurgePV, plainly, is the small residential installer doing fewer than about fifteen jobs a month with no commercial pipeline and no lender in the picture. At that volume Pylon costs a few hundred dollars a year against several thousand for a seat licence, and the engineering depth being paid for in the seat licence would sit unused. Buying a lender grade simulation engine to sell 5 kW rooftops is spending money to solve a problem you do not have.

Who Should Not

Two groups, and the second is the one that gets caught.

The first is anyone doing real commercial work. Above 100 kW the roof gets complicated, the self shading gets real, the customer brings a consultant, and the finance package wants probabilistic yield. Our commercial solar design software guide covers what that tier of work actually requires.

The second is the fast growing residential installer who has not yet noticed the crossover. Per project pricing is a gift at low volume and a slow leak at high volume. At sixty projects a month with a third on Pro, you are paying roughly what a small team of seat licences costs, and getting less engineering for it. Recalculate every quarter rather than assuming the model that suited you at launch still suits you. The same logic applies to any per project vendor, and it is set out across the field in best solar design software.

Pylon vs SurgePV

Disclosure, plainly. Heaven Green Energy runs SurgePV on its own EPC projects, and SurgePV is a sister product within the Heaven Group. That is first hand operating experience and it is also a commercial interest. Both are true, so SurgePV’s weaknesses appear in the same table as Pylon’s.

SurgePV documents the engine behind its column on its solar simulation software and 3D solar roof design pages, so the depth claim can be checked at source.

The comparison is genuinely a volume and complexity question rather than a quality one. Below the crossover, Pylon is cheaper and faster and the depth would go unused. Above it, the per project model stops saving money at exactly the moment the engineering starts mattering, which is an awkward coincidence for a growing installer and the main reason teams move.

How Heaven Green Energy Uses This In Practice

We do not run Pylon as a production tool, because our own mix runs from residential rooftops through 100 kW plus industrial jobs where lender facing yield is a requirement, and a tool that stops at small commercial cannot carry that. We have benched it, and the speed claim held: on a simple two plane residential roof, a presentable proposal took a few minutes, and the number it produced was in a sensible range for a system of that size and orientation.

What we would say to any small installer weighing it is the thing our own cost history shows. The moment your average job size moved above about 50 kW, the design questions changed character. Shading stopped being a tree and became the plant room and the adjacent shed. Somebody asked what soiling loss you assumed. The DISCOM asked for a drawing. None of those are Pylon’s job, and no amount of speed substitutes for them. The transition point is predictable, so plan for it rather than discovering it during a tender.

For work that needs a stamped drawing or a structural check, we route to Heaven Designs permit design, and string sizing on hardware choices gets checked against the QBits Energy string sizing calculator before a BOQ is issued.

If you are here as a solar buyer rather than a software buyer:

• Residential Solar: 1 to 10 kW rooftop with PM Surya Ghar subsidy handled for you.
• Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with ROI and accelerated depreciation modelling.
• Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW and above, turnkey with performance guarantees.
• Solar Calculator: subsidy and 25 year savings in 60 seconds.

Market context on installer software and residential solar volumes is tracked by pv magazine and Mercom India, with global deployment benchmarks from the International Energy Agency and IRENA.

Related Software Reviews

Same five axis bench, applied consistently across the category.

• SolarEdge Designer Review
• Sunbase Review
• OpenSolar Review
• Solargraf Review
• Aurora Solar Review

Category guides: the solar design software pillar, the residential solar design software guide, and solar proposal software.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Pylon cost?

Pylon charges per project rather than per seat. A Standard project costs $4 and covers systems up to 30 kW DC with five designs per project. A Pro project costs $10 and adds custom load profiles, battery storage design and commercial sized systems. There is no monthly minimum, revisiting an existing project is free, and new users get five free Standard credits with no card. The CRM is a separate subscription from $49 per user per month, and e-signature is $0.80 per project.

Is Pylon good enough for commercial solar?

For small commercial below roughly 100 kW, yes, using Pro projects. Above that, user feedback and the tool’s own design point agree that it struggles: complex structures, heavy self shading and detailed near shading modelling are outside its range. As of August 2026 we found no P50, P75 or P90 output, so a financed commercial project will usually need a second tool to produce the report a lender’s reviewer expects. Buy a simulation platform for that tier of work.

Does Pylon do shading analysis?

Yes, it runs a 3D shading analysis from obstructions and trees placed on the design, and for typical residential roofs the result is sound. What it does not do is hour by hour module level simulation with probabilistic yield bands, and it does not model complex obstruction geometry at the depth a bankable commercial report needs. Treat the yield figure as good for a residential sale and insufficient for an engineering review.

Is Pylon better than a subscription design tool?

It depends entirely on your volume. Below about fifteen projects a month, per project pricing is dramatically cheaper and the extra depth in a seat licence would go unused. Above roughly fifty projects a month, the per project cost approaches a small team’s seat licences while delivering less engineering. Work out your own crossover and recheck it quarterly, because a growing pipeline changes the answer without warning.

Does Pylon generate a single line diagram?

Pylon generates a schematic diagram automatically from the design, which is more electrical documentation than most sales-first proposal tools produce. It is not a stamped permit plan set and it should not be presented as one. Where an authority or a DISCOM requires a formal drawing, that work still goes to a design platform or an external drafting partner.

Which countries does Pylon work well in?

Australia and the United States are its strongest markets, and it has been recognised by Australian installers as a leading design tool. Its speed advantage depends on high resolution aerial imagery, which is available in selected countries only. In markets with thin imagery coverage you fall back to manual roof entry, which removes much of the reason to choose it over a more capable platform.

Can Pylon handle battery storage design?

Yes, on Pro projects. Battery storage design and custom load profiles are the main features that separate the $10 Pro tier from the $4 Standard tier, alongside larger system sizes. As export tariffs fall in several markets and self consumption decides project economics, having the load profile and the battery in the same file as the proposal is the right structure for a residential sale.

What is the best Pylon alternative?

That depends on what pushed you to look. If the trigger is engineering depth or a lender asking for P90, you need a simulation platform rather than a faster proposal tool. If it is proposal customisation, a design first platform with white label output solves it. Our Pylon alternative guide ranks the replacements and covers the migration steps in detail.