If you are an Indian rooftop installer searching for a The Solar Labs review, start with the thing that decides everything else: the brand now sits under Arka360. Arka360 hosts The Solar Labs product documentation on its own help site and publishes a Solar Labs software page on its own domain. Neither firm has published a formal rebrand announcement or a transaction statement, so we are telling you what those published pages show rather than asserting a corporate fact we cannot source. Practically, if you are buying today you are buying from Arka360, and you should confirm that before you sign. What follows is a real evaluation of that product, scored on our 5-axis bench, with the actual published India rate card in rupees rather than a converted dollar guess.
Direct answer. The Solar Labs, whose product documentation and India rate card are now published by Arka360, scores 38 out of 50 on our 5-axis bench, the strongest India-native residential design tool we have benched. Published India pricing runs ₹46,000, ₹70,000 or ₹1,00,000 per user per year plus 18 percent GST, with a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee. Buy it for high-volume PM Surya Ghar residential work.
Indian installers reading this already know the product, so this review skips the marketing summary and goes to the numbers, the tier gates and the two situations where a different purchase is the right one.
What The Solar Labs Is
The Solar Labs was founded in 2017 to sell solar design and proposal software to Indian rooftop installers, and it did the unglamorous thing that most global tools skip: it built for the way an Indian residential sale actually runs. Address in, satellite roof out, obstruction placement, a shading estimate, a layout, and a customer-ready quotation with the subsidy shown. The brand now sits alongside Arka360, which sells internationally, and the India rate card is published in rupees on the Arka360 India pricing page. We say “sits alongside” rather than “was acquired by” deliberately: neither company has published a transaction or a rebrand statement, and we are describing what the two companies’ own web properties show, not a corporate event we can source.
Bring one of your own sites to a free SurgePV demo. We will build the 3D roof from a satellite address, run the 8,760-hour shading simulation, and hand you the SLD, BOQ and branded proposal on the call.
Book a free SurgePV demo → Compare pricingThe 5-Axis Review Bench
Five axes, each out of 10, total out of 50, published so the score is auditable. Design and simulation depth measures the shading engine and the physics. Compliance and documentation output measures the single line diagram, bill of quantities and anything a DISCOM (electricity distribution company) or a lender will accept. Proposal and sales workflow measures the customer-facing document and the sales motion around it. Price against value measures cost per useful outcome. Support and onboarding measures time to a competent first design.
| Axis | What it measures | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Design and simulation depth | Shading engine, obstruction modelling, yield physics | 7 / 10 |
| Compliance and documentation output | SLD, BOQ, DISCOM and lender acceptance | 6 / 10 |
| Proposal and sales workflow | Customer document, subsidy presentation, sales motion | 8 / 10 |
| Price against value | Cost per useful outcome for an Indian residential team | 9 / 10 |
| Support and onboarding | Time to first competent design, local support | 8 / 10 |
| Total | 38 / 50 |
Two of those need a caveat rather than a shrug. The 6 on compliance is not the tool failing at engineering. It is a residential proposal product where the single line diagram export sits behind the top tier, which is a packaging decision, not an engineering one. The 7 on simulation is a genuine ceiling on our bench: the shading engine is good enough to price a rooftop, and it is not an hourly module-level engine of the kind a lender’s technical advisor usually asks to see. Where it is genuinely competing, on proposal workflow and on price for Indian volume work, it scores 8 and 9.
Pricing
The rate card is published in rupees, which is worth crediting. All figures below exclude 18 percent GST, which is added on top, and there is a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee across the tiers.
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | Projects and limits | Notable gates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | ₹7,500 | ₹46,000 | 360 residential projects a year, 25 kW maximum per design | No micro-inverter design, no automated stringing |
| Basic | ₹11,500 | ₹70,000 | Unlimited residential and commercial | Micro-inverter design and automated stringing included |
| Premium | ₹16,500 | ₹1,00,000 | Unlimited | SLD export, optimizer design, manual stringing, SketchUp export, API, customisable proposals |
With GST, Lite is about ₹54,280 a year and Basic about ₹82,600. That is the reconciliation for the ₹60,000 per user per year number most Indian installers quote from memory: it sits between the two, and it is a fair blended estimate of what a working seat actually costs in year one once onboarding is amortised.
📘 Regulation note
The 25 kW per-design cap on Lite is fine for PM Surya Ghar residential work, where the subsidy tops out at 3 kW, but it blocks the small commercial jobs that most Indian installers eventually take.
The two clauses to read before signing are the 360 projects a year cap on Lite (about 30 designs a month, which a busy rep passes) and the SLD export sitting in Premium. If your DISCOM application file needs a single line diagram out of the same tool, the real price is ₹1,00,000 plus GST, not ₹46,000. Our solar design software pricing breakdown sets that against bundled global platforms across a five-seat team.
What The Solar Labs Does Best
Throughput on Indian residential rooftops, at a price Indian volume work can actually carry.
India added rooftop capacity fast enough through the PM Surya Ghar rollout that throughput, not design sophistication, became the binding constraint for most installers, as the scheme’s own installation dashboard on the PM Surya Ghar portal shows. A PM Surya Ghar sales motion is a volume motion. A rep handling twenty enquiries a week does not need a lender-grade study for each one, they need an address turned into a presentable shaded layout and a quotation with the subsidy shown correctly, in under fifteen minutes, twenty times. That is the job The Solar Labs was built for and it does it well. The 3D output tests well with Indian homeowners, who respond to seeing their own roof rather than a generic diagram, and the quotation format matches what buyers here expect.
The second strength is that it was built inside the Indian market rather than localised into it. Sanctioned load, the subsidy conversation and the DISCOM-facing sequence are familiar to the product and to the support team, and support in Indian time zones with Indian context is worth more than a feature checkbox. Compare that to a US tool where a rep has to explain what a sanctioned load is before getting help.
The third is price honesty. ₹46,000 to ₹1,00,000 plus GST is real money for a small Indian firm and it is a fraction of what per-seat monthly global tools cost across the same team. Our ranked guide to solar design software in India puts that gap in context against Aurora and HelioScope at Indian exchange rates.
💰 Real numbers
At ₹54,280 a year with GST, the Lite tier costs about ₹150 a day. One extra closed 3 kW job a year covers it several times over.
Where The Solar Labs Falls Short
Four limitations, stated as an installer would state them.
The shading engine has a ceiling. It is good enough to price a rooftop and it is not an hourly module-level simulation. On a dense Ahmedabad or Pune rooftop with a water tank, a staircase headroom and a neighbour’s parapet, the difference between a monthly-average estimate and an 8,760-hour run can be several percent of annual yield, and it lands on the wrong side of the number you quoted. Our guide to shading analysis software for India covers where that boundary sits.
Engineering deliverables are tier-gated. SLD export, manual stringing and optimizer design all sit in Premium. That is a fair commercial choice, and it means the entry price and the working price are different numbers for many teams.
No lender-grade bankability position. Indian commercial and industrial solar is increasingly debt financed rather than paid from cash, a shift tracked in Mercom India’s rooftop market reporting, and in the financed deals we have seen the technical advisor asks for PVsyst. The Solar Labs is not positioned to compete there, but the constraint is real the moment your projects get debt.
The brand transition itself creates confusion. Older listings, comparison articles and even some resellers still refer to The Solar Labs as a distinct product. If you are procuring, confirm you are buying the current Arka360 product and current support terms, not renewing against a stale quote.
- ✓ Fastest address-to-proposal motion for Indian residential work
- ✓ Priced in rupees for Indian volume, from ₹46,000 a year
- ✓ 3D roof output that converts well with Indian homeowners
- ✓ Indian support team that already understands sanctioned load
- ✓ Published rate card, no quote needed to budget
- ✗ Shading depth below an 8,760-hour module-level simulation
- ✗ SLD export gated to the ₹1,00,000 Premium tier
- ✗ 25 kW per-design cap and 360 projects a year on Lite
- ✗ No lender-grade bankability position for financed C&I
- ✗ ₹10,000 onboarding fee plus 18 percent GST on every tier
Verdict. For Indian residential volume, this is a well-judged product at a fair rupee price. Its ceiling is engineering depth, and you will meet that ceiling the first time a bank or a large factory client audits your yield number.
Who Should Buy The Solar Labs
The reader for whom this tool, and not SurgePV, is the correct purchase is a one to four person Indian residential installer doing PM Surya Ghar volume in a single state, on systems under 10 kW, with no financed commercial work in the pipeline.
For that reader the case is straightforward. Lite at ₹46,000 plus GST covers 360 designs a year, which is more than one rep will produce. The output converts. The support speaks your regulatory language. Paying two or three times more per seat for simulation depth you will not use, on jobs no lender will audit, is not prudence, it is waste. We would not argue that installer into a more expensive tool.
The second genuine fit is a channel partner or dealer network that needs many low-cost seats producing consistent branded quotations. Per-seat economics decide that purchase and this tool wins it.
Sizing a system before you design it? Run the numbers with our solar calculator or talk to our engineering team about how we handle subsidy paperwork and net metering on 3 kW to 10 kW residential jobs.
Who Should Not
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1
Anyone doing financed C&I work. The technical advisor will want PVsyst. Budget for it rather than hoping the proposal engine will do.
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2
Teams working heavily obstructed urban rooftops. If water tanks and adjacent buildings decide your yield, you need hourly module-level shading.
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3
Ground-mount and utility-scale developers. Wrong category. Terrain-aware tools handle land parcels, this handles roofs.
-
4
Teams needing the SLD in the base plan. On Lite you will export it from somewhere else, so price the Premium tier honestly.
Migration options for that group are ranked in our Arka360 alternative comparison and in the broader best solar design software guide. Because the two names appear to point at one product, our Arka360 review covers the same platform under its current name and goes deeper on the international tiers, while our PVsyst review and Aurora Solar review cover the two tools Indian teams most often add on top.
The Solar Labs vs SurgePV
Disclosure, stated plainly. SurgePV is a sister product of Heaven Green Energy and we run it on our own EPC projects. That gives us first-hand operating detail and a commercial interest at once. The table names SurgePV’s weaknesses in the same rows as its strengths.
| Axis | The Solar Labs (Arka360) | SurgePV | Honest call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indian residential speed | 9 | 8 | The Solar Labs, narrowly. It was built for exactly this motion. |
| Entry price in rupees | ₹46,000 plus GST | ₹1.07 lakh per user per year | The Solar Labs. Materially cheaper at the entry tier. |
| Shading and hourly simulation | 7 | 9 | SurgePV. 8,760-hour module-level shading. |
| SLD and BOQ in base plan | ✗ Premium only | ✓ Included | SurgePV. No tier gate on engineering output. |
| Ground mount and utility scale | ✗ | ✓ | SurgePV. Different scale range entirely. |
| PM Surya Ghar subsidy logic | Partial, some setup | ✓ Automatic slab | SurgePV, but the gap is small in practice. |
| Drone or as-built capture | ✗ | ✗ | Neither. Scanifly owns that job. |
| Structural stamping | ✗ | ✗ | Neither. Both need an engineering partner. |
| Racking component database | Moderate for India | Thin | The Solar Labs, on Indian racking specifically. |
| Brand recognition in India | Established since 2017 | Thin since 2025 launch | The Solar Labs. It is a known name here and SurgePV is not yet. |
Four of those rows go against SurgePV and we are not going to soften them. SurgePV has no drone capture, no structural stamping, a racking database noticeably thinner than its module and inverter databases, and thin brand recognition since its 2025 launch, which matters in a market where a DISCOM officer or a bank may ask whose software produced the report. Where it wins for the majority reader is scale range and no tier gates: the same licence covers a 3 kW rooftop and a 20 MW ground mount, with 3D roof design and the single line diagram output included rather than gated.
How Heaven Green Energy Uses This In Practice
Our Gujarat residential work has exactly the shape this tool targets: 3 kW to 10 kW rooftops, PM Surya Ghar applications, DISCOMs like UGVCL, DGVCL, MGVCL and PGVCL, and volume rather than complexity. So we have a real opinion on where the ceiling sits.
The ceiling is shading, and it is not theoretical. On a 6 kW Rajkot install last year, a monthly-average estimate and an 8,760-hour run differed by about 9 percent of annual yield, because a neighbour’s parapet clipped one string through winter afternoons. Quoting the higher figure gets the signature and loses the customer in year two, when the generation report does not match the promise. For that reason we run hourly shading on every job over 5 kW, whatever tool produces the proposal.
The second field observation is about the subsidy. Show PM Surya Ghar as a direct benefit transfer into the customer’s bank account after commissioning, per the MNRE scheme structure, never as a discount on your invoice. Tools that present it as a line-item discount create a payment dispute at handover. This is a presentation choice, not a software limitation, and we have seen it cost installers money regardless of platform.
Where we go outside software entirely is stamped drawings and detailed engineering, which we route to Heaven Designs rooftop detailed engineering, and inverter selection questions, where the Qbits Energy inverter sizing guide settles most arguments faster than a design tool does.
For customers who found this page while comparing installers rather than software:
- Residential Solar covers 1 to 10 kW rooftop systems with PM Surya Ghar handled for you.
- Commercial Solar covers 10 to 100 kW with ROI modelling and depreciation planning.
- Solar EPC services covers turnkey design, supply and commissioning.
- Solar Calculator gives subsidy and savings numbers in about a minute.
Two definitions worth having before you sign anything: our PM Surya Ghar glossary entry explains the slab structure, and the ALMM entry explains which modules qualify. This The Solar Labs review lands at 38 out of 50, which is a good score for a product that knows precisely which customer it serves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Solar Labs the same as Arka360?
In practice yes, though neither company has published a formal announcement saying so. Arka360 hosts The Solar Labs product documentation on its own help site and runs a Solar Labs software page on its own domain. If you search for The Solar Labs pricing you land on the Arka360 India rate card. We have not been able to source a rebrand statement or a shared legal entity name from a primary source, so treat the connection as strongly evidenced rather than formally confirmed. When procuring, confirm you are contracting on current Arka360 terms rather than renewing an old quote.
How much does The Solar Labs cost in India?
Three published tiers, all per user per year and all excluding 18 percent GST: Lite at ₹46,000, Basic at ₹70,000 and Premium at ₹1,00,000. Monthly equivalents are ₹7,500, ₹11,500 and ₹16,500. There is a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee. With GST, Lite works out around ₹54,280 a year and Basic around ₹82,600, which is why most Indian installers quote roughly ₹60,000 per user per year as the working figure.
What is gated behind the higher tiers?
Lite caps you at 360 residential projects a year and 25 kW per design, and excludes micro-inverter design and automated stringing. Basic removes the project and size caps and adds micro-inverter design and automated stringing. Premium adds SLD export, optimizer design, manual stringing, SketchUp export, API integration and customisable proposals. The SLD gate is the one that catches teams, because a DISCOM application file usually needs one.
Is The Solar Labs good enough for shading analysis?
For a straightforward Indian rooftop, yes. For a dense urban roof with a water tank, a staircase headroom and a neighbouring parapet, it has a ceiling. The engine estimates shading well enough to price a job, but it is not an hourly module-level simulation, and on obstructed roofs the difference can reach several percent of annual yield. On any job over 5 kW in a crowded neighbourhood, run an hourly simulation before you commit to a generation figure.
Does The Solar Labs handle PM Surya Ghar subsidy?
It presents the subsidy in the quotation, though some setup is required and the slab is not always computed automatically from system size. That is workable for a team that configures it once. Whatever tool you use, present the amount as a direct benefit transfer into the customer’s bank account after commissioning, in line with the MNRE scheme structure, and not as a discount against your invoice, which creates payment disputes at handover.
The Solar Labs or Aurora Solar for an Indian installer?
For Indian residential volume, The Solar Labs, comfortably. Aurora has the deeper roof and shading engine, but at Indian exchange rates a per-seat monthly US subscription costs several times more across the same team, and we found no PM Surya Ghar, ALMM or DISCOM logic in its published feature set as of 2 August 2026. Aurora becomes the better answer only when your work shifts to complex or financed projects where the extra design depth is what the client is paying for.
Can The Solar Labs design commercial projects?
Yes, from the Basic tier upward, which removes the 25 kW per-design cap that limits Lite. It handles small and medium commercial rooftop work adequately. The constraint is not size, it is bankability: for a financed commercial and industrial project the lender’s technical advisor will typically ask for a PVsyst yield report, and in our experience a residential proposal platform’s output is not accepted in its place. Plan for a second licence if debt is involved.
What score did The Solar Labs get on your bench?
38 out of 50. It scores 9 on price against value, 8 each on proposal and sales workflow and on support and onboarding, 7 on design and simulation depth, and 6 on compliance and documentation output. That 6 reflects the SLD export sitting behind the top tier rather than an engineering failure. It is the highest score we have given an India-native residential design tool.
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