The FAQ does not contain a direct comparison, but might answer some questions: https://librepcb.org/faq/

One of the main "selling points" is the advanced library concept: https://librepcb.org/features/library-concept/

There are two types of PCB designers:

1) Those who believe in library managers

2) Those delivering boards on a regular basis

The vast majority of time in PCB design is spent reading datasheets. The second largest chunk of time is spent doing the engineering schematic design and analysis. After that is PCB placement. After that is building schematic and PCB symbols. After that is actual routing.

Yes, building library symbols annoys me. It's tedious and error prone. However, it's integral to your design and you can't skimp. The sooner you accept that, that better off you will be.

(A good example is your vias underneath a QFN for power and heat transfer. If your via rules change because you have a different board house, some of your physical symbols may need to change slightly. This sucks, and no library manager is ever going to solve this.)

I agree with you. That doesn't mean that Kicad's library system is great, though. It's bananas annoying to deal with.

Every PCB library manager is bananas annoying to deal with. Altium's was no better, IMO. Nor Orcad's.

Library managers for PCB design have all the same pathologies as bug ticketing systems in software development.

Hah! I was frustrated with KiCAD's library system until I used other tools. I got over it when my employer bought a $20k/seat electrical CAD system with a trash library and I had to draw all my own symbols. Those KiCAD folks have done a fantastic job, in my opinion.

Yep. A good portion of my time helping folks with PCB design is in getting them comfortable with making their own symbols and footprints.

Draw the parts. It's not that hard. Don't worry about libraries. Yes, somebody may have done it already. No, that one isn't the same. Just draw it, you have the datasheet. Make the symbol that fits your schematic, it'll be way better than shoehorning in the one you found.

I get it, I'm annoyed every time I have to draw a symbol, but that's just how it is. Every project I work on, I make a new library and draw symbols to put in it. I copy most library symbols I use into it so I can modify them. I reuse my own symbols, but I modify them for the new project. It's a fact of life... embrace it.

Wat

I download 99.9% of the symbols I don't already have available locally from online libraries. Why would I draw a symbol for random part when the manufacturer provides one and has uploaded it to all the usual places.

Because almost all manufacturers outsource the footprint creation stuff. And one sometimes finds mistakes.

What are the usual places for you? I rarely find proper footprint+symbol on snapeda for example, plenty of plain wrong or subtly wrong are however found on regular basis.

Hello there,

I hope you are doing well! This is Ron Publico from SnapEDA and we want to help you regarding your experience about our footprints and symbol at SnapEDA. May we ask if you can share us more information and send us an email to [email protected]?

Our team is more than happy to help you and investigate those footprint and symbols that you have check earlier.

Kind regards, Ron

I'm sorry, but SnapEDA is one of the companies specifically making the library situation worse (Altium comes in first place on that front, though).

For a while, everybody was shipping Altium libraries. This was really good because, as we well know, engineers are lazy. Thus, somebody would simply pack up their internal libraries and ship them. This meant that every symbol had been shipped and tested in a real product. Consequently, the libraries generally didn't have any fatal faults. And you could extract the symbols and make whatever edit you needed to fit into your own library management stuff.

And then Altium decided to enshittify things in order to extract rent from library management. Now, you couldn't extract symbols or footprints from a library, or you had to register with their cloud garbage.

And then SnapEDA and its ilk came along to "fix" this problem that Altium just caused. Except that engineers are lazy. Nobody uses SnapEDA for actual internal libraries for production boards inside the semiconductor companies. Consequently, the libraries have minimal feedback and you have to beg people to send you fixes. Which, of course, they don't do because engineers are lazy.

And don't get me started about the "licensing terms" behind using SnapEDA symbols.

I was still able to extract sources from integrated libraries in Altium 22 and I have no cloud integration turned on. Was there some easier process in the past?

Hello there, this is Carlos from SnapEDA replying. The licensing terms used for SnapEDA content are regulated by our Creative Commons BY-SA license, which is a fairly common license in the industry to share content for derivative works. For more information, please check the following link: https://support.snapeda.com/en/articles/2957815-what-is-the-...

The feedback our users give us is essential, and all our content is created using internal standards developed from the opinions of our community and manufacturers. If you can provide any specific feedback about our parts, please contact us. We'd be happy to assist!

Your footprints are absolute trash, that's the problem.

KiCAD is more complete and (imo) better overall.

LibrePCB is more simple.

I have found that Horizon EDA is squarely better than both KiCad and LibrePCB. With the addition of blind vias this year, it's capable of everything I could possibly need.

Horizon gives me that priceless feeling that the software is working with me rather than against me. I love it. It's beautiful. It deserves to be far more popular.

Also it’s so well written that you don’t need zillions of bug fixes like you always see in kicad and librepcb

I thought HorizonEDA was a Kicad fork?

It is not. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063002

It does use KiCads interactive router though