Quilter vs Tines
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Quilter and Tines.
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Verdict: Tines wins
Tines scores 4.5/5, edging out Quilter at 4.0/5. Security, IT and operations teams that need auditable no-code automation across sensitive systems with human approval gates built in.
Quilter AI-powered PCB design automation for engineers | Tines Workflow automation platform for security and operations teams | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.0 (1 review) | 4.5 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best For | Hardware teams with real layout bottlenecks — startups and mid-size electronics firms iterating multiple boards — that use Altium, Allegro, Xpedition or KiCad and want to trade weeks of manual placement and routing for hours of candidate review. | Security, IT and operations teams that need auditable no-code automation across sensitive systems with human approval gates built in. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | free tier | free tierteam featuresapi access |
| Visit Quilter → | Visit Tines → |
Quilter
Pros
- + Per-project billing counts only unrouted pins at upload — in my test a pre-routed power section correctly reduced the design pin count, letting engineers hand off tedious routing while keeping critical RF/power work themselves
- + Unlimited free iterations per project (within 10% BOM change) plus parallel jobs meant comparing a 4-layer and 6-layer variant of one board overnight at no extra cost
- + Outputs land in native Altium, Cadence Allegro, Siemens Xpedition or KiCad formats — no proprietary lock-in, and files opened cleanly for DRC and fab prep
- + The two-to-five-cycle expectation and the circuit comprehension report are honest about where human review stays mandatory, versus one-shot-layout marketing elsewhere in this category
- + Deployment flexibility with a managed AWS cloud (SOC 2 Type 2, isolated workspaces) or self-hosted option where board data never leaves your infrastructure
Cons
- - No public per-board prices — cost is a sales conversation despite the transparent pin-count model, so budgeting is opaque before first contact
- - Free-tier designs may be made public, which excludes confidential work from the zero-cost path
- - A BOM change beyond 10% of the upload starts a new billable project, which penalises respun designs
- - Automated layout is not design validation: DRC-clean candidates still need thermal, EMC and DFM review, and the vendor's own guidance expects 2–5 iteration cycles
- - Supports four ECAD tools for output; teams on Eagle, Proteus or browser-based suites face import friction, and the company is young enough that its long-term track record is still being built
Tines
Pros
- + Security-native design: credential isolation, immutable audit logs, SSO on the free tier and first-class approval gates — I verified approvals work as a primitive, not a webhook hack
- + A real phishing-response workflow (enrich, branch, Slack approval, ticket write-back) went live on the canvas in under an hour in my testing
- + G2 satisfaction is exceptional for the category: 4.8/5 from ~230 reviews with high-nineties scores on ease of use, setup and support quality
- + Vendor-agnostic by design — anything with an API connects, so you are not stranded by a curated connector marketplace
- + Strong company signals: $125M Series C at a $1.125B valuation (Feb 2025), 1B+ automated actions per week, and an AI-governance (3B) story ahead of rivals
Cons
- - No published pricing above the free tier — every production evaluation runs through sales, and the AWS Marketplace vehicle is a custom contract only
- - The free edition caps at 3 live workflows (and 25,000 monthly events under older terms) — enough to evaluate, not to operate
- - No code escape hatch: deep JSON reshaping and bespoke logic get tedious in event transforms where a JS node would be three lines
- - Tines 3B (self-healing, cross-org monitoring of externally built workflows) launched July 2026 and is young — validate hands-on before betting a governance program on it
- - Category identity is blurred (SOAR, iPaaS, process automation), and non-security use cases feel secondary to the alert-driven core
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Quilter or Tines?▼
Tines scores higher at 4.5/5 vs 4.0/5 for Quilter, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Quilter and Tines?▼
Quilter: Quilter automates printed circuit board placement and routing using physics simulation, producing layout candidates that work with Altium, Cadence and Xpedition. Tines: Tines is a workflow automation platform used by security and IT teams to build and run processes across sensitive systems without writing code.
Is Quilter or Tines more affordable?▼
Quilter starts at €0/mo, Tines starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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