Best wind farm layout and micrositing software in 2026 (with real prices)

Searching for wind farm layout software returns vendor pages and a few listicles that copy each other's feature bullets. What they rarely give you is the price, or a straight answer to the question a developer actually has: which of these do I need at my stage of the project, and what does it cost to find out?

This page compares eight tools. Every price below was taken from the vendor's own price list on 8 September 2026 and is linked. Where a vendor does not publish prices, we say so rather than guess.

What people say about layout and spacing

The recurring theme in public discussions is that spacing is measured in rotor diameters, that the rule of thumb is wide, and that the real answer comes from modelling.

There's a lot of interesting CFD modeling that goes into optimizing wind farm layout given the prevailing atmospheric conditions. Rule-of-thumb though is 7-10 rotor diameters between turbines to limit the shadow effect.

individual turbines are typically spaced about 10 rotor diameters apart (some studies say 15 would be most efficient), and with rotor diameters having passed 100m long ago, creeping up to a 1/10th mile, that leaves us with about a mile between turbines

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, moving a turbine a few tens of metres can have an important effect on wind turbulence, component loads and production.

The open-source wake libraries attract a different kind of user: people building their own micrositing pipelines, and hitting the edges of the tools.

Add the missing area → optimized layout capability [...]: an optimizer that takes a bounded site area [...], a wind rose [...], and the existing PyWake wake model

While using the module "floris.tools.optimization.scipy.layout", the output "layout_opt" gives a nturbs allways lower than the number of turbines indicated at the input file, therefore the turbines optimized are always less than expected. In my case, I am trying to optimize a wind farm with of 6 turbines and turbines optimized are 2.

When running FLORIS with 5 or more aligned NREL5MW turbines (spacing 3D and higher) , gives issues when the wind speed is high. The model returns a 'nan' power production instead of (near) rated power for the last downstream turbine(s) for wind speeds 23 m/s and higher

Comparison at a glance

Prices exclude VAT and local taxes. windPRO and WAsP prices are in EUR from the vendors' European price lists; Openwind is in USD.

1. windPRO

Best for: teams that need permitting deliverables (noise, shadow flicker, visual impact) alongside energy calculations, in one package that regulators and lenders already recognise.

windPRO is a modular desktop suite. You buy the BASIS module, then add what you need: the ENERGY modules (METEO, MODEL, PARK, MCP, LOSS AND UNCERTAINTY, OPTIMIZE), environmental modules (DECIBEL for noise, SHADOW for flicker, ZVI for visibility, NORD2000), and SITE COMPLIANCE for IEC site suitability. It ships with a catalogue of more than 1,000 manufacturer-approved turbine models, and it wraps the WAsP flow model for resource work.

Pricing, from EMD's price page:

• BASIS: EUR 1,700 standard licence, or EUR 680 for a one-year licence.
• ENERGY modules: EUR 1,600 to 1,800 each standard; OPTIMIZE and PARK are EUR 1,700.
• DECIBEL EUR 1,600, SHADOW EUR 1,500, ZVI EUR 1,500, NORD2000 EUR 2,200, SITE COMPLIANCE EUR 1,800.
• A one-year licence is 40 percent of the standard price. After the first year, the service and update agreement is 20 percent of the list price of your modules per year. A second licence for the same holder is 50 percent.
• EMD raised prices on 1 January 2026.

A realistic developer bundle of BASIS plus PARK, METEO, MODEL, DECIBEL and SHADOW comes to about EUR 9,600 for standard licences, then roughly EUR 1,900 a year for updates.

Pros: the broadest module set on this list; outputs that authorities in Europe and India accept; strong turbine catalogue; a mature GIS-style map canvas.

Cons: modular pricing adds up quickly; Windows only; the learning curve is real, and most teams budget for EMD's training.

2. WAsP

Best for: wind resource assessment where you need the reference method that banks and authorities have trusted for decades.

WAsP (Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program) turns measured wind data into a wind climate across the site and estimates yield for a layout. It is a resource tool first and a layout tool second: it will compute wake losses for a layout you give it, but optimisation and permitting outputs are not its job. WAsP CFD adds a computational-fluid-dynamics option for complex terrain, sold as calculation credits. PyWAsP exposes the same engine to Python for automated workflows.

Pricing, from DTU's price page:

• WAsP Bundle: EUR 2,100 for the first year (EUR 1,900 when upgrading from WAsP 11), then EUR 800 per year.
• WAsP CFD credits: 5 for EUR 500, 20 for EUR 1,400, 90 for EUR 5,400.
• PyWAsP: EUR 1,500, 6,000 or 24,000 per year depending on run volume.
• WAsP Tools (Climate Analyst, Map Editor, Turbine Editor, CFD Result Viewer): free.

Pros: the lowest-cost entry among the commercial tools; the method everyone else validates against; free companion tools; educational licences.

Cons: limited layout optimisation and no permitting modules, so most teams pair it with windPRO, Openwind or WindFarmer.

3. Openwind

Best for: layout optimisation on large projects where each turbine move should be judged on cost of energy, not just yield.

Openwind is UL's layout design and optimisation platform. It models wakes with five customisable models (Modified Park, N. O. Jensen variants, Eddy Viscosity, and Deep Array Wake Models in Park and Eddy Viscosity versions), plus noise, shadow flicker, curtailment and GIS constraints, and it ties layout changes to project economics through its cost-of-energy model.

Pricing, from UL Renewables' price list:

• Openwind 2 or Openwind 3: USD 9,250 per year.
• Wind Developer Suite (Windnavigator, RRAP, Openwind and Windographer): USD 14,500 per year.
• Windographer Enterprise on its own: USD 2,600 per year.

Pros: the strongest optimisation engine on this list; deep-array wake models for large farms; economics built in; the suite bundles resource data and analysis.

Cons: the highest published price here, and it is a subscription, so there is no perpetual option; it assumes you already have a wind resource grid.

4. WindFarmer: Analyst

Best for: projects that need a DNV-validated energy assessment for financing.

WindFarmer: Analyst is DNV's desktop tool for energy yield assessment and layout, sold on the strength of DNV's validation datasets and its role as an independent engineer on many financings. Licences are standalone (one computer) or network, for three months or one year, through the Veracity store.

Pricing: DNV does not publish a price. The store lists subscription periods but requires a login to see costs, and network licences, three-year terms and enterprise agreements are quoted on request. Budget on the same order as Openwind.

Pros: credibility with lenders; DNV's wake and loss methodology; CFD.ML and API options for larger users.

Cons: opaque pricing; primarily a yield tool, with permitting outputs coming from elsewhere.

5. WindSim

Best for: complex terrain where linear flow models are known to struggle, and the team is willing to run CFD.

WindSim is a CFD-based wind flow model. It resolves flow over ridges, escarpments and forests better than linearised models, at the cost of computing time and expertise. It is usually used to produce a resource grid that then feeds a layout tool.

Pricing: WindSim's purchase page offers commercial and academic licences as subscriptions or perpetual licences, with prices on request. Public training is EUR 1,000 for the basics course and EUR 2,250 for the advanced course, with a 75 percent student discount.

Pros: physics-based flow in difficult terrain; academic licensing.

Cons: no published price; a specialist tool that needs CFD experience; longer turnaround.

6. PyWake and TopFarm (open source)

Best for: engineers comfortable in Python who want wake modelling and layout optimisation without licence fees, and who can produce their own reports.

PyWake is DTU's open-source wake modelling library, with a collection of engineering wake models and a fast vectorised solver. TopFarm builds an optimisation framework on top of it: layout, spacing constraints, boundaries and cost models. Both are MIT licensed and actively maintained by DTU.

Pricing: free.

Pros: no cost; transparent methods; scriptable, so every revision of a layout can be re-run automatically; the same institution that makes WAsP.

Cons: you build the workflow yourself; no permitting modules; results are as bankable as the person presenting them.

7. FLORIS (open source)

Best for: research and control-oriented work, including wake steering, and teams that want a second wake model to cross-check a commercial result.

FLORIS is NREL's open-source wake framework (the repository now lives under the NatLabRockies organisation). It includes several analytical wake models, layout optimisation helpers and yaw-based wake steering. The GitHub issues quoted above show both its reach and its rough edges: users do hit numerical corners, and they get answered in public.

Pricing: free, Apache 2.0.

Pros: free; well documented; large research community; wake-steering capabilities that commercial tools are only starting to match.

Cons: Python only; no GIS or permitting layer; you assemble the pipeline.

8. reneGIS Windmill Micrositing

Best for: checking a project's coordinates against every neighbouring project before submission, and re-checking on every revision.

reneGIS is the tool we make, and it solves a narrower problem than the seven above. It does not model a wind climate or estimate yield. It takes turbine and solar coordinates from your project and from competing projects, and audits every asset for spacing conflicts in rotor diameters, for neighbours sitting in the wind corridor, and for turbines placed inside a competitor's solar boundary. It reports every clash per asset, not just the nearest, and exports KML for Google Earth with colour-coded pins and red connector lines between clashing assets.

The work it replaces is the manual proximity check a developer's analyst does before a grid-connection or land application, which takes one to three days per project and has to be repeated whenever coordinates change.

Pricing: prepaid credits, spent per analysis, with free trial credits for new organisations. Request a demo for current pack prices.

Pros: minutes instead of days for proximity audits; multi-clash reporting; maps that non-GIS colleagues can open; browser based.

Cons: not a yield or resource tool; the wind corridor is a screening rule, not a wake model; you still need one of the tools above for energy numbers.

Which one should you use?

• You have met-mast or lidar data and need a wind climate: WAsP, or windPRO with the ENERGY modules. Add WindSim if the terrain is complex.
• You need permitting outputs (noise, flicker, visual): windPRO.
• You need to optimise a large layout on cost of energy: Openwind, or TopFarm if you have a Python engineer and time.
• You need a bankable yield assessment for lenders: WindFarmer: Analyst, or a windPRO-based assessment from a recognised consultant.
• You want to learn or cross-check wake models at zero cost: PyWake or FLORIS.
• You need to prove your coordinates do not conflict with neighbouring projects, and to re-prove it every revision: reneGIS, alongside whichever of the above you use for yield.

Methodology

Prices were read from each vendor's public price page on 8 September 2026 and linked above. Where a vendor publishes no price, we say "not published" rather than quoting third-party estimates. Quotes are verbatim from public posts, linked to the original, with omissions marked by brackets. We have not been paid by any vendor on this list, and we make the last tool on it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between wind resource assessment software and layout software?+

Resource assessment software (WAsP, the windPRO ENERGY modules, WindSim) turns measured wind data into a wind climate across the site. Layout software (Openwind, WindFarmer, TopFarm, FLORIS) places turbines in that climate and estimates wake losses and yield. Most projects use one of each, and several vendors bundle both.

How much does windPRO cost?+

As of September 2026, EMD lists the windPRO BASIS module at EUR 1,700 for a standard licence or EUR 680 for a one-year licence, with energy, noise and visual modules priced between EUR 1,500 and EUR 2,200 each. A one-year licence is 40 percent of the standard price, and the annual service and update agreement is 20 percent of list price.

Is WAsP free?+

No. The WAsP Bundle is EUR 2,100 for the first year and EUR 800 per year after that. The WAsP Tools (Climate Analyst, Map Editor, Turbine Editor) are free, and DTU offers educational licences separately.

Are there free alternatives to windPRO and Openwind?+

For wake modelling and layout optimisation, PyWake and TopFarm from DTU and FLORIS from NREL are free, open-source Python libraries used in research and increasingly in industry. They need a Python user, and they do not produce bankable reports on their own.

Does reneGIS replace windPRO or Openwind?+

No. reneGIS Windmill Micrositing audits turbine and solar coordinates for spacing, wake-corridor and boundary conflicts against competing projects. It does not compute a wind climate or an energy yield. Teams use it alongside a resource or layout tool, or on its own when the question is proximity to neighbours rather than yield.

How far apart should wind turbines be?+

Common screening rules are a minimum of about 5 rotor diameters in any direction and 7 or more rotor diameters along the prevailing wind. Utility-scale farms are often spaced 7 to 10 rotor diameters apart. Final spacing comes from a wake model run over the site's wind rose.