Best Wifi Heatmap Software for 2026: 11 Options Compared by Use Case

NetSpot is the easiest way to get a Wi-Fi heatmap without paying: upload a floor plan, walk the rooms, and tap each spot to record the signal. The free version covers one zone with 50 data points per snapshot, enough for a flat or small office, and the map shows signal, noise and channel overlap. When the free limits pinch, Home costs $49 once and Pro $149 once, with no subscription to renew.

The catch is the free tier's size, not its quality. One zone means a larger house or office needs a paid licence, and exports, active scanning and the full survey mode are paid too. NetSpot is still the right first download for almost everyone: it pairs a genuinely free heatmap with paid licences cheap enough for a small business.

UniFi Design Center answers a different question from the survey tools: what should the network look like before you buy anything? Upload a floor plan, trace the walls, drop access points onto the plan, and the tool draws simulated coverage in 2D and 3D, then totals a bill of materials with store prices. Automatic placement even suggests how many access points each room needs.

The catch is that it only plans Ubiquiti hardware, and the map is a prediction, not a measurement — walls, furniture and neighbours all bend real signal in ways the simulation cannot see. Use it to plan the purchase and the AP positions, then verify with NetSpot after the install. For a UniFi shop, it is free money.

VisiWave Site Survey is the visual pick in this list: its heatmaps render in 2D and 3D with colour coding a client reads at a glance, and it collects data three ways — one point at a time, continuous walks through the survey area, and GPS positioning for outdoor sites. Custom report templates and Google Earth export finish the job, and the $379-a-year subscription includes all updates and support while it is active.

The limits are the platform and the upsell. It is Windows only, there is no free plan beyond the evaluation version, and predictive surveys — the feature that simulates coverage before hardware exists — need the Pro edition at a higher price. For a surveyor who sells the map as much as the survey, the 3D views are worth the subscription.

TamoGraph Site Survey sits between the free tools and Ekahau: a professional survey tool that an IT team can learn in a day. It runs passive and active surveys, draws heatmaps for signal, interference, data rates and throughput, and produces reports ready to hand to a client. It works on Windows and macOS, supports 802.11ax, 6E and 7, and the maps are easy enough to read that a non-specialist can follow them.

The price is the trade-off: there is no free plan, only a fully functional 30-day trial, and Standard costs $999 for a one-year licence. Predictive modelling and GPS support need Pro at $1,999, and full validation can need extra adapters. For a team that surveys offices a few times a year, it is the cheapest route to professional-grade maps.

Acrylic WiFi Heatmaps is a dedicated survey tool for engineers who map large sites: it handles indoor plans where GPS does not reach, and outdoor GPS mapping for campuses, warehouses and smart-city areas. At each measured point it records signal strength and quality, then renders the coverage map and generates editable reports with a diagnosis of the network and advice on how to improve it. CSV export feeds the data into other tools.

The price is the catch for casual users: there is no free plan, only a 15-day trial, and the shortest licence is one month at 129 euros. It is also Windows only. For a one-off professional survey, though, the one-month licence is the cheapest way to get a proper tool for the job, and you stop paying when the survey ends.

Hamina Network Planner is the browser-based challenger to Ekahau: open a browser, upload a floor plan, and build a predictive design with 2D and 3D heatmaps and automatic access-point placement, with no heavy desktop install and no perpetual licence to buy. The free plan covers 30 locations, enough to design a house or test the tool, and paid tiers scale by location count rather than by seat.

The limits are scope and currency. Thirty locations will not cover a real office, so most buyers need Basic at 269 euros a year, and the tiers are priced in euros, so US buyers pay the converted amount. It also predicts rather than measures: pair it with Hamina Onsite when you need a walk-through survey of the finished network.

Hamina Onsite is the field companion to the Planner: an iPhone and iPad app that records real signal as you walk, in continuous, line or point modes, then syncs the survey to the cloud planner for analysis. It works offline, so a basement or warehouse with no signal still gets surveyed, and the results land in the same project as the predictive design, so the plan and the measurement sit side by side.

Two warnings before you buy. First, the $780-a-year figure comes from a third-party comparison, not a vendor price page we could re-read, so confirm it with Hamina first. Second, accurate surveys need compatible hardware such as the Oscium Nomad, which is a separate purchase, and Android field teams are out of luck — the app is Apple-only.

iBwave Wi-Fi Mobile puts indoor wireless design on a phone or tablet: survey a site, sketch a simple design, and sync the work to the PC product for full modelling, with 10 GB of cloud storage and a read-only Viewer licence included. It is purpose-built for indoor wireless work, so the workflow follows how a site survey actually runs, rather than bolting a map onto a generic scanner.

The term is the thing to plan around. Thirty days at $215 suits a single project, but a multi-month job needs repeated renewals, and large multi-floor models are still easier on the PC product. Treat Mobile as the field half of an iBwave workflow, not a standalone replacement for the desktop design tool.

AirMagnet Survey PRO is the enterprise surveyor's workhorse: it runs passive and active surveys at the same time, adds predictive planning through the Planner module, and includes voice-grade survey modes for hospitals, warehouses and offices where call quality is the requirement. Spectrum analysis integration helps track down the interference source, and the reporting is built for enterprise sign-off.

The price is the unknown. NetAlly publishes no starting price and sells through partners, so budget on a quote, and ignore the old $3,995 list price still floating around online — it is years out of date. Factor in supported adapters and NetAlly hardware too: the software licence is rarely the whole bill for an AirMagnet deployment.

Ekahau AI Pro is the industry standard for enterprise Wi-Fi design, and the price shows it: the perpetual licence costs $5,995 once, and a one-year Connect subscription at $1,995 a year is required with it. In return you get AI-powered design that places access points and plans channels across whole buildings, predictive surveys, spectrum analysis and capacity planning, plus mobile Survey and Analyzer apps and cloud project sync.

The catch is everything around the licence. Full survey features need the Sidekick 2 measurement device, sold separately, and the software is heavy on system resources. For a home or a small office this is vast overkill. For an enterprise engineer designing a hospital, campus or warehouse, it is the tool the client, the team and the next hire all expect.

NetSurveyor is the free Windows classic: freeware with no licence, no account and no limit on machines. It discovers nearby access points in real time and shows them in six diagnostic views, including a channel heatmap, a spectrogram and timecourse charts. A Map screen lets you upload a floor plan and collect samples by clicking your location, and the tool generates PDF reports and plays back recorded data for later analysis.

The trade-offs are age and scope. NetSurveyor is no longer actively updated, so newer Wi-Fi standards and adapters may not be covered, and its heatmap shows channel usage over time rather than coverage on a floor plan. For free Windows troubleshooting with logging and reports, though, it still earns its place.