Fusion Personal vs SOLIDWORKS for Makers vs FreeCAD vs SketchUp Free: Which CAD License Lets You Sell?
Fusion Personal vs SOLIDWORKS for Makers vs FreeCAD vs SketchUp Free: Which CAD License Lets You Sell? - A step into the workshop.
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A buddy of mine started selling end-grain cutting boards out of his garage last spring. Nice work, clean glue lines, honest finish. Then he mentioned he'd been designing the layouts in Fusion on the free personal license. I had to stop him right there, because that free license has strings on it, and the strings are exactly the kind you don't notice until they cost you something.
So let's sort out the four options a garage shop actually has in 2026: Fusion for Personal Use, SOLIDWORKS for Makers, FreeCAD, and SketchUp Free. This is a licensing article first and a workflow article second, because the license is what bites you.
The Licensing Mess, Plain
Here's the part nobody explains clearly, and Autodesk's own page doesn't help. Fusion for Personal Use is free and, per Autodesk, intended for "hobbyists, makers, DIY enthusiasts, and anyone generating less than $1,000 USD annually from their work." That's the headline rule. But the FAQ on the same page says something stricter: that selling products, freelancing, or consulting means you should be on a commercial subscription, full stop, even under that grand. Both statements live on Autodesk's page, and I'm not going to pick one for you. The $1,000 figure is the published eligibility ceiling; the FAQ is Autodesk's official stance on selling. If your cutting boards start making money, you're on shaky ground with the free license either way.
SOLIDWORKS for Makers is the opposite. SOLIDWORKS's own FAQ says you can design and even sell parts as long as you stay under $2,000 a year in revenue. Above that, you're no longer eligible, and there's no upgrade path; you buy a commercial license separately. But $2,000 of annual sales is real headroom for a weekend board business.
SketchUp Free is the blunt one. Trimble states directly that SketchUp Free is not for commercial use, and there's no published dollar threshold to fall back on. Zero dollars of sales is the only safe reading. FreeCAD has no cap at all. The project's homepage says it straight: no licensing fees, no vendor lock-in, no restrictions. It's open source under LGPL-2.0-or-later, current stable release 1.1 as of March 2026.
What Each License Actually Costs
The price ladder, from Autodesk, solidworks.com, and the FreeCAD project:
| Option | Price | Selling allowed? |
|---|---|---|
| Fusion for Personal Use | Free | FAQ says no; $1,000/yr eligibility ceiling |
| SOLIDWORKS for Makers | $48/yr or $15/mo | Yes, under $2,000/yr revenue |
| FreeCAD | Free, open source | No cap |
| SketchUp Free | Free | No, per Trimble |
Two footnotes on SOLIDWORKS. The Makers page currently shows a $24/year promotional price, "half the usual price," so treat $48 as the standard list and check the price as it stands at checkout. And there's no free version or trial, though yearly subscriptions carry a 15-day money-back policy.
If you outgrow the cheap tiers, the jump is ugly in both directions. Fusion Personal to paid Fusion is $680 a year or $85 a month per Autodesk. SOLIDWORKS Makers to commercial SOLIDWORKS is a separate purchase with no upgrade path.
What You Get, and What's Locked Out
Fusion Personal is generous on the modeling side: full parametric, direct, surface, mesh, and freeform modeling, cloud storage with version history, and limited CAM. That last one matters, and I'll come back to it. What's locked out per Autodesk's feature table: advanced manufacturing, multi-user collaboration, full simulation, advanced drawings, a limited set of import/export file types, no configurations, no BOM, no cloud rendering, and no extensions. Support is community forum only.
SOLIDWORKS for Makers comes in two packages. The desktop version, 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers, is a Windows install with local and cloud storage, photorealistic rendering, and built-in 2.5- and 3-axis CAM. It works offline up to 30 consecutive days before syncing. The browser version, SOLIDWORKS xDesign for Makers, runs on anything with a connection, Macs and Chromebooks included, with AI design guidance and cloud rendering, but it needs to stay online. Storage caps at 25 GB and can't be expanded. One gotcha that matters if anyone else will ever touch your files: Makers files are digitally watermarked and open only with a Makers license. Your .sldprt files are dead ends outside the Makers world. Neutral exports like STEP, STL, IGES, DXF, and DWG are unrestricted, so export early and often.
FreeCAD gives you parametric modeling, production drawings, FEA, BIM, and dedicated CAM/CNC workbenches, and it reads and writes STEP, IGES, STL, SVG, DXF, OBJ, IFC, and more. If you tried FreeCAD years ago and quit, know that version 1.0 fixed the long-standing topological naming problem and added a proper assembly workbench. It's a different program now.
SketchUp Free is browser-only with 10 GB of Trimble Connect storage and 3D Warehouse access. Imports are SKP, JPG, and PNG. Exports are SKP, PNG, and STL. That's it. No DXF, no STEP, no CAM. For sketching out a workbench or a shop layout, fine. For a parts-making workflow, it's a dead end.
Sketch to Toolpath
Now the part that matters if you run a CNC. Fair warning: what follows is my own workflow analysis, not stopwatch data.
Fusion Personal wins on the sketch-to-toolpath pipeline for one reason: the free tier includes limited CAM functionality. You can generate toolpaths without paying anything. That's why CNC hobbyists have clustered around it, and that's the whole story.
SOLIDWORKS for Makers gets you there for $48 a year, and SOLIDWORKS markets the woodworking workflow directly: change one part and the mating parts update, then export files for CNC or laser cutting, with the CAM in the desktop package. For parametric furniture work where dimensions cascade, that's a genuinely strong pitch. Two-and-a-half and 3-axis CAM covers most garage CNC work.
FreeCAD's CAM workbench produces machine instructions for CNC machines from a 3D model, and a Path/CAM module has been part of FreeCAD since version 0.16. It's real, it's free, and it has no revenue ceiling attached. The trade is that you're trading polish for freedom, and you'll spend more time learning it.
SketchUp Free is last here by a mile. STL export and no CAM means you're bolting on other software to get to a toolpath. If CNC is your goal, SketchUp Free isn't your tool.
My Call
Right tool for the job, same as always.
If you're selling anything, even a few boards at the farmers market, Fusion Personal and SketchUp Free are both off the table on their makers' own terms. Autodesk's FAQ says sellers need a commercial subscription, and Trimble says Free isn't for commercial use, no dollar threshold offered.
If you want free and legal for selling: FreeCAD. No cap, no watermarks, no lock-in, and it'll take you all the way to a CNC toolpath. The cost is your patience during the learning curve.
If you're willing to spend $48 a year to buy back some of that patience: SOLIDWORKS for Makers, desktop package. It's an inexpensive legal way to sell with CAM built in, and $2,000 of annual revenue headroom covers most garage operations. The watermarked files are the catch. Export your geometry to neutral formats and keep those as your masters.
If you're a pure hobbyist who sells nothing and runs a CNC: Fusion Personal is hard to beat, because free toolpath generation is the whole ballgame. Just understand that the moment money enters the picture, Autodesk's fine print says the deal changes, and the paid version is $680 a year.
And if your design life is sketching shop projects in a browser, SketchUp Free does that without apology. It just doesn't do anything after the sketch.
Pick based on where the money is, not where the features are. The license is the part that fails first.