A focused CST alternative for planar PCB RF

CST's scope is 3D geometry, multiple solvers, and multiphysics, with a price to match. The question for a PCB RF designer is whether the work needs that scope, or whether it is patches, filters, couplers, and transmission lines that a focused tool turns around in minutes.

What CST has that RayRF does not

• Arbitrary 3D geometry, not just planar PCB stackups.
• Multiple solver types and multiphysics coupling.
• A deep feature set with decades of industrial use.

If the work needs those, RayRF is not a replacement. CST's time-domain solver also uses the finite integration technique, closely related to FDTD, so the difference is scope and workflow rather than physics family.

What RayRF does

One job: planar PCB RF, fast. Draw or import the board, set the stackup and ports, slide a quality preset, and run on your NVIDIA GPU with S-parameters updating live. The whole loop is one window, and an edit-and-rerun cycle is seconds, not a context switch into a separate post-processor.

Cost and trial

RayRF is 29 USD per month for the non-commercial Hobby tier and 149 USD per month, or 1,499 USD per year, for commercial use, with a 30-day free trial and no card required. You can evaluate it on your own design the same day, without a sales call. See pricing for the full breakdown.

Evidence

The CST license forbids publishing comparative benchmarks, so none are published here. What is published: RayRF against measured hardware, 43 VNA-measured structures across 4 fabricated boards on the validation page, and RayRF against openEMS on a matched mesh in the benchmark post, 173.7x on the GPU. Weighing RayRF against the free option instead? Read the openEMS comparison.