Flux Avis 56

Next-Generation of EDAs; Absolutly phenomenal support and design experience. Added value with the post-design reviews before manufacturing.

The Flux team have clearly worked hard to deliver not only a great browser based PCB design tool that cuts through the noise, but a great community for genius level hardware designers and newbies alike.

Their focus on community has definitively paid off, as plenty of great folk are willing to help you along the way. If you need something - just ask.

The AI Tooling is immature as it stands, but it's worth considering that there are few tools attempting this and having a realistic expectation is important. I've had mixed results however I think with time it will become a useful addition.

Flux has managed to help me deliver a PCB project from inception to delivery. I am not a hardware engineer. It makes me _feel_ like one.

Not sure what’s up with all the reviews calling Flux a “scam” these days, but I had a good experience with it! Their support was helpful, and their videos were useful to get started with the new software.

Scammy credit system. The AI chews through the credits without doing much of anything. Their bot freezes up easily and support is basically non-existent. Or maybe they're so busy digging through a backlog of reports that it takes ages to get help. As others have mentioned, it just piles components on top of each other. Almost the same prompts will yield a different result.

I got the free trial for this site… I didn’t like it at all. Horrible. Couldn’t even turn an LED on. I then proceeded to Cancel my free trial. I know I clicked cancel, Yet I check a month later I’m charged $100 to my bank account! I am disputing this charge. Did not authorize this. I clearly cancelled my subscription. There are criminals running this site. They have a product that doesn’t even work charging you money you never agree to pay. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!! Unusable product.

Beware this has all the hallmarks of a very crafty scam!! First of all when you sign up what is NOT clear is how long you have before you run out of free credits and then the system starts to bill you I wanted to create an outdoor weather PCB using standard Grove connectors and industry standard components. It took an absolute eon for a half baked unfinished output, the software is buggy it took ages for it to start - it went through the motions of working out the nests and the components and wiring. When he got to the wiring stage it seemed to hang and just spent ages going round in every decreasing loops almost as if it didn't know what to do. It doesn't give you options to see the product in 3-D and actually gave up to the extent whereby a lot of red errors came up with components which were basic SMD components which it didn't seem to be able to find locations for. As you're using the software on the top right hand corner once you run out of free credits you see a little picture of a shopping basket and an amount in dollars going UP this is the amount that you are being charged for using the software as it goes through each phase of the 'design process' when it got to about $34 I suddenly realised there is something drastically drastically wrong - I thought this was the bill of materials cost. No! it wasn't - I was being billed after the free credits for trying and attempting to create the item I wanted. This is a horrendously shocking abuse of customers trust. It is NOT clear on the website that this happens and thankfully the card I used is my Revolut card which means that when they try to charge the card I can block the merchant which is exactly what I'm going to do! The product that I tried to create is not finished due to bugs. The AI software I'm assuming they use is an API linked to a standard AI LLM is basically gouging the customer for money for something which you could probably do and in half the time on a piece of software like KI CAD. It really is THAT bad - so if you're thinking of signing up for flux my advice DONT bother. Avoid it like the plague it's got the word scam written all over it the software doesn't do what it says, it's not that intuitive. It really is that bad so if they think they're going get the $36 out of me then boy have I got a surprise for them ! Because I will just simply block the card - they don't have my address and if they want to try and take me to court for the $36 be my guest - my advice don't even bother with it it's just got scam written all over it and you are better off finding another piece of AI software that can do the job (probably better in fact) if you use Ollama or Claude or Perplexity you could do a much better job using those types of software on a home computer but this this absolutely sucks as I say avoid it like the plague don't even bother subscribing, save your money.

Scam. Designed to eat credits. I have a 10mmx10mm board. 2 pins and a pad. 2 layer, pad on bottom i asked it to connect Net1 to J3 using a smart via. It took 150 credits to go thru the process. Over 5$. Just to create the via, think longer, delete it and then not even apply it in the end. The only connection it made was on my schematic. 1 line. 7$ i drew it myself in 1 second literally. SCAM!!!! Stealing your money. If you try, got to subs and payments right away and change the monthly limit off of 100$. You will be thinking your on trial, use up the 500 credits in 2 prompts and then start charging your card tol you hit max which is default 100$ SCAM!
Does nothing that Kicad doesnt. Has AI attached and it does even work for small tasks. Dont bother with anything bigger. Just wasting time, which cost money too. Good idea, not even close to production ready. Stop being greedy, fix your product and then launch. You ruined your name now. Need to close shop and start with new name if anyone will ever use you again. Such a SCAM!

Update: Flux responded. The review was prompted. I caught everything before they caught me up and the review is so people after me dont get caught up. Thats why we do reviews, to share experience and im sharing mine. I canceled. I can do math and the free credits it took for the basic generations, thats what the costs would be. I was testing. This is a review of my testing and its not production ready. You also reveled it runs with co pilot. Microsoft co pilot excels at JAVA code, not design. I would try running Super grok for this use case.

Trial credits insufficient and unable to cancel.

I have flux.ai a try for PCB design. I burned through all my trial credits and another $2.50 in additional fees without producing a single piece of usable output.

I attempted to cancel, but the cancellation button is not available while using the trial despite the fact that is clearly is charging for additional credits.

Seems like there is a deliberate attempt to block cancellations.

useless. The AI doesn't even connect the components in the schematics, and in the PCB view, the components are stacked on top of each other. Components are missing, and there are many other basic level problem with the agentic feature. The editor would stillbe bad if we were just compare to other editors with a free option. The whole product is like when you want to be successful and do a startup, but you are not demanding or competent enough to do something truly good.

This tool is not worth paying for. Maybe after a bit more R&D, but the capabilities of this software are close to nothing. Shame daring to make people pay for this.

you have no option to stop the subscription, to delete your account or to make any changes to your plan. There are no humans to can support you and the last support ticket I submitted was 6 days ago, went unanswered. The service itself was useless for my needs because the schematics it created did not work.

You don't have any option to stop them from taking payments from you. During the free trial, you will be charged, so there is no free trial

Scam!!! They charged me 40$ for some credits without my permission.

The way their system is laid out, lures you in with a free trial, then without telling or alerting you, runs out of your free trial 'credits' and then bills you, no alert, no security no warning. The quality of the outputs itself is terrible, it's knowledge is just sometimes wrong, it's reasoning is terrible and it's susceptible to delusion.