CutList Optimizer Alternatives Compared

Three kinds of tool, three different jobs

What each kind of tool is genuinely good at.
	Browser optimizers	Windows desktop packages	Sawgrid
Entering 200 parts	Best. A keyboard and a wide screen beat a phone, and it is not close.	Very good, usually with spreadsheet import.	Workable, but slower.
Working with no signal	No. A browser tool needs the connection.	Yes, once installed.	Yes. Everything is computed on the device.
At the saw	Only if you carry a laptop to the fence.	Same problem.	Built for it. One cut at a time, screen stays awake.
CNC output, DXF, toolpaths	Some do.	Yes, this is their territory.	No. Not planned.
Cabinet libraries, costing, labels for a shop floor	Rarely.	Yes. This is what you pay them for.	Labels yes, costing and libraries no.
Irregular shape nesting	Some specialist tools.	Yes, in the serious ones.	No. Rectangular guillotine cuts only.
Cost of trying it	Usually free to try in a browser.	Often a paid licence, sometimes a free edition.	Free, and the calculating is never metered.

When a browser optimizer is the right answer

If you plan at a desk, type long parts lists, and the workshop has usable signal, a browser tool is genuinely a good fit and there is no reason to move. Wide screen, real keyboard, nothing to install, and you can paste from a spreadsheet. A phone loses that comparison on every count. This is worth saying plainly because the honest answer to "should I switch" is often no.

When a desktop package is the right answer

If you need CNC toolpaths, DXF export, part libraries that generate a carcass from a few dimensions, material costing, or label printing tied to a shop floor workflow, buy the desktop package. Sawgrid has none of those and is not trying to. It is a cut list optimizer, not a shop management system.

When the phone wins

The case for Sawgrid is narrow and it is real:

The workshop has no signal. Basements, garages, sites. The optimizer, the drawings, the PDF and the offcut inventory all run on the device, with no account and no server.
You are standing at the machine. Saw table mode shows the next cut alone, the fence setting in figures readable from two metres, the screen kept awake, and each cut ticked off as you make it.
You want to re-solve while you think. A few hundred parts solve in well under a third of a second. Change one dimension, solve again, compare. That loop is what a browser round trip makes tedious.
You do not want the calculating metered. No capped parts list, no counter of free solves, no plan withheld until you pay. The free tier is limited by scope, one project and one material at a time and a fixed 3.0 mm kerf, and it says so on the result screen rather than at a paywall.
You want the books opened. Parts, saw kerf, edge trim, reusable offcut and waste, adding to exactly the sheet, computed in whole tenths of a millimetre. A plan whose balance does not close is not shown at all.

The comparison nobody makes for you. Most tools in this category are good at the arithmetic. Fewer are honest about what happens to a part that will not fit. Whatever you end up using, test that one case: give it a part slightly too big for the stock and see whether it says so, or quietly hands you a plan with a piece missing. That is the failure that costs money.

Other iPhone apps

There are several. They differ mostly in three places, and those are the places to look before you commit a job to one: whether the calculating is metered, whether the kerf is charged to the free area or added to the parts, and whether unplaced parts are reported or dropped. The checklist page sets out all seven questions worth asking.

If the workshop is where the problem is

A phone is already in your pocket, it works with no signal, and it can sit on the saw showing one fence setting at a time. That is the case Sawgrid is built for.

iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 and later. Free to download.

Keep reading

The rest of the arithmetic behind a cutting plan.

CutList Optimizer alternatives, compared honestly