Most vendors in the structural engineering software market do not publish their prices. That is a deliberate strategy. It forces every buyer into a sales conversation, removes the ability to compare options directly, and makes it harder to build a realistic technology budget.
This guide pulls together what is publicly available for the tools that structural practices use most - analysis platforms, calculation software, and modelling environments - and fills in what the vendors will not say upfront. The goal is to give practice leads and technical managers a realistic picture of what they are spending, and what they are likely to spend if they change, add, or consolidate their stack.
Why Pricing Is Hard to Find (and What That Means for Buyers)
The major structural software vendors - CSI, Bentley, Trimble - operate on enterprise sales models. Prices vary by region, reseller, contract length, number of seats, and whether the software is bundled with other products in the same vendor's portfolio. Quoting publicly would expose those variations and make negotiation harder for the vendor.
The result for buyers is that budgeting requires a series of sales calls before you can compare anything. For practices renewing existing licenses, it also means there is rarely a public benchmark to measure the renewal price against.
Two categories of software break from this pattern. Calculation tools aimed at small and mid-sized practices - ENERCALC, ClearCalcs - tend to publish transparent tiered pricing. General-purpose modelling tools at the Autodesk end of the market also publish list prices, though resellers often discount off those.
For the quote-only tools, the ranges in this guide are drawn from published third-party sources, practitioner forums, and pricing intelligence platforms where historical data is available. They should be treated as a reference range rather than a quote.
Analysis and Calculation Software
ETABS (CSI)
ETABS is the dominant platform for building analysis in most UK and US structural practices. CSI has moved firmly toward subscription licensing, and the current annual pricing (billed monthly) sits at:
ETABS Plus: $1,301/month
ETABS Nonlinear: $2,081/month
ETABS Ultimate: $3,128/month
At the Plus tier, that is roughly $15,600 per seat per year. A practice with five structural engineers using ETABS is looking at $78,000 per year before any support or maintenance costs.
Network licensing costs more per seat but allows seats to be shared across a larger team. For firms where not everyone needs ETABS running simultaneously, network licenses can reduce the effective per-user cost - but require IT infrastructure to manage.
SAFE (CSI's slab and foundation analysis tool) is licensed separately at $1,041-$1,561/month depending on tier. Most practices that use ETABS also need SAFE, so the combined cost per active user is typically $2,342-$4,689/month.
CSI does not publish perpetual license prices publicly. Perpetual licenses are still available through resellers in some regions, but CSI's direction clearly favours subscription for new buyers, and support for older perpetual versions has a limited horizon.
SAP2000 (CSI)
SAP2000 serves practices doing bridge, infrastructure, and specialist structural analysis alongside standard building work. Its pricing follows the same structure as ETABS:
SAP2000 Basic: $521/month
SAP2000 Plus: $1,301/month
SAP2000 Advanced: $2,081/month
SAP2000 Ultimate: $3,128/month
The Basic tier is restrictive enough that most commercial practices will need Plus or Advanced. At the Advanced tier, a five-seat subscription runs $124,860/year.
CSiBridge, CSI's dedicated bridge analysis platform, runs $2,341-$5,209/month depending on whether rating functionality is included.
STAAD.Pro (Bentley)
Bentley does not publish STAAD.Pro pricing publicly. The software is sold primarily through subscription, often bundled within Bentley's broader infrastructure and engineering portfolio under enterprise agreements.
Practitioner-reported figures from forum discussions and third-party pricing sources suggest standalone STAAD.Pro subscriptions fall broadly in the range of $4,000-$9,000 per seat per year, though enterprise agreements with seat minimums can bring that figure down significantly.
Bentley's Virtuoso Subscription model bundles multiple products across the Bentley portfolio - iTwin, ProjectWise, and STAAD.Pro among others. For practices already using Bentley's ecosystem, this bundled route can change the per-product cost calculation significantly, though it requires a longer-term enterprise commitment.
If STAAD.Pro is your primary analysis tool, the place to negotiate is the enterprise agreement structure rather than the per-seat price.
ENERCALC
ENERCALC occupies a different part of the market - calculation-focused rather than full finite element analysis, with transparent subscription pricing that makes it unusual in this space.
SEL Annual: $1,699/year for 2 seats (all 64 modules included)
SEL Monthly: $199/month for 2 seats
Additional seats: $1,150/year or $119/month each
For a five-seat team, the annual cost works out at approximately $5,249/year - a fraction of ETABS at equivalent seat count. ENERCALC is not a substitute for ETABS in terms of analytical depth, but for practices whose calculation work sits primarily in member sizing, connection checks, and standard structural elements, it covers the majority of daily calculation volume at significantly lower cost.
Modelling and Detailing Software
Tekla Structures (Trimble)
Tekla is the industry standard for structural detailing and steel fabrication coordination. Like the analysis tools above, Trimble does not publish Tekla Structures pricing publicly. The software is sold through regional resellers with pricing that varies substantially by geography and contract structure.
Third-party pricing intelligence sources and practitioner-reported figures suggest Tekla Structures subscriptions run broadly in the range of £8,000-£18,000 per seat per year in the UK market, with the range reflecting tier differences (Steel vs. Engineering vs. Full) and whether the license includes Tekla Model Sharing.
Tekla Model Sharing - the cloud collaboration layer that allows multiple users to work on the same model - is an additional cost on top of the base license. For practices running coordinated projects with fabricators or other disciplines, it is effectively mandatory rather than optional.
The total cost per active Tekla user, including Model Sharing, is typically higher than the base license figure suggests. Get clarity on what the base subscription includes before signing.
Revit (Autodesk)
Revit sits in structural practices primarily as the coordination model environment - receiving the structural engineer's output, coordinating with architecture and MEP, and feeding into IFC-based workflows. Few structural practices treat Revit as their primary analysis or calculation tool.
Autodesk publishes its US list prices:
Revit standalone: $380/month or $3,005/year
AEC Collection (includes Revit, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and others): $3,675/year
For practices that need Revit alongside other Autodesk tools, the AEC Collection is usually the more cost-effective route. The Collection effectively bundles tools that would individually cost two to three times as much.
Autodesk's pricing has increased consistently year on year since 2021. Practices on older Autodesk contracts should check renewal terms carefully - renewal prices may have stepped up significantly from the rate at the original contract date.
The Hidden Cost Nobody Puts in the Budget
The license cost is the number that appears in a software budget. It is rarely the largest number.
The more significant cost in most structural practices is the labour involved in moving information between these tools - and that cost does not appear on any software invoice.
A practice running ETABS for analysis, Revit for coordination, Excel for calculations, and a separate report template has four environments that do not natively talk to each other. Every time a load changes, a section size is revised, or an architectural update lands, someone re-enters data. That re-entry is time at an engineer's loaded rate.
At three to four hours per project per week, across a portfolio of 12-15 active projects, that is 150-240 engineer-hours per month of re-entry work. At £85-£95/hour loaded cost, that is £12,750-£22,800 per month - £153,000-£273,600 per year - that sits entirely outside the software budget.
The practices reducing their total technology cost are not necessarily the ones spending less on licenses. They are the ones reducing the coordination overhead that accumulates between tools. That overhead scales with project complexity and team size. It does not appear on a renewal invoice, which is why it rarely gets managed as a cost.
How to Evaluate the Real Cost Across a Practice
A meaningful software cost analysis for a structural practice covers four things that vendors will not put in front of you.
Seat utilisation. Network licenses are priced higher per seat because they can be shared. Named-user licenses are cheaper per seat but tie a license to one person. The right choice depends on how many engineers need simultaneous access versus staggered access. Most practices do not know their actual concurrent usage, which means they are either over-licensed or arguing over access.
Renewal trajectory. Autodesk has increased list prices by 20-30% cumulatively over the past three years. Bentley and CSI have followed. A renewal conversation starting from the previous year's price is a different conversation than one starting from the current list price. Know the list price before the call.
Integration overhead. Every tool that does not natively connect to the rest of the stack creates coordination work. Quantify it before evaluating whether a more expensive but better-integrated tool is actually more expensive in total.
Support and training. License cost rarely includes meaningful support. CSI's standard support is included in subscription but covers bug fixes and updates, not workflow guidance. Bentley's support tiers vary. Factor in the real cost of getting engineers productive on a new tool - including the time they are slower while they learn it.
What to Ask Before Buying or Renewing
Before any structural software procurement or renewal, the questions worth asking the vendor directly are:
What is included in support - bug fixes only, or workflow and technical guidance? What is the upgrade path if the tier purchased turns out to be insufficient? What happens to data access if a subscription lapses? Is pricing fixed for the contract term or subject to annual increases? What are the exit terms if we need to move to a different tool?
For quote-only tools, also ask for the all-in cost including any required add-ons - Model Sharing for Tekla, SAFE alongside ETABS - rather than letting the base license figure stand as the comparison number.
The Starting Point
The total cost of a structural engineering software stack is almost always higher than the line items on the license invoices. The visible cost is the subscription. The less visible cost is the coordination layer - the hours spent moving information between tools that do not connect.
The practices with the most control over their technology spend are not the ones that have negotiated the lowest license prices. They are the ones that have a clear view of what each tool is actually costing them, including the work it generates rather than just the invoice it produces.
If your practice is approaching a renewal, adding a seat, or evaluating a stack change, the right starting point is a clear picture of how project information currently moves - and where it stops moving automatically and becomes someone's job.
Prices in this guide are sourced from published vendor pages, third-party pricing platforms, and practitioner-reported data current as of October 2026. CSI pricing sourced from PricingSaaS. Revit pricing sourced from RenderAHouse. ENERCALC pricing sourced from ENERCALC. STAAD.Pro and Tekla Structures pricing is not publicly disclosed; ranges reflect third-party intelligence and practitioner-reported figures and should be verified with resellers before procurement decisions.