Articles
Urban Development
May 13, 2026
Early-stage feasibility software has become a real category. Five years ago, most developers and architects worked in a combination of CAD, Excel, and gut feel for pre-design decisions on raw land. Today, there are at least five serious tools targeting different parts of this problem space, with overlapping but distinct philosophies. This post compares them.
A note on transparency: We make Hektar, so this comparison is not neutral in the strict sense. We have done our best to describe each tool fairly, focusing on what each one is best at. Where we think Hektar is weaker than a competitor, we say so. Where we think it is stronger, we say that too. Verify pricing and current features directly with each vendor before making a purchase decision. Software changes faster than blog posts do.
The category contains tools that look superficially similar but make very different bets about which problem to solve first.
Acquired by Autodesk in 2020 for $240 million when it was called Spacemaker, then rebranded as Forma in May 2023. Now officially Forma Site Design, with Forma Building Design entering general availability in 2026. Cloud-based, AI-powered, focused on real-time environmental analysis during early-stage site planning. Strongest in sun, wind, noise, and microclimate analysis. Tight Revit integration.
Founded 2017 in Sydney, Australia. A spatial-data and feasibility platform that combines real-time massing with pro-forma updates, site analysis layers, and parcel data. Strong on stakeholder communication and the financial side of feasibility. Now positioning itself as an orchestration layer for AI-driven real estate decisions.
Founded in Malmö, Sweden by architects Pamela Nunez Wallgren, Jesper Wallgren, and Martin Kretz. Uses graph technology and AI to generate optimized floor plans from a given massing in seconds. Focused on multi-family residential, with strong Revit and Rhino integration. Generative copilot positioning rather than full feasibility platform.
Founded in Dallas, USA. The American counterpart to the European tools in this comparison. Strongest on rapid configuration of multi-family residential, parking optimization, and yield-on-cost calculations. Now organized into three modules: Urban Planner, Data Maps, and Site Solver. Supports eight building typologies including industrial, retail, hotels, parking structures, data centers, and mixed-use.
Founded in Stockholm, Sweden. Generative feasibility platform focused on raw land development in the Nordics, with a deep typology library, integrated Swedish and Dutch geodata, and a generative engine that operates from site through building configurations. Strongest in early-stage raw land where the regulatory and physical context of the site is most uncertain.
Pricing is where these tools differ most dramatically, and it tells you who each one is designed for.
$185 per month or $1,445 per year as a standalone product. Included at no additional cost in the Autodesk AEC Collection subscription, which many architecture firms already have. Free 30-day trial, free for students. This pricing assumes you are either willing to commit to Autodesk's ecosystem or already in it.
Four tiers. A permanent free plan allows one project. The Core plan at $1,000 per user per year gives unlimited projects, templates, and library access. Portfolio at $3,000 per user per year adds workspace properties, kanban boards, teams, and API access. Enterprise is custom-priced with SSO, SDK access, and premium support.
Permanent free plan with manual editing tools and integrations, but no AI generation. Basic plan at €49 per month adds generative tools for multi-family residential. Enterprise at €1,000 per month, billed annually at €12,000 for three seats, adds full floor plan generation, complete BIM model output, and custom graph rules.
Custom pricing not published publicly. Sold through demo and sales conversation. The pricing structure follows three modules: Urban Planner for pre-zoning analysis, Data Maps for zoning and environmental data, and Site Solver for full generative design and detailed typology solutions. This is enterprise-style sales.
Free tier with limited credits. Hektar Pro at three SEK-denominated tiers: 250, 750, or 2,000 SEK per month for 50, 200, or 1,000 credits respectively. Enterprise pricing available. The most accessible entry point in this comparison, deliberately designed to lower the barrier for individual architects and small developer teams.
What each tool can actually produce varies more than the marketing implies.
Strong on massing and site-level analysis. Building Design (LOD 200-300) entering general availability in 2026 extends this into schematic phase. Residential is the most common use case, but the platform handles mixed-use, commercial, and urban-scale projects. Less prescriptive about typology than the more residential-focused tools.
Generative drawing tools with mullion, transom, and roof detail. Stronger on flexibility than on a fixed typology library. Best for early massing exploration where the architect wants control over the geometry rather than picking from a catalogue.
Focused on multi-family residential floor plan generation. Graph rules let firms encode their own typology standards into the AI. Strongest in interior layout generation, weakest in site-level work since Finch starts from a massing rather than producing one.
Eight building typologies: multi-family residential, single-family, industrial, retail, hotels, parking structures, data centers, and mixed-use. Each typology comes with presets encoding industry practices. The widest range of building types in this comparison.
Five volume typologies ranging from Point to fully enclosed Quarter, combined with four block plan access types (Corridor, Gallery, Point House, Lamella with staircase in facade). More than 500 base parcel configurations. Residential-focused with strong urban scale capabilities. Less broad than TestFit on building types, but deeper on the urban-scale combinations.
The environmental and performance analyses are where each tool's technical depth shows.
The deepest analysis suite in the category. Sun hours, wind comfort, noise, microclimate, embodied carbon, operational energy, and solar potential. Real-time analysis as you sketch. This is Forma's strongest argument and the reason it has stayed relevant after the Spacemaker acquisition.
Real-time pro-forma updates, site analysis layers including parcel, tax, and zoning data, and integrations to external data sets. Wind and solar facade impact analysis. Carbon emissions quantification. Stronger on financial and contextual data than on environmental physics.
Daylight analysis, spatial efficiency metrics, adjacency compliance, and performance feedback for floor plan optimization. Focused on interior performance rather than site-level environmental conditions.
Yield on cost, parking ratio optimization, automatic cut and fill, financial modeling, and 3D terrain visualization. Strong on construction cost and constructability, less developed on environmental analysis. Generative design is exclusive to the Site Solver tier.
Direct Sun Hours, Sky View Factor, road noise modeling, parking norms, and area calculations. The architectural scales structure means analyses run at the right scale for each decision. Less broad on advanced microclimate modeling than Forma, but designed around Nordic regulatory contexts that the global tools approximate.
Where each tool connects to the broader AEC toolchain.
Tightest Revit integration in the category, unsurprising given the Autodesk parentage. Connects to Rhino, Dynamo, Autodesk Construction Cloud, with IFC and OBJ import. Strongest choice if you are deeply embedded in the Autodesk stack.
Public GIS layer integration, private data connections, API access at the Portfolio tier and above. Designed to consolidate data fragmentation across Google Earth, Bluebeam, zoning databases, Excel, and SketchUp. Strong on data, lighter on direct BIM tool integration.
Live two-way connection with Revit 2023 and 2024. Supports Rhino 6, 7, and 8, plus Grasshopper. Direct BIM model export. Strongest pure architect-tool integration in this comparison.
Revit, SketchUp, and AutoCAD integration. No public API. Designed to hand off feasibility studies into standard design software.
Export to Rhinoceros (.3dm), generic OBJ, and Excel for the data side. Direct ingestion of Swedish geodata from Lantmäteriet and Dutch open data including BAG and AHN. Less embedded in BIM toolchains than Finch or Forma, more embedded in geodata infrastructure.
This is the dimension that gets the least attention in comparisons but matters more than most buyers realize.
Forma is global with strong presence in markets where Spacemaker had established itself before the acquisition. Giraffe is Australian-founded but global, with US offices and a focus on English-language markets. Finch3D is Swedish but with global ambitions, particularly in firms already using Revit. TestFit is heavily focused on the US market and US regulatory norms.
Hektar is deliberately Nordic-first. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands are the primary markets. The geodata integration, the typology library, and the regulatory awareness all reflect Nordic and Northern European context. This is a strength for projects in those markets and a deliberate limitation for projects elsewhere.
If we had to map each tool to its strongest buyer:
Forma: Architecture firms already in the Autodesk ecosystem, especially mid-to-large firms working on urban-scale projects where environmental performance matters early. Best when site-level sun, wind, and noise are decisive factors.
Giraffe: Real estate developers and urban planners who care about the financial and stakeholder communication side as much as the design side. Strongest when the pro-forma and the design need to evolve in the same model.
Finch3D: Architecture firms doing multi-family residential who want to compress schematic design from days to minutes. Strongest when the massing is already defined and the floor plan is the bottleneck.
TestFit: US-based developers and architects doing rapid feasibility on a wide range of building types, including industrial, retail, and parking-heavy projects. Strongest for go/no-go decisions on potential deals.
Hektar: Architects, developers, and municipal planners working on early-stage raw land development in the Nordics, especially when compressing risk at the acquisition or pre-detaljplan phase matters most.
No comparison is useful without acknowledging the limits.
Forma: Locked to the Autodesk ecosystem. Pricing assumes you are in or willing to enter the AEC Collection. Less prescriptive about typologies, which means more setup work for residential developers.
Giraffe: Stronger on data orchestration than on generative depth. The free tier is real but limited. Less of a generative engine than the AI positioning suggests.
Finch3D: Starts from a massing rather than producing one. Less useful for the earliest stages of site evaluation. Enterprise pricing climbs quickly for the full capability set.
TestFit: No public pricing, which signals enterprise sales. No public API. US-centric regulatory framing that is less natural for European projects.
Hektar: Less broad than Forma on environmental analysis. Less integrated into BIM tooling than Finch. Nordic-first geographic focus is a limitation outside the target markets. The architect skepticism we have written about applies to generative tools generally, and Hektar is not immune.
The question is rarely "which tool is best." It is "which tool is best for me."
If you are deeply in the Autodesk world and care most about environmental analysis: Forma.
If you are a developer who cares about the pro-forma evolving with the design: Giraffe.
If you are an architect doing multi-family residential and the floor plan is your bottleneck: Finch3D.
If you are doing rapid US-based feasibility across many building types: TestFit.
If you are doing early-stage raw land work in the Nordics where regulatory and geodata integration matter: Hektar.
Many serious teams use more than one. The tools have surprisingly little overlap when you look closely. A firm might use Forma for environmental analysis on a large urban project, Hektar for the raw land feasibility that precedes it, and Finch3D for the floor plan generation once the massing is locked. The category is not a winner-take-all market.
Each of these tools is investing in a specific layer of the problem. Forma is going deeper into environmental analysis. Giraffe is going deeper into data orchestration and AI agents. Finch3D is going deeper into generative floor plans with custom graph rules. TestFit is going deeper into typology breadth and constructability. Hektar is going deeper into regulatory intelligence and geodata integration.
Five years ago these tools looked more similar to each other than they do now. The category has matured, and the differentiation is real. That is good for buyers: the right tool is more likely to exist for your specific situation than it was a few years ago.
For Nordic raw land developers and architects, we will obviously argue that Hektar is the right answer. For the rest of the cases, we have tried to point honestly toward the alternative that fits best. Comparison content like this is only useful if the comparison is real.
