Arka 360 Review 2026: Built for India, Assessed Honestly

Arka 360 is the solar design platform most Indian installers name first, and that position was earned the hard way. It was built in Bengaluru by a team that watched Indian rooftop quoting up close, rather than being a US product with a rupee sign bolted onto the financial model. That distinction matters more than most feature comparisons admit. This review covers what Arka 360 costs in 2026, what it genuinely does well, where the fit runs out, and which alternatives deserve a look before you commit to an annual plan. Where we could not verify a claim about the product, we left it out rather than filling the gap with a guess.

Short version. Arka 360 is a credible, India-origin solar design and proposal platform priced from ₹46,000 a year in India and $1,699 a year in the US. It fits Indian residential and small commercial installers well because it was designed around their workflow. It fits less well where lender-grade yield reporting or single-licence multi-country compliance is the requirement.

What Arka 360 Is and Where It Came From

Arka 360 is a browser-based platform for designing solar systems, running shading and generation analysis, and producing customer-facing proposals. It is built by Arka Energy, headquartered in Bengaluru, with the company founded in 2017 according to its own company profile.

The product covers the sequence an installer actually runs. You start from an address, build a 3D model of the roof, place modules, run a shading study, produce a generation report, and generate a sales proposal. CAD export and a CRM add-on sit alongside that on every published India plan.

The origin story matters commercially. Most solar design software sold in India was designed for North American or European buyers first. The financial model assumes net metering credited against a retail bill. The compliance layer assumes NEC. The module database is weighted toward brands an Indian EPC will never quote. Arka 360 did not start from that position, and Indian users notice the difference in the first hour.

Arka 360 Pricing in 2026

Arka 360 publishes prices openly, which is unusual in this category and worth crediting. The plans differ by region, so the India list and the US list are separate products in commercial terms.

India prices are quoted before 18% GST on Arka’s own pricing page. Two things to verify with the vendor before you budget. First, whether the plan you want is licensed per seat or per account, because that changes the arithmetic for a team of five completely. Second, whether the CRM add-on carries a separate charge. We could not confirm either from published material, so treat the table as the starting point of a quote rather than the end of one.

The list does make positioning clear. Lite at ₹46,000 a year targets a solo designer or small residential installer. Premium at ₹1,00,000 a year targets a team doing mixed residential and commercial work that needs SLDs and stringing control.

What Arka 360 Genuinely Does Well

These are real strengths, and skipping past them would make this review useless.

It was built for Indian workflows, not translated into them. This is the single biggest thing Arka 360 has going for it. When a product is designed around a market from the start, the defaults are right. Nobody has to explain to the tool that the customer is comparing against a DISCOM slab tariff rather than a US utility rate schedule. Competitors that entered India later carry assumptions that have to be worked around, and working around assumptions is where designer hours disappear.

Browser-based with no installation. A designer needs a login and a laptop. That sounds minor until you have onboarded a junior engineer in a Tier 2 city on a desktop application with a licence dongle and a version-mismatch problem. Cloud delivery removes an entire class of operational friction, and it is why cloud tools have taken share from installed software across the category.

Residential design and proposal output are solid. The core loop works. You get a 3D roof model, a shading report, a generation estimate, and a proposal a homeowner can read. For the volume of work that dominates Indian rooftop, that is the whole job. Tools that are more capable are not automatically better here, because a 5 kW system on a clean RCC roof does not reward extra depth.

Open pricing. Arka publishes numbers. Most competitors in this space make you sit through a discovery call to learn what a seat costs.

It understands the Indian market context. Micro-inverter design on the Basic plan, CAD export on every plan, and a CRM add-on bundled rather than sold as a separate product line all reflect how small Indian installers actually operate, with one or two people doing design, quoting, and follow-up.

Where Arka 360’s Fit Runs Out

We are only going to state limits we are confident about. There are plenty of things we have seen asserted about Arka 360 that we could not verify, and those are not in this review.

Depth of bankable reporting. Arka 360’s Premium plan includes a PVsyst export. That is a useful feature and a clear signal about intended workflow: for lender-grade yield modelling, the expectation is that you finish the job in PVsyst. For residential and small commercial sales that is completely fine, because no homeowner asks for a P90. For a C&I project going to a lender or an IPP, it means two tools, two licences, and a reconciliation step between them. If your pipeline is moving in that direction, price the second licence into the comparison.

Breadth of multi-country compliance. Arka runs distinct regional editions with separate pricing pages and separate feature sets. That is a sensible way to serve one market properly, and it is the same trade Aurora made in the United States. The cost shows up for a team quoting across borders. An Indian EPC that starts winning work in the Gulf or East Africa is not simply changing a country dropdown. Platforms that carry NEC, IEC, AS/NZS, and IS code libraries plus multiple tariff structures in a single licence handle that case with less friction. This is a difference in product strategy, not a defect.

Plan-level project caps at the entry tier. The Lite plan is capped at 360 residential projects. For a solo designer that is generous. For a growing team it is a ceiling you will hit, and the step up to Basic is a 52% increase in annual cost. Worth modelling before you anchor on the ₹46,000 number.

Capability Comparison

The honest reading of that table is that these are three products solving overlapping but different problems. Arka 360 optimises for an Indian installer selling rooftop. PVsyst optimises for a yield number a lender will accept. SurgePV optimises for doing both in one workflow across more than one market. None of those is a universal winner.

An Illustrative Example: A Coimbatore EPC Choosing Between Them

The point is not that one tool wins. It is that the decision is driven by pipeline shape, not by the design canvas, and most buyers evaluate the canvas.

Who Should Buy Arka 360

• Solo designers and small Indian residential installers, where Lite at ₹46,000 a year is very hard to beat on value.
• Teams whose work sits inside one region and does not need lender-grade yield output.
• Installers who want design, proposals, and basic CRM from one vendor without integration work.
• Buyers who value published pricing and want to avoid a procurement cycle.
• Anyone whose bottleneck is quoting speed on straightforward rooftop jobs.

Who Should Not Buy Arka 360

• EPCs whose pipeline includes bankable C&I, PPA, or IPP work, where the PVsyst step becomes a permanent second workflow.
• Teams quoting across several countries from one office, where regional editions create duplicate setup.
• Engineering-led firms that need detailed stringing, SLDs, and yield depth as standard rather than as a top-tier upgrade.
• Buyers who need white-label proposals in multiple languages as a core requirement.

Alternatives Worth Comparing

SurgePV. The closest alternative for Indian teams that want Arka’s workflow plus depth. It runs $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year with ALMM-aware module libraries, PM Surya Ghar subsidy bands, DISCOM tariff libraries, and IS code clearances shipped in the product, alongside NEC, IEC, and AS/NZS for teams working outside India. Design, 8,760-hour module-level shading, bankable P50, P75, P90 output, and branded proposals sit in one licence. The argument for it over Arka 360 is not that Arka is weak on India, because it is not. It is breadth: one licence that covers the Indian compliance set and the export markets, with the bankable report and the proposal in the same file as the design. The trade-off is that Arka has a larger installed base among small Indian installers and a bundled CRM. If you are actively evaluating a move, the Arka360 alternatives comparison covers six options side by side.

PVsyst. When a financing agreement names the tool, the debate ends. Use PVsyst for the bankability report and something faster upstream. The PVsyst alternative guide explains when a substitute is accepted and when it is not.

Aurora Solar. Relevant only if your market is US residential, where it is deeper than Arka on NEC and utility tariffs and priced accordingly. Our Aurora Solar review covers that case.

For the wider view, the India solar design software guide sets out the full Indian requirement set including ALMM, DISCOM approvals, and subsidy handling, and the pricing comparison puts annual costs across the category in one table.

Verdict

Arka 360 is a good product that deserves its standing with Indian installers. Building for a market from the inside is genuinely harder than localising a foreign product, and the difference is visible in how quickly an Indian designer becomes productive in it. At ₹46,000 to ₹1,00,000 a year, the pricing is fair for what it delivers, and publishing those numbers openly is a point in its favour.

The limits are about scope rather than quality. The PVsyst export on Premium tells you where bankable yield modelling is expected to happen, which means a second tool for project-finance work. Regional editions mean a team selling in more than one country manages more than one setup. Neither is a flaw. Both are the consequence of a deliberate decision to serve one market properly, and that decision is why the product is good at what it is good at.

So the recommendation splits cleanly. If you are an Indian residential installer or a small EPC working inside one region, buy Arka 360 and stop shopping. If your pipeline includes bankable commercial work, or you expect to quote outside India within two years, SurgePV covers both in a single licence at $1,299 to $1,899 per user per year, and that is where the arithmetic turns.

Three things to do next:

If you are searching under the old name, see The Solar Labs review.

About This Comparison

Pricing, features and product positioning described here were checked in August 2026 using publicly available vendor information. Vendors change pricing, packaging and capabilities without notice, and several do not publish prices at all. Treat every figure as a starting point for your own enquiry rather than a quotation, and confirm current terms directly with each vendor before making a purchasing decision.

All product names, logos and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Reference to them here is for identification and comparison only and does not imply any affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement from those companies. SurgePV is a Qbits Energy product, so treat this as a vendor comparison written by an interested party and weigh it alongside independent sources and your own trial of the tools.

Where we could not verify a claim from a primary source we have said so in the text rather than repeating it. If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, contact us and we will review and correct it.