Comparisons

On this page you will find some comparisons between other popular BOM generators and KiABOM. This is meant to fully inform you of what KiABOM does differently.

KiABOM

  • KiCad only.

  • Simple unformatted BOM generation, which also retrieves part data from suppliers.

  • Supported output formats are CSV, HTML, and TXT.

  • Uses the kicad_netlist_reader module that ships with KiCad and does not do its own XML parsing.

  • Config file for cache lifetime and API keys, and uses command line options for configurating the BOM.

  • Implements presets to simplify commands and to promote user customisation.

  • Handles schematic property fields like ‘DNP’, ‘Exclude from Board’, and ‘Exclude from BOM’, as they appear on the schematic.

  • Ignores MPNs like ‘Generic’,’TBD’,’Manufacturer’s Stock’, and ‘’ (blank).

  • Auto-detects the output file extension and sets the format.

  • Currently supports Mouser and DigiKey.

KiCost

  • Supports Altium, Proteus, Eagle, Upverter and hand made CSVs.

  • Outputs a fully formatted XLSX spreadsheet file with supplier parts data.

  • Only supports XLSX as the output format.

  • Uses BeautifulSoup4 for reading the input XML and then does its own parsing for the part data.

  • Config file for cache lifetime and API keys, and uses command line options for configurating the BOM.

  • Does not handle schematic property fields like ‘DNP’, ‘Exclude from Board’, and ‘Exclude from BOM’, without adding extra fields to the symbol.

  • Can ignore MPNs but they need to be specified with an option.

  • Supports multiple suppliers.

KiBoM

  • KiCad only.

  • Simple unformatted BOM generation with no supplier parts data.

  • Supported output formats are CSV, HTML, TXT, TSV, XML, XLSX.

  • Uses its own method with modified KiCad netlist reader source code to minimise dependencies.

  • Mostly configured through a config file with many options.

  • Does not handle schematic property fields like ‘DNP’, ‘Exclude from Board’, and ‘Exclude from BOM’, without adding extra fields to the symbol.

  • Auto-detects the output file extension and sets the format.

  • Repository is archived.