If they were the same price, I would pay for Eagle, but they are not. Eagle is $315/year or $830 for a lifetime license, whereas KiCad is generously offered at no charge under GNU GPL v2 free of charge licensing.
KiCad - available at www.kicad-pcb.org
Eagle - free for hobbyists is available at www.cadsoftusa.com
That difference is reflected in the layout and integration of the two different products.
Eagle:
- The layout of the various Eagle windows is what one would expect from a professional pre-ribbon styled Windows application.
- It's interface is mouse focused, which I prefer as I occasionally work on layouts on my tablet.
- The integration between windows in a project is great - update the schematics and the layout will reflect that change
KiCad
- KiCad's icons and palette selection looks less "professional"
- The interface comes alive when used with keyboard shortcuts, but is labourious when only using a mouse -- nearly useless on my tablet.
- There's no automatic integration the schematics and layout - you need to export the Net list, update the footprints then import that into the PCB editor.
That said I'm starting to warm up to KiCad. To me, it's not as polished as Eagle, but once you get used to it and understand the flow, and are in front of a keyboard, you can quickly get things accomplished.
So after a week or so I give KiCad a thumbs up. Factor in the price, then it's 2 thumbs and 2 large toes up!
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