FDTDX vs FeenoX
FDTDX
fdtdx.readthedocs.ioFeenoX
seamplex.comSide by side
| Figure | FDTDX | FeenoX |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Physics Simulation Software | 8.6 (#12) | 8.8 (#3) |
| Assessment tools | No | No |
| Audience | The project presents FDTDX for research, development, and commercial use in photonic nanostructure simulation and design. | Official pages present FeenoX for industry engineers, Unix hackers and academic professors, with advanced users as the target audience. |
| Authoring tools | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Yes | Yes |
| Delivery mode | desktop | desktop |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Installation | The maker provides a pip installation command and an editable installation path for development. | Official installation options include Debian or Ubuntu packages, statically linked GNU/Linux binaries, source tarballs and the GitHub repository. |
| Integrations | The API includes functions for importing GDS polygons and working with GDS layer stacks and ports. | It reads Gmsh meshes, uses PETSc and SLEPc solvers, and writes Gmsh MSH or ParaView VTK/VTU results. |
| Lesson library | No | No |
| Purpose | FDTDX is an open-source Python package for simulating and designing three-dimensional photonic nanostructures with the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method. | FeenoX is a cloud-first computational engineering tool for solving engineering problems with one or many computers in parallel. |
| Support | The FAQ invites users to open GitHub discussions for unanswered questions and issues for suspected bugs, and says the maintainers regularly check discussions. | The project directs users to GitHub Discussions for help and GitHub Issues for bug reporting. |
| 3D visuals | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
FeenoX
FeenoX is free, open-source computational engineering software for solving mathematical and engineering problems, including work across computers in parallel. It handles ODEs and DAEs, along with finite-element problems such as heat conduction, thermo-mechanical analysis, modal analysis, neutron diffusion, and neutron transport. Users describe problems in self-descriptive, English-like plain-text input files, so changes do not require recompiling. FeenoX reads Gmsh meshes and writes results in Gmsh MSH or ParaView VTK/VTU formats. It uses GNU GSL, SUNDIALS, PETSc, and SLEPc for computational tasks, and supports MPI parallelization. Installation options include Debian or Ubuntu packages, source tarballs, the GitHub repository, and generic statically linked GNU/Linux binaries. Ubuntu packages are available from version 25.04 onward. The generic binaries omit MUMPS and MPI and use basic optimization flags. FeenoX has no graphical interface, targets GNU/Linux, and is not expected to run in Windows. Browser access is available through interfaces such as SunCAE and CAEplex.