Alternatives
Ardis is a modular platform for industrial cutting. Here is what it publishes, and which of our two tools is the fair comparison.
By Cutlist Evolution ·
Ardis describes itself as "a modular all-in-one platform designed and built for the sheet, bar and coil cutting industry", offering "saw-cutting and nesting machine independent third party integration". Their published modules are ARDIS OPTIMIZER, PERFORM for MRP and MES, STOCK, TRADE and CAM CENTER, and they list wood working, metals, plastics, architectural cladding and glass as the industries they serve.
Machine independence is the claim worth noting, because it is the same one we make. Ardis is not tied to one saw manufacturer, which is what lets a factory running mixed equipment drive all of it from one optimiser. Pricing and any trial are not published on their site, so both come through a conversation with them.
Say the awkward part first. If you need MRP, shop floor scheduling, stock valuation and CAM output from one system, Cutlist Evolution is not an alternative to Ardis and this page will not pretend it is. A platform with five modules exists because factories need five modules.
Two narrower comparisons are real. The first is the optimiser on its own. If what you actually want out of Ardis is good layouts, and the MRP side is something you already have elsewhere, a tool that does only the optimisation is a much smaller commitment. The second is the seat that never justified a licence: the estimator, the second site, the person checking a revised parts list who is not going to open an MES to do it.
Cutlist Evolution is a free browser cutlist optimizer for sheet, linear and roll materials. The free tier allows unlimited calculations of up to 40 parts each, unlimited stock, 3 saved projects and PDF export. Paid plans add trim cuts, edge banding, printable part labels, CSV, SVG, DXF and PTX export, beam saw settings and a material and stock cloud database. A separate true shape nesting optimizer handles irregular contours.
Free to use, nothing to install
The closer comparison to Ardis OPTIMIZER is not a web app at all. It is SmartCut, the same engine as an HTTP API: you post a parts list and a stock list and get a layout back, so the optimisation sits inside the ERP, configurator or quoting system you already run rather than beside it. Like Ardis it is machine independent, and unlike a platform it assumes you already have the rest.
Across 2,083 real production jobs the engine lands on the fewest stock the parts could physically fit into 82% of the time, with a typical result in under two seconds. Head-to-head results against other tools are published in full at smartcut.dev/benchmarks, including the jobs where a competitor ties or wins. We have not benchmarked Ardis, and Ardis publishes no yield figures we could compare against, so there is no claim here that one beats the other.