Elevations vs ArchitectGPT vs Planner 5D: Which Free Tool Delivers Real Indian Elevations?

You typed “30x40 north-facing duplex, modern, with a small porch” into three different AI tools and got three wildly different answers. One gave you a gorgeous Californian villa. One gave you a furnished living room you never asked for. One gave you a façade that actually looked like a house on your street. This is the honest free house design tool comparison India homeowners keep asking for — a real ArchitectGPT review and Planner 5D elevation test, run against one Indian brief, with no marketing gloss. The question isn’t “which tool is smartest.” It’s “which one understands your plot.”

We gave all three the same brief and watched what came back. Here’s what we learned.

Sketch your first idea free → Three free sketches a day, no card, no signup wall.

The test: one Indian brief, three AI tools

To make this fair, we fixed the brief instead of the tool. Every tool got the identical prompt: a 30x40 ft north-facing plot, G+1 duplex, modern style, parking in front, a small entrance portico, and a Vastu-friendly main door in the north-east. That’s a request a few lakh Indian families make every year.

A good test for any best free AI architecture tool isn’t whether it can render something pretty. It’s whether it understands the words portico, parapet, jaali, and north-east entrance — the vocabulary of an Indian house front. Global tools render beautifully. Few of them render correctly for a Bengaluru or Pune street.

Alt text: Same 30x40 north-facing Indian duplex elevation generated by three different free AI house design tools, shown side by side. Caption: One brief, three tools. The differences below the roofline tell the whole story. Try this design →

ArchitectGPT review: powerful, polished, and not built for India

ArchitectGPT is the heavyweight on style. It runs on GPT-4 planning, offers text-to-image and sketch-to-image, 80+ design themes, 40 room and outdoor types, a “magic editor” to repaint specific areas, 4K upscaling, and even 360° panoramas. For an architect building a mood board or a real-estate agent staging a listing, it’s genuinely impressive.

Where ArchitectGPT shines

Style transfer is its superpower. Feed it a rough sketch and a theme, and it returns a photoreal render that looks ready for a magazine. It also accepts exports from AutoCAD, Revit, and SketchUp, so professionals already in a CAD workflow can fold it in. As an architectgpt alternative evaluation benchmark, its output quality sets the bar.

Where it struggles for Indian homes

Two problems. First, the obvious one: is ArchitectGPT free? No. There’s no free plan — pricing starts at $25/month (roughly ₹2,100) and climbs to $90/month. For a homeowner who just wants to brainstorm a façade, that’s a steep gate before the first idea.

Second, and more important, its design library is global. Ask for a “modern Indian duplex” and it leans toward Western suburban or Mediterranean aesthetics. It doesn’t natively understand Vastu zoning, a north-east pooja-adjacent entry, Kota stone cladding, or the compact, parking-forward layout an Indian 30x40 plot demands. You can coax it there with long prompts — but you’re fighting the tool, not riding it.

See how a purpose-built tool handles the same brief →

Planner 5D review 2026: a 3D house, but is it an elevation tool?

Planner 5D is the most familiar name here, and for good reason. Its 2D-to-3D workflow is smooth, it has a catalogue of 8,400+ furniture and décor items, and it genuinely has a free plan with unlimited projects. For a planner 5d review 2026, the interiors experience earns its reputation.

Strong on interiors, lighter on façades

Here’s the catch for our test: Planner 5D is fundamentally an interiors and floor-plan tool that happens to render 3D buildings. You can model a multi-storey structure, add landscaping, pools, and garages — but the Planner 5D elevation workflow asks you to build the house element by element rather than sketch a façade idea in seconds. That’s powerful if you want a furnished walkthrough. It’s slow if you only want to decide what your front looks like.

The pricing reality

The free tier is real but limited to about half the catalogue. Premium runs $4.99/month billed annually (or $19.99 monthly), and the Professional plan with the AI Design Generator, 4K renders, and CAD export is $33.33/month annually. Reviewers on G2 and Trustpilot repeatedly flag confusing pricing and unexpected charges after trials — worth knowing before you enter a card.

For a homeowner asking “what should my house front look like?”, Planner 5D answers a different, bigger question: “how do I model my entire home in 3D?”

Alt text: Planner 5D interiors-first 3D house model beside a fast Indian façade elevation sketch from a purpose-built AI tool.

Elevations: purpose-built for the Indian house front

Elevations by Ongrid Design took the opposite approach to both. It does one thing — Indian house elevations — and it does it in about 60 seconds. You describe your plot, pick a style, and get a façade sketch. No furniture catalogue to wade through, no $90 paywall, no fighting a global aesthetic.

On our north-facing 30x40 brief, it returned a façade that read as a recognisably Indian duplex: compact footprint, parking in front, a defined portico, a parapet line, and proportions that fit the plot. It understands the brief’s vocabulary because that vocabulary is what it was trained to draw.

What “free” actually means here

Elevations gives you 3 free sketches a day — genuinely free, no card. If you want to iterate harder, credit packs start at ₹29. Compared with a $25/month floor just to start (ArchitectGPT) or a subscription maze (Planner 5D), it’s the most honest free tier in this free house design tool comparison India.

It knows its limits — on purpose

Here’s the part the other tools won’t tell you: Elevations is the brainstorm before the blueprint, not the blueprint. It’s deliberately the “base model” — fast, delightful, and made to get your idea out of your head. It does not pretend to hand you structural drawings.

Try Elevations free — sketch your Indian façade in 60 seconds →

The head-to-head: how all three compare

Here’s the same brief, scored across the dimensions that matter for an Indian homeowner — not a Silicon Valley designer.

Dimension	Elevations (Ongrid)	ArchitectGPT	Planner 5D
Purpose-built for elevations	Yes — façade-first	Renders, not elevation-specific	Interiors / floor-plan first
Genuinely free to start	Yes, 3 sketches/day	No free plan	Free tier (limited catalogue)
Entry price	Free; packs from ₹29	$25/mo (~₹2,100)	$4.99/mo annual+
India / Vastu awareness	Built-in	Weak, global library	Manual, not guided
Speed to first idea	~60 seconds	Minutes (prompt-tuning)	Slow (build element by element)
Indian façade vocabulary	Native (portico, parapet, jaali)	Needs heavy prompting	Not a focus
30x40 plot fit	Designed for Indian plots	Tends Western/villa	Possible, manual
Output style	Sketch concepts	Photoreal renders	3D furnished model
Learning curve	None	Moderate	Steep
Export options	Image / share	4K, 360°, CAD-friendly	CAD export (paid)
Path to a buildable home	→ Ongrid expert services	None	None
Best for	Indian homeowners brainstorming	Pros doing style boards	Full 3D interior modelling

The pattern is clear. ArchitectGPT wins on render polish. Planner 5D wins on 3D interiors. For the specific job of “show me what my Indian house front could look like, right now, for free,” a purpose-built tool wins. If you want the wider field, our full roundup of the best elevation design tools for 2026 ranks ten options, and we also run a direct Elevations vs HomeDesigns.AI head-to-head if that’s the matchup on your shortlist.

Which AI tool should you actually use?

Match the tool to the job, not the hype.

Choose ArchitectGPT if you’re a designer or agent who needs photoreal renders and 360° panoramas, you already work in CAD, and a $25–90/month budget is fine. As an architectgpt alternative comparison point, nothing here beats its render finish.

Choose Planner 5D if your real goal is a full 3D model with interiors, furniture, and landscaping, and you’re happy to build it room by room. The interiors depth is the reason to use it.

Choose Elevations if you’re an Indian homeowner who wants to decide what your façade looks like — fast, free, and on a real plot size like 30x40 — and you want a path to experts when you’re ready to build. It’s the best free AI architecture tool for that one job because it was built for exactly that job and nothing else.

Alt text: Decision chart matching Indian homeowner goals to Elevations, ArchitectGPT, or Planner 5D in this free house design tool comparison India.

The honest part: none of these gives you a buildable home

This matters more than any feature row. AI tools — all three — give you inspiration, not a blueprint. A render is not a structural drawing. A 3D model is not municipal approval. A sketch is not a contractor-ready set with column positions, beam depths, material specs, and a Vastu reading tied to your actual site and soil.

That’s not a flaw to hide; it’s the line where smart homeowners hand off to experts. You use AI to fall in love with an idea in an afternoon. Then you bring that idea to people who can make it stand up, pass the municipal corporation, and not crack in the second monsoon.

This is exactly why Elevations is built as the front door to Ongrid Design’s expert architecture services — a studio behind 1,200+ delivered projects. Sketch freely, explore ten façades before lunch, and when one feels right, graduate it into a real, buildable design with a human architect. ArchitectGPT and Planner 5D have no such bridge; your render is where their journey ends. With Planner 5D elevation outputs or an ArchitectGPT review-worthy render, you’re still on your own to find someone to build it.

Start free: sketch your idea, then talk to an expert →

Frequently asked questions

Is ArchitectGPT free? No. ArchitectGPT has no free plan. Paid tiers start at roughly $25/month and go up to $90/month. If you only want to brainstorm a façade without paying upfront, a free Indian tool like Elevations (3 sketches/day) or Planner 5D’s limited free tier is a better starting point.

Is Planner 5D good for house elevation design? Planner 5D is excellent for 2D-to-3D modelling and interiors, but it’s not elevation-first. You build the house element by element rather than sketching a façade in seconds. It’s powerful for a full 3D model and slower if you only need to decide your front elevation.

What is the best free AI tool for Indian house design in 2026? For Indian elevations specifically, a purpose-built tool wins because it understands Vastu, plot sizes like 30x40, and Indian façade vocabulary natively. Global tools render beautifully but need heavy prompting to feel local. Test the same brief on each — the differences show up fast.

Can AI design a Vastu-compliant elevation? AI can produce a façade that respects Vastu cues like a north-east entrance or zoned openings if the tool is built with Indian context. But AI gives you a concept, not a verified Vastu reading tied to your site. For a binding Vastu and structural assessment, an architect closes that gap.

Which AI tool is best for a 30x40 plot? For the best AI house elevation tool for 30x40 plot brainstorming, choose a tool designed for Indian plot sizes so the proportions, parking, and setbacks come out realistic. General global renderers often return villa-scale designs that don’t fit a 1,200 sq ft footprint.

Do these AI tools give buildable drawings? No — and that’s the key takeaway. None of these three outputs a contractor-ready, municipality-approvable drawing set. They give inspiration. You take that inspiration to an architect to turn it into a buildable home.

The bottom line

In this free house design tool comparison India, there’s no single “best” — there’s a best for the job in front of you. This ArchitectGPT review confirms it’s the render king for paying pros. Our planner 5d review 2026 verdict: superb 3D and interiors, not a façade sketchpad. And for an Indian homeowner who wants to see their house front in 60 seconds, free, on a real plot, a purpose-built Planner 5D elevation alternative built for India is the natural place to start.

Sketch the idea with AI. Build the home with experts.

Try Elevations free — your first Indian façade is one sentence away →