Is Revit free? (2026)
Short answer: no — except for students, where it's completely free. Here is every legitimate route, what the free viewers can and cannot do, and how far the open-source BIM alternatives really get you.
The genuinely free routes
- Education license — full Revit, free for a year and renewable while you're enrolled, through Autodesk's education program. Verification is real (school email or documents). This is THE route: same software the job ads mean.
- 30-day trial — the full product, once. Fine for a portfolio sprint or an interview task, not a plan.
- Autodesk Viewer (web) — opens RVT in the browser: view, measure, comment. No modelling, no exports.
- Revit LT trial / "Revit for a month" — LT is the cheaper cut-down license (no worksharing, no analysis); its trial works the same way.
"Free Revit download" warnings
Cracked Revit installers are a malware staple, and studios can't touch work produced on pirated seats. If a free-forever full Revit is what you're searching for, it doesn't exist — the honest alternatives below do.
Open-source BIM, honestly rated
- FreeCAD (BIM workbench) — real parametric BIM, IFC-native, free forever. Rougher UX, smaller ecosystem; genuinely usable for smaller projects and drawings.
- Bonsai (BlenderBIM) — IFC authoring inside Blender; the most exciting open-source BIM project right now. Powerful, moving fast, not what your employer runs.
- IFC viewers (Open IFC Viewer, BIMcollab ZOOM free) — for opening models without any license.
Why employers ask for Revit anyway
European ads name Revit more than any other single tool — it's the deliverable format of the industry, not just software. The pragmatic path: education license while you can get one, open-source IFC tools to understand BIM beyond one vendor, and Revit skills on the CV either way.
More guides: free architecture software · AutoCAD alternatives · SketchUp for free · AI tools for architecture.