PCB Design Revision Comparator (GerbDiff)

Electronics manufacturers and PCB design teams need to quickly spot unintended changes between design revisions to avoid costly production mistakes. GerbDiff provides visual layer-by-layer comparisons of Gerber files with local-only processing to protect design IP. Target users are PCB designers, manufacturers, and fab houses.

The hardware renaissance — driven by tariff-induced reshoring, the proliferation of IoT devices, and the surge in defense/aerospace contracts — means more PCB revisions are hitting fabs than at any point in the last decade, and a single misread diff can cost tens of thousands in scrapped boards. No clear incumbent dominates here; most designers today manually overlay layers in KiCad or Altium's built-in tools, which is clunky and error-prone, not a polished diff product. The revenue band is realistic because fab houses and mid-sized EMS companies will pay per-seat or per-project for something that prevents even one re-spin, but the ceiling is low since the addressable buyer pool is niche and churn risk is high if design teams just internalize a workflow once they're trained. The biggest risk is distribution: PCB designers are insular, trust vendor recommendations, and don't browse Product Hunt — without a direct channel into fab houses or a partnership with a CAD tool, growth stalls at a few hundred users.