Comparison
Looking for a FUXA alternative
FUXA is free and it is a good project. We are not free. This page does not argue about price; it sets out what the money buys you and what it does not.
The short answer
FUXA (github.com/frangoteam/FUXA) is an MIT-licensed, free SCADA/HMI project written entirely in web technology. It has a drag-and-drop editor, supports Modbus, OPC UA, MQTT and S7, and runs on Docker and ARM. It is the reason the price floor in the lower segment is zero.
We cannot beat FUXA on price. There is nothing below free. If your decision rests on licence cost alone, you can stop reading here — the right answer is FUXA.
What separates us is accountability. FUXA has no legal supplier standing behind it, no SLA to sign, no enterprise identity and permission layer, no hash-chained audit log, no redundancy and no reporting engine. We are not claiming the system will not run without those; it runs, but it cannot be audited and is not accepted in tenders.
Feature matrix
The FUXA column reflects the state of the project in its own repository. In our column, anything unverified is written as "not verified" — overstating is the easiest mistake to make when comparing against open source.
| Topic | Bella SCADA | FUXA |
|---|---|---|
| Licence and cost | Commercial, perpetual licence — price list published | Free, MIT open source |
| Technology | .NET server + browser client | Node.js / Angular / SVG |
| HMI editor | In-browser editor, 36 widgets, symbol library | Drag-and-drop SVG editor |
| Field protocols | 11 drivers; none verified against real hardware | Modbus, OPC UA, MQTT, S7 and others |
| Identity and permissions | Permission catalogue, role/authority separation, 2FA, session lock | No enterprise identity or permission layer |
| Audit trail | Hash-chained audit log with verifiable chain integrity | No audit trail |
| Redundancy | Hot-standby included; disabled by default, real failover not yet exercised | No redundancy |
| Historian scale | TimescaleDB compression included, disabled by default; no published scale test | No historian scale story |
| Reporting | Reporting engine + scheduled e-mail | No reporting engine |
| Support and SLA | Contracted support; 18% standard / 24% priority response commitment | No SLA; community and GitHub issues |
| Accountability | A legal supplier defined in a contract | No supplier carries the responsibility — the integrator bills their own hours |
| Tender acceptability | Legal entity, contract, IEC 62443 dossier | With no supplier side, it is in practice not accepted in public tenders |
| ARM / Raspberry Pi | Not verified — we have no ARM installation test | Runs on Docker and ARM |
| Electronic signature | Signature ledger exists; binding it to write and approval flows is on our roadmap | None |
Source: the FUXA repository. Our column rests on the 21 August 2026 audit of our own codebase — our own gaps are written into the same table.
Cost comparison
We lose the licence row and the table does not hide it. Its purpose is not to make FUXA look expensive, but to show which items stay with you alongside a free licence.
| Item | Bella SCADA Plant | FUXA |
|---|---|---|
| Software licence | ~USD 5,700 (perpetual) | 0 |
| Annual maintenance / support | 18% standard, 24% priority | 0 — no contracted support exists |
| Installation and commissioning | Our hours or an integrator's | Your team's hours or an integrator's |
| Enterprise layer (identity, audit, reporting, redundancy) | Included in the package | Absent; you build it yourself if you need it — a cost that never appears in the budget |
| Who is accountable at 3 a.m. | A contracted supplier with a defined response time | You are; there is no responsibility that can be transferred to a third party |
| Three-year licence + maintenance | ~USD 8,778 | 0 — plus your own engineering hours |
Our figure is the midpoint of the Plant package on the pricing page plus three years of 18% maintenance. We deliberately put no number on the labour rows in the FUXA column: those hours vary by project, team experience and scope, and we have not measured them.
When we would recommend FUXA
In the three cases below, buying a commercial SCADA wastes your money. We would rather you knew that without having to ask us.
An unfunded single-machine interface
If you need an operator screen for one machine, alarms and trends are enough, and nobody will ask for an audit trail or a report, FUXA is more than sufficient. In that scenario you would use none of what a paid licence buys.
A Raspberry Pi / ARM edge box
FUXA runs on Docker and ARM and is mature there. We have no verified installation on ARM; if fitting into a small edge box is your binding constraint, the right answer today is FUXA.
An in-house team that can carry the risk
If you have people who know Node.js, can read and patch the source, and are willing to own the failure, you do not need to buy an SLA. The question that matters is simple: when that team is on holiday, who is behind the system?
Frequently asked
Can I move a project I built in FUXA?
We have no automatic converter. Tag and alarm definitions can be transferred through CSV/JSON; screens are redrawn. Plan the move as its own project line item.
Since you are not open source, am I locked in?
A fair concern. The whole SCADA configuration — connections, devices, tags, alarms, screens, recipes — exports as JSON, so your data is not trapped in our format. For public sector and critical infrastructure projects, source code escrow can also be arranged.
Why is FUXA not accepted in tenders?
Not for technical reasons, but because there is no counterparty. A tender file requires a legal entity to sign the contract, authorisation documents, references and a warranty commitment. An MIT-licensed repository can supply none of those; and when an integrator bids in their own name, the liability sits with the integrator, not the software.
Does your free tier replace FUXA?
Partly. It permits commercial use within 50 tags, 2 screens and one connection, and the brand bar stays on screen. Above those limits FUXA is the freer choice — it sets no limits at all.
What is unverified on your side?
None of the field protocol drivers has been verified against real hardware; hot-standby failover has not been run against a real second node; scale (tag count, concurrent clients) has not been measured; we have no ARM installation test; and the electronic signature is not yet bound to write flows. All are on the development list and this page will be updated as they change.
Start with FUXA, talk to us when you need to
If FUXA covers a single machine, run it. When an audit trail, redundancy or a contracted SLA enters the conversation, come back and we will build the same plant in Bella SCADA.