Free nesting software for laser, CNC and plasma: what still works

The question comes up on every cutting forum, every year: what can I use to arrange parts on a sheet without paying for CAM software? The honest answer has changed. Two of the best-known free tools have been abandoned for years, one community fork is alive and genuinely good, and the freemium tools have catches worth knowing before you invest an evening.

Rectangular vs. true-shape: know which kind you need

Nesting tools come in two families, and picking the wrong one wastes either material or your time. Rectangular (or "guillotine") optimizers treat every part as its bounding box. That is exactly right for cabinet sides, drawer bottoms and anything else that really is a rectangle, and those cut-list optimizers are fast and plentiful.

True-shape nesting works with the actual outline. Concave parts interlock, a disc tucks into the notch of an L-bracket, small parts land inside the cutouts of big ones. For irregular parts, nesting vendors commonly quote yield gains around 10 to 15 percent over bounding-box layouts. Treat that as a vendor range, not a promise: if your parts are mostly rectangular, true-shape gains you almost nothing, and a plain cut-list optimizer is the better tool. Everything below is about true-shape nesting.

The free true-shape tools, one by one

SVGnest: free, browser-based, frozen in 2019

SVGnest is open source and runs entirely in the browser with nothing to install, which is why LightBurn still hands its users over to it. The limits are structural: it accepts only SVG, so DXF files must be converted first; it flattens every arc and bezier into line segments; and by design it runs until you press stop, it has no finish line. The repository has been untouched since April 2019, with open reports of runs that go 20 minutes and longer without a usable result and of overlapping output at higher part counts. For a quick one-off with a handful of clean SVG shapes it still does the job. Know when to stop it.

Deepnest (original): capable, abandoned since 2018

Deepnest earned its reputation honestly: desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, imports DXF, SVG and Corel CDR, exports DXF and SVG, places parts inside the holes of other parts, nests bitmap images for engraving, and merges common cut lines so shared edges are cut once. No free tool since has matched that feature list. The problem is that development stopped in August 2018. The issue tracker has 181 open reports, including crashes, hangs and overlapping layouts, and nobody is going to fix them. Its DXF import also depends on a remote conversion server, so no internet means no DXF import. In 2026 there is no reason to start here, because the next entry exists.

deepnest-next: the fork to actually use

deepnest-next is the community fork that picked the project back up, and it is the current honest recommendation for free desktop nesting. It is MIT licensed and free, with binaries for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux. Releases have been steady, v1.5.6 shipped in May 2025, and early users report that unit conversion, a sore point of the original, is handled correctly. It keeps the features that made Deepnest special, including common-line merging. Two honest caveats: DXF import still runs through an online conversion service (native import is listed as upcoming), and the tracker has open reports around DXF files breaking into pieces on import. If your files are clean SVG or well-behaved DXF and you are online, try this first. It costs nothing.

MyNesting and DG-Nest: free until the export

Two freemium options come up in forum threads. MyNesting lets you nest for free and charges when you export the result to DXF, which is the step you actually need, so budget for that. DG-Nest follows a similar freemium pattern. Neither is a scam, but "free" here means free to evaluate, not free to produce cut files.

Comparison at a glance

MyNesting and DG-Nest are left out of the table because their pay-per-export models make a "free" comparison misleading.

Where NestForge honestly fits in a free roundup

NestForge belongs in this list because its free tier is a real tool, not a demo: up to 10 parts on 1 sheet, with the full importer, the full nesting engine, validation and DXF/SVG/PDF export, and it does not expire. Above 10 parts it is a paid one-time license, and that is the honest boundary of "free" here.

What it does differently: every layout is checked by an independent validator that recomputes overlaps and clearances with exact arithmetic, so a layout that overlaps by a hair never reaches you. Results are deterministic, the same parts and settings produce the same layout every time. Arcs stay true arcs from import to export instead of becoming polygon soup. And everything, including DXF parsing, runs locally in your browser, so it works offline and your files are never uploaded. We publish head-to-head benchmark numbers against SVGnest and deepnest-next, including the instances we lose, in the benchmark section.

What it does not do: no toolpaths or G-code, no common-line cutting (the Deepnest family's headline feature), no tube nesting, no CDR import, no bitmap nesting. If common-line merging or unlimited free part counts are what you need, deepnest-next is the better fit, and we would rather tell you that than have you find out after buying.