For Freelance Solar Designers
Your design business. One platform.
Produce permit-ready plansets in minutes. Manage every client, project, revision, and delivery in the same place. Your name on the work.
A set costs you $33. What you bill is your business.
One finished planset spends one credit: $49 bought one at a time, $33 a set on the 30-credit bundle, and your first one is free. Bill your installer what you bill today. The afternoon of CAD becomes an hour of review, on more sets per day than manual drafting allows.
The freelance day, before and after
Today
- CAD for drawings, a spreadsheet for jobs, email for status, Word for invoices
- Installers chasing you for updates
- AHJ comments (the plan reviewer’s corrections) that mean redrawing
- Looking like one person instead of a firm
With Solar Design Lab
- Permit-ready plansets from one engine, NEC checks included
- Clients sign in and see status themselves
- AHJ comments become a tracked task with a drafted response letter
- Your logo on the work, your business on the letterhead
Permit-ready plansets, and the business around them, in one login
Everything below is live in the product today.
The design engine
A single-line diagram (SLD), electrical, and structural generated from the drawing as you design, with AHJ and NEC checks running live. A complete permit package, not a diagram you finish somewhere else.
The pipeline
Every job from intake to delivery: statuses, turnaround countdowns, tasks, files, and threads in one place. Blocked jobs carry a reason, so nothing rots quietly in a folder.
Client logins
Invite each installer into their own sign-in. They see status, download deliverables, and message you on the project. They never see your other clients or your costs.
Branded delivery
Your business on the letterhead. Your client’s contractor name and license in the title block, which is what the permit office reads. The output carries your business identity, not a template’s.
Revisions handled
One click turns AHJ comments into a tracked revision task, and the assistant drafts the numbered response letter on your letterhead. Revisions of a delivered planset never cost another credit.
Invoicing
Bill each installer from their completed projects: PDF invoices, account statements, payment tracking. The spreadsheet and the Word template retire together.
When a job needs a PE stamp, request one in-app on the finished set, or bring your own engineer. Stamps are an add-on, never a gate on your work.
Open the free editor and see the engine yourself or read what the editor does first
Marketplace gigs pay you a rate. Your own book pays you a margin.
Plenty of independent solar designers work through somebody else’s storefront: an outsourced design service, Upwork, Fiverr, or an offshore shop’s queue. GreenLancer’s own services page describes the people who produce its designs as “qualified fulfillment partners.” In that model the installer is the platform’s customer, the platform holds the account and the relationship, and the designer fulfills. The next job starts from zero, just like the last one.
The numbers favor the designer who owns the relationship. GreenLancer publishes no rate card; third-party listings report $250 to $600 for a residential set, with plans-plus-stamps quotes reported past $1,500, against their own published turnaround of one to two business days for permit design. A designer on this platform produces the set in minutes at a cost of $33 a set on the 30-credit bundle, and answers the phone when the installer calls. The installer pays less, and your name is on the set.
Solar Design Lab is not a marketplace and does not sit between you and your clients: it is the office for the book you are building. A designer who already knows a client’s jurisdictions is expensive to replace, which is why direct relationships hold.
Reported prices are third-party reseller and directory listings as of August 2026; GreenLancer publishes no rate card. Turnaround figures are GreenLancer’s own published pages as of August 2026.
Your clients are yours. In writing.
Every platform you run your business on can see your client list. So can this one. The difference is a published, versioned policy: we will never use your account data to contact or compete for your clients. Not as a courtesy, as a commitment the whole platform operates under, the same one our engineering customers rely on.
Read the open-market policyDesigner Plan early access
We onboard a small cohort at a time. Early access means the full platform, free while the pilot cohort runs, with planset credits on us so you can put real jobs through it. In return we want your honest notes on where it falls short. Early access members also get first call if we open overflow work from our own installer pipeline.
Questions designers ask
- Can my clients see project status?
- Yes. Installers you invite get their own sign-in: their project list, workflow status, deliverable downloads, and message threads. Status changes email them automatically, so the "any update?" emails stop.
- Whose name is on the planset?
- Yours and your client’s, where each belongs. Your business goes on the letterhead, and your client’s contractor name and license go in the title block, which is what the permit office needs to see.
- What if a job needs a stamp?
- Request a PE stamp in-app on any finished planset, either stamp-only or with engineering modifications. If you already work with an engineer, bring them: the platform stores licenses and feeds them into title blocks and sealed letters.
- Do you ever contact my clients?
- No. Our open-market policy is published and versioned: we will never use your account data to contact or compete for your clients. Your clients are yours. The open market is everyone’s.
- What does a planset cost me?
- One credit per finished planset. $49 buying one at a time, $33 a set on the 30-credit bundle, down to $29 at the largest. Credits never expire, your first planset is free, and once a planset has spent its credit, revisions and re-exports are free, including AHJ correction rounds.
- Can I invoice my clients through the platform?
- Yes. Completed projects queue up by client. You generate the invoice, download the PDF or a full account statement to send to your client’s billing contacts, and record payments as they come in. Paid status flows back onto the projects.
- What will the Designer Plan cost?
- We are setting the price with the pilot cohort. Early access is free while the pilot runs, and you will see the number before you are ever asked to pay anything.
- I get my work through a marketplace today. Why change anything?
- You don’t have to quit marketplace work to stop depending on it. Marketplace jobs pay a rate on accounts the platform holds. Your own clients pay your price and come back next month. This platform is built for the second kind of work: your book, your brand, your margin.
Judge it on a real job.
The editor is free to try today. Early access adds the client logins, the pipeline, and the invoicing around it.