Frequently asked questions

Yes — there is a genuinely useful free tier (the unit converter, reference library, comparison mode, steel/section properties, GD&T and tolerance tools). On top of that, every new account gets a 14-day free trial of ALL 50 calculators and the schematic editors, and anyone can preview the whole suite for 30 minutes with no sign-up at all.

No. The 14-day trial requires no credit card and no payment details. You simply create a free account and get full Expert access for 14 days. Nothing is charged automatically when the trial ends.

Your account automatically drops to the free tier — you are never auto-charged. You keep access to the free tools (converter, reference library, steel sections, GD&T and tolerance tools) and can upgrade to a paid plan whenever you choose.

Yes. You can preview the full suite for 30 minutes with no account. After that, create a free account to continue with the 14-day no-card trial.

See the Pricing page for current plans. Billing is handled securely by Paddle (our Merchant of Record); you can cancel at any time and changes take effect at the end of your billing period.

50 standards-based calculators spanning rotating machinery (shafts, bearings, rotor dynamics, flywheels, motors), power transmission (gears, belts, chains, couplings, clutches, press fits), machine elements (bolts, springs, keys, seals, ball screws, cams, mechanism force analysis), structural & stress (beams, columns, fatigue, welds, Mohr's circle, torsion), manufacturing & metrology (machining, sheet metal, tolerance stack-up, GD&T), and fluid & thermal systems (pipe flow, pumps, compressors, heat exchangers, pressure vessels, hydraulics, pneumatics), plus lifting tools — and three schematic editors (fluid power, P&ID and electrical).

Each tool states the governing standard(s) in its header — for example ISO 6336 for gears, ISO 281 for bearing life, VDI 2230 for bolted joints, EN 1993 (Eurocode 3) for steel, and ASME B31.3 for process piping. Where a tool has no governing code it says so and names the textbook method it uses instead. The methodology and references are also printed in every PDF report.

Most calculators are standard-validated: they implement a cited governing standard or recognised textbook method, and each is checked against that standard by an automated test suite that re-runs on every release. Every report shows the formulas, substituted values and references so a reviewer can follow the work. That said, the tools are a decision-support aid — not a certified design and not a substitute for engineering judgement. The responsible (chartered/PE) engineer must independently verify any result before it is used for manufacture, construction, procurement or certification. See our Engineering Disclaimer for the full basis on which results are provided.

A small amber “Engineering estimate — not standard-validated” badge marks panels that use a simplified, heuristic or manufacturer-specific model for which no public governing standard exists. These are reasonable first-pass models for preliminary sizing, but they are not validated to a standard and should not be relied on for a final design. A few tools — notably slewing-ring bearings, shaft couplings and worm gears — are estimate-based and should be verified against the component manufacturer’s own selection data. Everything without the badge is standard-validated.

Yes. Tools accept SI (metric) inputs and many provide imperial equivalents, and the standalone unit converter covers the common mechanical-engineering quantities.

Yes. Every calculator has a built-in AI Engineering Assistant (powered by Claude) that sees your live inputs and results and answers questions about the calculation, the governing standard and how to improve the design. Hourly question limits scale with your plan: Core 10/hr, Pro 20/hr, Expert 50/hr. During the 14-day free trial: 3 questions per day.

We're bringing MechanixCalc into CAD. The first add-in — the MechanixCalc Copilot for Fusion 360, for Expert users — is in early access ahead of public release: a chat copilot that reads only the geometry you select (numbers, never your CAD file), asks for the loads CAD can't know, and runs every number through the validated MechanixCalc engines server-side. It authenticates with your personal API key and is covered by a monthly fair-use allowance shown live in the panel. Inventor and SolidWorks add-ins are planned next.

Yes. Signed-in users can save any calculation to their account and reopen it later from the My Calculations page — the inputs and results are stored so you can pick up exactly where you left off.

Yes. Signed-in users can group saved calculations into projects, so everything for one job, machine or assembly lives together, and your dashboard surfaces recent projects with a shortcut to resume where you left off. Projects are private to your account, and deleting a project never deletes its calculations — they simply become ungrouped again.

Yes. From any saved calculation you can mint a public, read-only share link. Anyone with the link sees a clean, branded summary of the inputs and results — no account required to view it.

Yes. Every calculator generates a branded, multi-page PDF engineering report with a title block, a PASS/REVIEW/FAIL verdict, the cited standard, input and result tables, a worked methodology section (formula → substituted values → result), the tool's schematic sketch embedded as a diagram, plus assumptions, references and a disclaimer — suitable for a design file or submittal. Pro and Expert users can upload their own company logo and name so the report is white-labelled as their deliverable.

Yes. Every tool exports its inputs and results to Excel (.xlsx). You can also bundle several saved calculations into a single multi-section submittal PDF (the Calculation Package) — a cover page, contents, and one section per calculation.

We use essential cookies — the ones that sign you in and run the free preview — plus a single analytics cookie that is set only if you agree. We ask on your first visit, declining costs you nothing, and you can change your mind at any time from the footer or Settings. We do not sell your data. Your saved calculations are private to your account unless you explicitly create a public share link. See the Privacy Policy for full details.

You can cancel a paid plan at any time from your account; access continues until the end of the current billing period. Because the trial is free with no card, there is nothing to refund for trial users. See the Refund Policy for details.

Yes — the Team plan is $49/seat/month (billed annually, 5–20 seats) and gives every seat full Expert-level access. Set-up is handled by email today (contact us from the Pricing page); a self-serve seat-management dashboard and shared calculation workspace are in development. For more than 20 seats, see the Enterprise option.

Yes, on the Expert plan. Generate and manage your own API keys (mxc_live_…) from the API docs page, then POST your inputs to /api/v1/<tool> with your key in the x-api-key header to get results back as JSON. No separate onboarding needed — and for security the full key is shown only once, when it's created.

MechanixCalc runs in any modern desktop browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari). Calculations run server-side, so a current browser and an internet connection are all you need.