OpenFlows WaterGEMS
Commercial
Bentley's flagship distribution suite — design, optimisation and criticality on EPANET-compatible hydraulics.
EPANET
DHS VerifiedActiveThe public-domain standard for water distribution modelling — hydraulics and water quality in pressurised networks.
by US EPA
- Pricing
- Gov-Public
- License
- Public domain (CC0)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Standalone, C engine
- Platform
- Windows, Linux (engine), macOS (engine)
About EPANET
EPANET, from the US EPA, simulates extended-period hydraulics and water quality in pressurised networks: pipes, pumps with curves and controls, valves, tanks, demand patterns, plus chlorine decay, water age and source tracing. Its INP file format is the lingua franca of the field — practically every commercial distribution package imports and exports it.
Version 2.2 moved development into the open (with the Open Water Analytics community) and added pressure-dependent demand. As with SWMM, the commercial suites largely sell productivity around this engine, so understanding EPANET itself pays off no matter which GUI you use day to day.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Appears in collections
- The EPANET Ecosystem
The public-domain engine and everything built on it — Python, MATLAB, QGIS and the browser.
Alternatives to EPANET
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with EPANET.
EPANET-MATLAB Toolkit
Open Source
Full MATLAB control of the EPANET engine — the standard bridge for control and optimisation research.
InfoWater Pro
Commercial
Autodesk's ArcGIS Pro-native distribution modelling — for utilities whose network data lives in Esri.
WNTR
Open SourceVerified
Sandia/EPA's Python toolkit for water network resilience — EPANET simulation plus disaster scenarios and metrics.
QGISRed
Open Source
A QGIS plugin that turns the free GIS into a water-network modelling environment for EPANET.
epanet-js
Freemium
EPANET in the browser — build, import and run distribution models on a map with zero installation.