Where infrared.city fits
3,204,804 simulations run on Infrared Core (as of 29 Oct 2026).
infrared.city runs 12 models from one engine, Infrared Core, among them wind, wind comfort, sun, daylight, radiant heat and felt heat (UTCI). It works on real 3D building and terrain meshes, in a browser app, through an API and SDK, and in plugins for Grasshopper, QGIS and ArcGIS. Felt heat for 1 km² takes about 5 s once the geometry is uploaded, and 400 km² took 44 s as four 100 km² runs in parallel. Run times are not like for like across tools: area, grid, simulated hours and physics differ. Sun, sky and radiant heat come from ray tracing. Wind comes from an AI model trained on CFD results, not from a CFD run for each request.
- You need wind, wind comfort and felt heat for a whole district or city, without local compute.
- You want the same results in Grasshopper, QGIS, ArcGIS, a browser and an API.
- You need an hourly city layer for a digital twin.
Use both
infrared.city has a Grasshopper plugin, so both can sit in one definition. Ladybug Tools covers weather data, building energy and daylight. infrared.city adds outdoor wind and heat across the whole site.
Facts side by side
| infrared.city | Ladybug Tools | |
|---|---|---|
| Inputs | Real 3D building and terrain meshes, weather data; trees and ground materials for heat | Rhino and Grasshopper geometry, EnergyPlus weather files (EPW) |
| Runs as | Cloud: browser app, API and SDK, plugins | Rhino and Grasshopper plugins, Python libraries, on your computer |
| Licence and pricing | Tokens: free start with 900 tokens, plans from €240 a year | Free, GNU General Public License version 3 |
The infrared.city values repeat the full comparison. Each value for Ladybug Tools comes from the sources below.
Sources
- Ladybug Tools: about , accessed 30 Oct 2026.
- Ladybug Tools: Ladybug , accessed 30 Oct 2026.
- Ladybug Tools: Honeybee , accessed 30 Oct 2026.