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Buyer’s guide · checked October 2026

The best nesting software for leather and textile in 2026

Nesting software for hides and fabric, online and desktop, free and paid, sorted by who each tool fits. We make Lescut, so it comes first; where another tool fits you better, we say so.

The short answer

If you needLook at
Leather hides nested in minutes: nothing to install, from €290 a month, cancel any timeLescut
The shortest fabric marker in minutes: nothing to install, from €29 a month, cancel any timeLescut
Leather and textile nesting in your own software through a cloud API, or under your brandLescut
Free nesting of laser or plasma sheets on your own computerDeepnest
A quick free nest of a few SVG shapes, nothing to installSVGnest
A nesting engine that runs offline, inside your own Windows softwareAutoNester-L / AutoNester-T
Unattended marker making in a Gerber cutting roomGerber AccuNest
Buying a leather cutting table with nesting includedThe table vendor’s own system

How we compared

Four questions decide which tool fits

  1. 01

    What do you cut?

    Rectangular sheets, natural hides with defects and grades, or fabric from a roll of fixed width.

  2. 02

    Where does it run?

    In the browser on cloud machines, on your own computer, or inside a CAD or a cutting table.

  3. 03

    What does it take to start?

    A public price and a trial, a sales conversation, a machine purchase or an integration project.

  4. 04

    What comes out?

    Cutting files your table reads, with the layers your cutter expects.

The tools

01

Lescut

Our product

Best for: Leather goods, furniture and automotive cutting rooms nesting scanned hides; apparel and upholstery cutting rooms making markers.

Runs on:
Your browser; jobs on cloud machines up to 8 vCPU
Price:
Textile from €29/month, leather from €290/month; 7-day free trial with a card

Strengths

  • Reads your hide scanner’s DXF: outline, defects and grade zones
  • A minimum grade per part, and graded sub-zones within a part
  • Fewest hides or lowest hide cost; sets, batches and shade lots
  • Shortest marker on a fixed roll width from AAMA/ASTM DXF
  • DXF and SVG out with your original layers and curves
  • A REST API to build Lescut into your own software
  • Coming soon: stripe and plaid matching, folded markers

Watch out for

  • Not for sheet metal: no common-line cutting, lead-ins or remnants
Leather nestingTextile nesting and marker makingPricing
02

Deepnest

Best for: Makers and workshops nesting plywood, acrylic or metal sheets on a laser or plasma cutter.

Runs on:
Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux
Price:
Free; the community fork deepnest-next is open source (MIT)

Strengths

  • Free and open source
  • Common-line merging so the laser does not cut a shared edge twice
  • Part-in-part placement; nests bitmaps for engraving

Watch out for

  • Nothing on hide defects, quality zones or grades in its pages
  • No roll width with the marker length minimised
  • Runs on your own computer until you press stop
Lescut as a Deepnest alternativeSources:deepnest.iodeepnest-next
03

SVGnest

Best for: A quick free nest of a few SVG shapes on a sheet, straight in the browser.

Runs on:
Your browser, on your own computer’s processor
Price:
Free and open source

Strengths

  • Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for
  • The project Deepnest grew out of

Watch out for

  • SVG only
  • Nothing for hides, grades, grain or roll markers
Sources:svgnest.com
04

AutoNester-L and AutoNester-T

Best for: Developers of CAD and ERP software who want a nesting engine to embed: AutoNester-L for leather, AutoNester-T for fabric and other materials.

Runs on:
Microsoft Windows, as a library (DLL) with an API inside the software that embeds it
Price:
On request from Fraunhofer SCAI / scapos AG

Strengths

  • Several hides at once, up to 16 leather quality levels, quality zones on parts
  • AutoNester-T: stripe and plaid matching, folded markers, nap and flip rules
  • Developed by the Fraunhofer SCAI research institute

Watch out for

  • An engine, not an app: you use it through software that embeds it
  • No public price or self-serve trial
Lescut as an AutoNester alternative for integratorsSources:AutoNester-LAutoNester-T
05

Gerber AccuNest and AccuMark

Best for: Furniture cutting rooms already working in Gerber AccuMark, now sold by Lectra.

Runs on:
Part of the Gerber AccuMark pattern and marker suite
Price:
On request from Lectra

Strengths

  • Automatic marker making that can run unattended around the clock
  • AccuMark adds stripe and plaid matching, kitting and bundling

Watch out for

  • Built for the Gerber AccuMark workflow
  • No public price or self-serve trial
Sources:Lectra: Gerber AccuMark & AccuNest
06

Cutting-table systems with their own nesting

Best for: Leather factories buying a cutting table: Lectra (Gerber Taurus, Versalis) and Zünd (Dectura with MindCUT) sell hide capture, defect marking and nesting with the machine.

Runs on:
The vendor’s workstation, with its own scanner and cutting table
Price:
Part of a machine purchase; on request

Strengths

  • Scanning, nesting and cutting from one vendor
  • Hide capture and defect marking built into the line

Watch out for

  • Tied to that vendor’s tables
  • A capital purchase rather than a subscription
Sources:Lectra: Gerber TaurusZünd: Dectura

Facts about other products come from their public pages, linked under each one and checked October 2026. Lescut is not affiliated with any of them. Something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.

Leather

What to look for in leather nesting software

  • It reads the files your hide scanner exports, with defects and grade zones.
  • Each part has a minimum grade, and a part can have zones that need better leather.
  • It nests across several hides and aims for the fewest hides or the lowest hide cost.
  • You decide what happens with incomplete sets, and sets stay within a shade lot.
  • Every cut part can be traced back to its batch and hide.
How Lescut does leather nesting

Textile

What to look for in marker making software

  • It reads AAMA/ASTM DXF from your pattern CAD, with grain lines and quantities.
  • It searches for the shortest marker on your fabric width, not just the first one that fits.
  • Grain, rotation and flip rules per piece hold on every marker.
  • True shape nesting: curved pieces interlock instead of being boxed.
  • If you cut stripes or plaids, it matches them.
How Lescut does marker making

Questions about choosing nesting software

What is the best nesting software?

It depends on what you cut. For laser and plasma sheets, free Deepnest is hard to beat. For scanned leather hides or fabric markers, Lescut runs in the browser with a public price, and its API brings it into your own software. To embed an engine that runs on your own Windows machines, AutoNester. Inside a Gerber cutting room, AccuNest.

What is the best free nesting software?

Deepnest for sheets on your own computer, and SVGnest for a quick nest of SVG shapes in the browser. Neither handles hide defects, leather grades or roll markers. Lescut is not free, but every plan starts with a free trial.

What is the best leather nesting software?

Look for software that reads your hide scanner's files, keeps parts out of defects, matches each part to a grade, nests across several hides and fills orders in whole sets. Lescut does all of that online; cutting-table vendors such as Lectra and Zünd include it with their machines; AutoNester-L offers it as an engine for CAD developers.

Is there online nesting software?

Yes. Lescut runs in the browser and nests on cloud machines, for leather and textile. SVGnest also runs in the browser, using your own computer's processor, for SVG shapes on a sheet.

What is the difference between nesting software and a nesting engine?

Nesting software is something you use: you load parts and stock and get cutting files back. A nesting engine, such as AutoNester, is a library that software developers build into their own CAD or ERP; you use it through that software.

How should I compare yield between tools?

On your own parts and material. Yield depends on the parts, the hides or roll width, the rules you set and how long the search runs, so figures from different samples do not compare. Run the same order through each tool you are considering.

Try Lescut on your own order, free for 7 days

The fair test is your own parts on your own hides or roll. Run this week’s order and compare it with what you cut today.

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