VFD Price List: ABB, Schneider, Siemens Compared

What drives VFD pricing across ABB, Schneider Electric and Siemens? A drive's price scales mainly with output power (kW or HP), overload duty class (Normal Duty vs Heavy Duty), and the options bolted onto the base power module — not with the brand name printed on the door. Buy the wrong duty class for the load and you either pay for headroom you never use or trip on overcurrent within the first month. This guide breaks down what actually moves the number on a quote: power and duty tier, model tier within each brand (entry, general purpose, industrial), added filters and safety hardware, enclosure rating, and how energy savings on variable-torque loads offset the purchase price over the service life of the drive.

What Actually Sets a VFD's Base Price

Frame size tracks output current, and output current tracks motor power at the rated voltage. A 480V drive sized for a 30 kW motor costs more than one sized for a 7.5 kW motor on the same model line, before a single option is added. Voltage class matters too: a 690V frame for the same kW typically costs more than the 400/480V equivalent because the semiconductors and DC bus components are rated higher.

Duty class is the variable buyers miss most often. A given frame delivers a higher kW rating in Normal Duty than in Heavy Duty, because ND assumes 110% overload for 60 s while HD assumes 150% (some frames 200% for 3 s). Order a drive for a conveyor or crane by matching HD current, and the effective price per kW rises compared with the same frame sold for a pump at ND current.

ABB ACS Range: Where the Price Steps Land

ABB's ACS family splits into three rough price bands. ACS180 and ACS380 sit at the machinery-drive tier: compact, V/f or basic vector, aimed at OEM panels where board space and BOM cost matter more than feature depth. ACS480 and ACS580 form the general purpose band — ACS580 is the volume drive with a built-in EMC filter and DC choke as standard, which raises its price over a bare ACS180 of the same kW but removes a line item buyers would otherwise add separately. ACS880 sits at the top: Direct Torque Control, regenerative or active-front-end options, and cabinet-scale power ratings push it into the industrial price tier.

ACH580 (HVAC) and ACQ580 (water/wastewater) price close to ACS580, since they share the platform and add application firmware rather than new power hardware. The premium there is small and buys commissioning time, not new silicon.

Schneider Altivar Range: Machine vs Process Tiers

ATV12 is the micro-drive floor of the Altivar range. ATV320 and ATV340 form the machine tier, and the gap between them is real: ATV340 adds fast dynamics, embedded Ethernet, and safety functions that ATV320 does not carry, so two drives at the same kW can differ meaningfully in price for reasons that have nothing to do with motor size. ATV610 through ATV680 make up the Altivar Process range — wall-mount volume units scaling up to cabinet-built ATV930 for high power, with the 6xx range adding metering and service features that raise cost per frame.

What we see in the field: buyers comparing an ATV340 quote against an ATV320 quote for "the same job" are often really comparing a drive with embedded safety and Ethernet against one without. The price gap reflects hardware, not margin.

Legacy ATV61 and ATV71 units are being phased out in favor of the 6xx/9xx and ATV340 lines, which affects sourcing more than spec — shrinking supply on a superseded line tends to push its price in either direction depending on the distributor's remaining stock.

Siemens SINAMICS Range: V20 to S120

V20 is the basic-drive floor: simple pumps, fans and conveyors, USS/Modbus RTU, no frills. G120C combines control and power into one book-size unit for general-purpose machinery, and its compact build keeps parts count — and price — below the modular G120. G120 itself splits Control Unit and Power Module into separate purchases, which costs more in total parts but opens the widest option range in the family: swap power modules without replacing the control logic. G120X is tuned for pump, fan and HVAC duty. S120 sits at the top for multi-axis, coordinated motion work, and its per-axis cost reflects servo-grade positioning performance that V20 or G120C were never built to deliver.

Options That Move the Price Beyond the Base Drive

The base power module is only the starting line. Fieldbus option cards (PROFINET, PROFIBUS, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT) add cost on drives where the protocol isn't embedded. Safety functions such as STO or SS1 add a card or firmware license on some models and come standard on others — check before assuming parity. Motor cable runs beyond roughly 15-50 m call for a dV/dt reactor or sine-wave filter to keep reflected-wave voltage spikes off the winding insulation, and that filter is a line item, not a rounding error on smaller frames.

Overhauling loads — cranes, hoists, centrifuges — need a braking chopper and resistor, or a regenerative front end, neither of which ships standard on a general-purpose drive. Line or DC reactors for harmonic mitigation, and an enclosure upgrade from IP20 to IP55 or IP66 for wash-down or outdoor mounting, both add to the number on the quote before the drive ever reaches the motor terminals.

Total Cost of Ownership: Purchase Price vs Energy Savings

On centrifugal pumps and fans, power follows the affinity laws: flow scales with speed, pressure with speed squared, and power with speed cubed. Running a fan at 80% speed uses roughly 51% of full-speed power. That cube relationship is the standard payback argument for spending more on a VFD than on a fixed-speed motor with a damper or throttle valve.

A higher price does not always mean a longer payback. A vector-capable general-purpose drive costs more than an entry V/f unit of the same kW, but on a variable-flow load running at partial speed for most of its duty cycle, the energy saved against a throttled fixed-speed motor recovers that price gap faster than most buyers expect. This depends on the load profile — a pump running at 95% speed nearly all day saves little, while one cycling between 50-80% speed saves a lot.

How to Get an Accurate Comparable Quote

Request quotes at matched duty class, matched voltage, matched enclosure rating and matched fieldbus protocol. Comparing an ND-rated ACS580 against an HD-rated G120 sized for the same current is not a fair comparison — one carries less overload headroom than the other. Ask each supplier to itemize filters, safety cards and enclosure upgrades separately rather than bundling them into one line, so the base-drive price is visible on its own.

This depends on the option list more than most buyers expect: two quotes for "the same drive" can differ by more line items than kW alone, and lead time changes the comparison too. A drive held in stock lands sooner than one on backorder from a factory allocation queue, and that timing has its own cost when a line is down waiting for parts. Working through a VFD selection checklist before requesting quotes keeps the comparison on equal terms, and reading a direct ABB ACS580 vs Schneider ATV630 vs Siemens G120 comparison shows where the spec differences, not just the price differences, actually sit.

Conclusion

VFD price differences track power, duty class, and the option list far more than the brand name on the drive. An ABB ACS580, a Schneider variable frequency drive from the Altivar range, or a Siemens G120C all sit in the same general-purpose price band once matched for kW, voltage, duty and enclosure — the real spread appears when safety, fieldbus, filters, or braking hardware are added for the specific load. Size by duty rating first, price the options the application actually needs, and weigh the purchase price against energy savings on variable-torque loads before comparing brands on sticker price alone. For platform fundamentals and sizing method, see the VFD engineering guide.