What “online” means here
“Online” covers everything from a lux estimator to a 3D room styler, so it is worth being literal about what it means on this site. Three things, and they are the three the product pages already claim.
- Nothing to install. You log in and work — no download, no desktop version to keep updated on every machine in the office.
- The calculation runs in the cloud, not on your laptop. As the FAQ puts it: nothing on your machine has to keep up.
- It runs where your browser runs. macOS, Windows and Linux all work, on any device.
There is a second half to that, and for a BIM team it matters more than the browser itself. Momik has two front doors and one engine behind them: “One calculation engine, one catalog. Work in the browser or straight from Revit — both are available today.” The Revit plugin runs where Revit runs, which is Windows. Your model supplies the zones, the calculation still happens in the cloud, and the chosen luminaires come back into the model as families with their photometry linked.
So the browser is not a lesser edition of a desktop product. It is one of two ways into the same study.
What you get from a browser-based study
A study is four steps, the same four whichever door you came in through.
- Draw or upload your zones. Import your floor plan or draw the zones — each type automatically gets the right standard values.
- Filter the catalog. Set your requirements — lux, UGR, IP, CCT, CRI, mounting — and the catalog keeps only what truly fits.
- Click Calculate. One click, one complete study: illuminance, uniformity, UGR and an isolux map — the contour lines that show where the light lands — per zone.
- Receive your report. A standards-compliant PDF with heatmaps, luminaire list and results per zone — ready for your quote.
The compliance step is the part worth reading twice. Momik calculates maintained illuminance, uniformity (Uo) and UGR per zone and checks each one against the standard values for that room type. The report lists the result zone by zone, so the compliance is readable instead of assumed.
The other half of the study is the comparison. Momik is not a manufacturer. Same room, same standard, same grid — the calculation method, the grid spacing and the maintenance factor, the allowance for light output dropping over the life of an installation, are the ones you would set in a desktop tool — and several suppliers judged purely on the numbers, not on their brochures. Every luminaire is calculated from its real IES or LDT photometric file, the measured file describing how that specific luminaire spreads light, so what you are comparing is illuminance, power per m², efficacy, UGR and list price.
Professional tool or hobby tool: how to tell
Searching for an online lighting calculator returns a wide spread of tools. Many are good at what they do, but are not built to produce a compliance document. Five questions separate the two, and they are worth asking of any tool, this one included.
- Does it know the standard per room type? A lux figure means nothing until it is checked against a requirement. An office, a corridor and a workshop do not share one.
- Does it calculate from real photometry? IES or LDT files describe how a specific luminaire actually distributes light. A generic point source with a lumen figure is an estimate, not a study.
- Does it report glare? Illuminance is the easy half. UGR is where a room that looks fine on a heatmap still fails.
- Does it apply a maintenance factor? Light output falls over the life of an installation. A study calculated on day-one output flatters every design in it.
- Will the report survive someone else’s desk? Assumptions stated, results per zone, luminaires listed — enough for a client, a contractor or a checking engineer to follow what you did.
Momik’s own answers, taken from its product pages rather than from us, in the same order:
- Standard per room type — each zone type automatically gets the right standard values.
- Real photometry — every luminaire is calculated from its real IES or LDT file.
- Glare — UGR is calculated per zone and checked against that room type’s value, alongside illuminance and uniformity.
- Maintenance factor — one of the assumptions the study fixes, the same way you would set it in a desktop tool.
- The report — a standards-compliant PDF with heatmaps, luminaire list and results per zone.
That is the claim, not the proof. The checklist above is what you should hold any tool to — run one study and read the report before you build a project around it.
Browser versus desktop software
The established tools in this field are desktop applications. That is not a flaw — it buys them capability a browser tool does not have — but it decides a few things for you before you open the software.
| DIALux evo (desktop) | Momik (browser) | |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | A desktop install. DIALux evo also needs a user account, the DIALux ID, to start the software. | None. Log in and work — nothing to install. |
| Operating system | DIALux evo runs only on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11; ARM CPUs are not supported, and DIAL says it currently has no plans for a Mac version. | Any browser: macOS, Windows and Linux. The Revit plugin is the exception — it runs where Revit runs, which is Windows. |
| Where the calculation runs | On your own machine. DIAL lists 4 GB RAM (min. 2 GB) and an OpenGL 3.2 graphics card among its requirements. | In the cloud. Nothing on your machine has to keep up. |
| Scope | Broad. DIAL names indoor, emergency, outdoor and street lighting, daylight simulated together with artificial light, whole buildings, and ray-traced images for presentation. | Indoor workplaces: the EN 12464-1 study, the supplier comparison, the report. |
DIALux evo is the desktop tool we checked line by line; the figures are DIAL’s own, taken on 17 September 2026 from DIALux evo 14 Patch 5. Relux and AGi32 are the other established desktop tools in this field. We have not verified their requirements, so this table makes no claim about either.
When desktop is still the right choice
A browser tool that pretends to replace a desktop suite is selling you a disappointment. Here is what the desktop tools do that Momik does not, taken from DIAL’s own description of DIALux evo:
- Outdoor lighting — façades, plazas and parks, with mounting heights, beam angles, light pollution and glare.
- Street lighting — street profiles and luminaire arrangement, with automatic optimisation of pole spacing, mounting height and tilt.
- Emergency lighting — escape routes and anti-panic areas, with a real-time false-colour preview.
- Daylight — natural and artificial light simulated together.
- Whole-building work — from single rooms to entire buildings, with imported 3D models, DWG plans or room scans.
- Photorealistic visualisation — ray-traced images to present the design to a client.
If your next job is a car park, a sports hall, a façade or a street, that is a desktop job and Momik has no answer for it. Momik does one thing: the EN 12464-1 indoor study, the supplier comparison on real photometry, and the report. Plenty of teams run both, and there is nothing odd about that — the sourced, line-by-line version of this comparison is on the DIALux alternative page.
Try it before you decide
The Momik homepage carries the editor itself rather than a picture of it: “This is the real Momik editor — not a mockup, and nothing to install.” It runs a sample study on the same calculation engine you use in the app — standards-compliant, with an isolux heatmap and 3D. Draw, calculate, view the result.
Beyond the sample study: creating an account is free, and a study is not. Momik is priced on the square metres you calculate — a plan with a monthly allowance included, or pay-as-you-go per square metre. Every plan is one seat and starts with a 14-day trial — card details up front, cancel before day 14 and you are not charged — and every plan includes the full web app, the complete catalog and standards-compliant reports.