Render a House vs Veras (and D5 Render): 2026 comparison of prices, inputs and speed

Veras earned its place. It was the first AI renderer most architects met inside their own modelling software, and after EvolveLAB joined Chaos it now ships as plugins for Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad, Vectorworks, Forma and Allplan, and inside Enscape, V-Ray and Corona. That plugin depth is real: you render the view you are looking at, with the camera you set, without exporting a thing.

Its geometry controls are also genuinely useful. The Geometry Override slider lets you decide how tightly the AI respects your model, Render Selection re-renders only the part you pick, and Render Same Seed keeps a look consistent across iterations. Those are controls a practising architect asked for, and they show.

D5 Render deserves the same honesty. It is a mature real-time engine with an asset library, animation and a team plan with shared libraries. If you want a walkthrough video from a finished model, it is the right category of tool, and Render a House is not.

Render a House is an AI rendering tool for architects, interior designers and real estate. It runs in the browser, takes a sketch, plan, photo or 3D export, and returns a concept image in about half a minute. The rest of this page is about where each of the three is the honest pick.

The canonical table first. Prices are the lowest paid tier each vendor shows on its own page, checked September 2026.

Two clarifications. Veras does not publish a per-render time, so that cell says so rather than inventing one. D5 Render's speed depends on your GPU and output resolution, because it is a real-time engine rather than a fixed cloud queue.

This is the comparison most people searching “Render a House vs Veras” want: the two image-first AI tools, dimension by dimension, with D5 Render noted where it changes the picture.

Where each tool runs

Veras runs where your model runs. Chaos lists plugins for Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad, Vectorworks, Forma and Allplan, availability inside Enscape, V-Ray and Corona, and a web app for people without a host. The features page marks the Enscape live link as “coming soon”, so check the current state before you rely on it.

D5 Render is a desktop real-time engine that runs on your own GPU. Render a House runs entirely in the browser: a laptop, a client's meeting-room screen or a tablet all work, and there is nothing to install or keep updated. The trade is that Render a House has no offline mode and no plugin.

Inputs each tool accepts

Veras covers a wide input range for a plugin. Chaos lists sketch-to-image, 3D-model-to-image, text-to-image, image-to-video and image-to-3D, plus image-to-image in the web app. Inside a host, the main input is the current model view.

Render a House accepts hand sketches, floor plans, 3D-model exports or screenshots from SketchUp, Revit or Archicad, existing photos and previous renders, as JPG, PNG or WebP. Native 3D import takes GLB, GLTF and OBJ; a .skp or .rvt file has to be exported first. The floor plan to 3D render tool and the hand sketch to render tool are the two most-used entry points.

D5 Render accepts one thing: a 3D model, synced live from your modelling software. That is not a weakness, it is the point of a real-time engine, but it means D5 is useless on the morning you only have a napkin sketch.

Host software and plugins

Hosts are Veras's home turf. Seven modelling hosts plus three Chaos renderers means most BIM and CAD studios already have a place to run it. If you own Enscape, V-Ray or Corona, Veras is bundled into the product you pay for, which can make the marginal cost of trying it zero.

Render a House has no host plugin by design. Instead it sits downstream of any host that can export an image or a GLB: our SketchUp, Revit and Archicad pages walk through each export path. D5 takes a synced 3D model from your modelling software, and its Pro licence is shared across D5 Render and D5 Lite.

Geometry control

This is where Veras leads. The Geometry Override slidergives you a dial between “keep my model exactly” and “let the AI reinterpret”. Render Selection limits the change to a chosen region, and Render Same Seed lets you vary a prompt while keeping the composition stable. For an architect protecting a facade rhythm or a window module, that is the feature that matters.

Render a House preserves geometry in general but does not expose a numeric override. What it offers is area editing, so you can change one region or material without re-rendering everything, and style presets or a custom reference image for the look. Its output is a concept image, not a measured drawing, and geometry can shift on openings, roof lines and thin elements. D5 sits at the other extreme: as a real-time engine it renders your model exactly, because it is not reinterpreting anything.

Speed

Render a House returns a render in roughly 30 to 60 seconds, and up to about two minutes on complex inputs or under heavy load. Veras does not publish a per-image time on the pages we opened, so we will not quote one; in practice the plugin's speed depends on the cloud queue and the chosen model. D5 Render is real-time in the viewport, and final still or video export time scales with your GPU and resolution.

The speed that matters more is workflow speed. With Veras, the first render is minutes after installing the plugin if the model is already open. With D5, it is after the model is synced, assets are placed and lights are set. With Render a House, it is after an upload, because there is no scene to build.

Output

All three produce stills. Veras adds presets, mood boards, diagrams, annotative edits and multiple views from one run. D5 produces stills, tours and animation from a fully lit scene. Render a House produces PNG or JPG stills with relighting and time-of-day options, and read-only share links so a client can view a set without an account. Uploads stay private unless you share them, and commercial use is allowed on every plan.

Video and 3D

Veras now offers image-to-video and image-to-3D model generation, drawing from the same credit pool as images; Chaos frames the trial's 100 credits as roughly 10 images or 10 videos. D5 Render is the video specialist of the three, with animation and project tours from the real-time scene.

Render a House can generate a short video from a finished render, and its 3D import lets you orbit a GLB, GLTF or OBJ and pick the camera before rendering. The 3D model to AI video walkthrough guide shows that path end to end. It is not a substitute for a D5 animation timeline.

Pricing

The Chaos Veras page lists Starter at $16.90 a month billed annually ($202.80 a year), Pro at $29 a month billed annually ($348 a year) and an Ultra tier with 6,000 credits whose price was not shown on the page we opened. Prices exclude taxes, and image and video generation share one credit pool. The dedicated chaos.com/veras/pricingURL returned a 404 when we checked in September 2026, so these figures come from the main Veras page. EvolveLAB's own page still lists $59 a month month-to-month, $29 a month annual named, $51 a month annual floating and $12.42 a month annual student licences, with a 15-day, 30-render trial. Treat the Chaos page as current and the EvolveLAB page as the legacy licence list.

D5 Render lists a free Community edition, Pro at $30 a month billed yearly ($360 a year) and Teams at $59 a month per seat ($708 a year). Community is non-commercial; paid work needs Pro. Render a House is $39 a month or $312 a year for Pro with 240 credits a month, and $99 a month or $792 a year for Studio with 1000 credits a month, with 3 free credits every day.

“Render a House vs D5 Render” is a category question more than a feature question. D5 is a real-time GPU engine: you bring a complete model, sync it live, dress it with assets, light it and walk through it. The result is exact to the model and can be animated. Its Community edition is free for non-commercial use, which is generous, but commercial delivery requires Pro at $30 a month billed yearly.

Render a House is an AI image tool. It has no scene, no asset library to place and no timeline. It interprets whatever you upload and returns a concept image in about a minute. For the first two weeks of a project, before a model exists, that is exactly what you want. For a final marketing film from an approved model, D5 is.

The two are complementary far more often than they compete. A common pattern is Render a House for concept options and client direction, then D5 (or Enscape, or Lumion) once the model is locked. Our D5 Render pricing guide and D5 Render alternative page cover the licence detail and the hand-off in more depth.

Every competitor cell links to the first-party page it was read from, checked September 2026. Render a House prices are pulled from the live pricing constants, so they cannot drift from the pricing page.

The annual maths: a year of Veras Starter is $202.80, a year of D5 Pro is $360, a year of Render a House Pro is $312. Veras is the cheapest paid entry; Render a House is the only one of the three with a permanent free tier that allows commercial use; D5 is the only one with a per-seat team plan.

A straight decision table. Find the row that describes your week and take the tool in the middle column.

A “Render a House review comparison” should judge the tool against the job it claims to do, not against a real-time engine. Here is how the three compare on the practical questions a studio asks before committing a seat.

In use, Render a House's strengths are speed to first image, zero setup and the fact that a non-technical colleague can run it. Its weaknesses are the ones any AI image tool has: it interprets rather than computes, so you check openings and roof lines before a client sees the image. Veras's strength is that the check is partly done for you by the Geometry Override slider. D5's strength is that there is nothing to check, because the geometry is your model.

Stated plainly, because a comparison that hides this is useless:

• Render a House is not a BIM or CAD tool and does not replace Revit, Archicad, SketchUp or Rhino. It produces images, not models or drawings.
• It is not a real-time engine. There is no viewport, no asset library to place and no animation timeline. D5, Enscape and Lumion do that job.
• Output is a concept image, not a measured or contractual drawing. Geometry is generally preserved but can shift, especially on openings, roof lines and thin elements.
• It runs in the browser only. There is no plugin for Revit or SketchUp, no offline desktop app, and native 3D import needs GLB, GLTF or OBJ rather than .skp or .rvt.
• There is no multi-user team account with shared libraries. Studios that need per-seat administration should look at D5 for Teams or a Veras floating licence.
• Style control is presets plus a reference image; there is no model fine-tuning on your own portfolio.

Who it is not for: a visualisation specialist producing final marketing films, a documentation team that needs drawings, or a studio whose entire process must stay inside one host plugin. Who it is for: architects, interior designers and real estate teams who need a convincing concept image from what they already have, today.

Veras vs LookX vs MyArchitectAI vs Render a House widens this comparison to two more AI renderers.

D5 Render pricing breaks down Community, Pro and Teams licences in detail.

AI alternatives to Enscape and Lumion explains when an AI image tool can stand in for a real-time engine.

Revit and Archicad to AI render covers the export path from the two BIM hosts Veras also supports.

Best AI rendering tools for architects ranks the wider field, including the tools on this page.

Sketch to photorealistic render with AI is the workflow Render a House does that neither Veras nor D5 targets first.