Up to 69% of Revit users may be cloud-ready, our new poll shows

‍Designair conducted a poll with over 500 Revit users to find out if they would consider running Revit entirely in the cloud. The results showed there is strong demand for this approach - over two thirds of respondents said they would be open to doing so. From our follow up interviews, we learned what's holding the doubters back.

Autodesk’s Revit is one of the most popular brands of BIM software on the market today. At present, Revit is only available on-premises. It is installed on powerful desktop computers, and is used by architects, engineers and construction (AEC) industry workers to design, visualize and collaborate on building models. 

At Designair, we wanted to find out if Revit users would consider accessing the software in the cloud. We carried out a LinkedIn poll on the Revit Users group to gauge interest in this approach. 

Read on to learn about:

• The survey’s headline results
• Limitations of the research
• Analysis of Revit cloud interest among different groups

Transparency: Designair’s Desktop-as-a-Service solution allows Revit users to work with the software in the cloud, so we have an interest here. However, we don’t feel this invalidates our findings. 

Strong demand for Revit in the cloud

In the winter of 2025, Designair’s founder Don Rekko posted a snap poll on the Revit Users LinkedIn group. 

The poll asked group members: “Would you consider running Revit entirely in the cloud?”. They could then select from one of four answers. 

In total, 543 people responded to our poll about using Revit online. Their responses are displayed in the chart below:

The results of this snap poll are striking:

• One in three Revit users is ready to run the application in the cloud
• Another 36% would consider using Revit online if performance was good enough
• Less than a quarter of users prefer using Revit on a local workstation

These results indicate that there is strong, pent-up demand for cloud access to Revit. At present, this demand is not being met. Despite wanting to be able to use Revit in the cloud, the vast majority of AEC professionals are instead forced to use Revit on local workstations. 

Dig deeper: For a detailed breakdown of people’s responses, scroll down to the bonus section at the end of this article for more analysis. 

Limitations of these results

Even though the number of participants - well over 500 - is large for such a niche topic, our poll was short (just one multiple-choice question) and had a number of limitations. 

Self-selection bias

Our poll only reflects the opinions of LinkedIn users who chose to respond. These people might not be representative of all Revit users. And the kinds of people who respond to online surveys may have specific motivations for doing so. 

There are almost half a million people in the Revit Users LinkedIn group, and LinkedIn’s poll data tells us around 20,000 people saw the poll in their feeds. This means that about 2.7% of people decided to respond. This may at first seem low, but bear in mind that experts suggest a 1% response rate is the average for social media polling. 

To verify the responses, we used LinkedIn’s analytics features to check the backgrounds of the poll participants. Overall, they appeared representative in terms of the industries they worked in, their locations and the size of the companies they worked for. 

In the bonus section, we’ve broken out the background of the audience. 

Platform bias

The survey was confined to LinkedIn, thereby excluding any individuals who are not on the platform. The poll also excluded LinkedIn users who didn’t happen to login while the poll was running, or AEC professionals who haven’t joined the Revit Users group.  

That said, LinkedIn is a global, professional network. The Revit Users group is large, diverse and global, and provides one of the best ways of reaching a large number of people who use Revit.

Polling vs. actual behavior

The way people respond to online polls doesn’t reliably represent actions in the real world. This means there’s a definite margin of error here - many of the people who said “Yes, definitely” may not have thought through the implications of using Revit online. Nonetheless, the overall trend in our data suggests there’s undoubted interest in this approach.

Unclear motivations

The survey was very short (just one question), so it is difficult to understand why people chose the answers they selected. To learn what is behind their answer We conducted follow up research, asking respondents to explain their choice (more below). We received further answers from over 30 people who’d responded to the initial poll, and this more ‘qualitative’ data provides a greater level of insight. 

We cannot, by any means, claim these results are scientific proof (this wasn’t exactly Don’s goal). However, we learned a lot about what Revit users’ general attitudes towards this approach are with this poll. The real insights of this survey are in the qualitative follow up, which we’re going to share next. 

Triangulating the data: understanding respondents’ motivations

As mentioned earlier, an obvious limitation of our poll is that it asked a single question, so it couldn't reveal people’s motivations. To learn more, we used LinkedIn’s messaging tools to follow up with everyone who answered the survey. 

In total, we received over 30 responses. These were free-text answers, which we then analysed for trends. 

Common concerns: the ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ respondents

Among people who responded ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ to the survey, three categories of concerns came up over and again. 

1. Internet Dependency is a Major Fear (Outages = Productivity Loss)

Example response:

“The only issue with a completely cloud based solution is the total dependence on Internet connection and the stability of Autodesk's service. We have hosted models on the cloud since 2017 and to be fair there have only been 3 outages in that time period, but when you have 12 technicians staring at the wall for 8 hours it costs a lot of money. At least with a local machine running Revit you can switch to offline work and minimise loss.” - Construction, medium-sized company, Europe

2. Performance and Latency Are Key Barriers to Adoption

Example response:

“I have concerns about potential input lag when running Revit entirely in the cloud. Given the real-time nature of modeling, drafting, and rendering workflows, any latency in user input could impact efficiency and the overall user experience” - Engineer, small-sized company, North America

3. Data Security and Compliance Are Still Question Marks

Example response:

“Cloud solutions raise concerns about data security, especially for sensitive projects. Some companies might prefer to keep files locally for compliance reasons” - Civil engineer, large enterprise, Europe.

What’s the attraction? Reasons for interest among ‘yes’ responders

Among people who responded ‘yes’ to our poll, motivations fell into three categories:

1. Cloud Eliminates Hardware Costs and Improves Accessibility

Example response: 

“I chose to be on the cloud entirely because in my understanding it will save us tons of time and effort, it will use less space in your workstation, accessible from everywhere, easy for linking and archiving and document management would be much easier.” - Architect, micro business, North America. 

2. Collaboration Becomes Effortless in the Cloud

Example response: 

“When it comes to collaboration with other firms, specifically engineering, it is nice to have us all working in the cloud so that updates are streamlined and you aren’t constantly waiting on them to send updated backgrounds because it’s right there and you can see it. Having the ability to collaborate/troubleshoot in real time saves a lot of headache in both design and construction” - Interior Designer, small business, North Americe

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3. Cloud Could Unlock New Workflows (AI-powered workflows, Performance Improvements)

Example response: 

“It has the potential to really speed up productivity in regards to sending info to the right people, especially in a fab or construction environment where Revit isn’t the preferred way to be viewed. It’s just seems to have the potential to make the workflow much more seamless" - Product Owner, construction, North America. 

Related: 5 ways to collaborate and share using Autodesk Revit®’s Central Model

Summing it all up: adoption of Revit in the cloud is inevitable

Our LinkedIn poll revealed some hugely interesting insights into how AEC professionals view cloud-based working, and what they expect from their technology. 

After analysing all the responses, we feel confident in drawing three main conclusions: 

• Cloud adoption is inevitable – but performance concerns, internet dependency, and security fears are slowing full adoption.
• Cloud Revit must provide benefits beyond ‘just’ remote access — it should enable better workflows, automation, and cost savings to justify the shift.
• The real opportunity is hybrid/parallel solutions — offering the best of both worlds, to “ease” into the cloud. This will limit the real and perceived concerns of organizations, and prove whether the improvements are tangible, on an acceptable scale. 

Autodesk has never announced any plans to offer any kind of cloud-Revit. However, there are other solutions that let companies use Revit over the internet. This means you can run Revit in the cloud today:

• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
• Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)

Curious to know howthis would work? Read more in this article.  VDI or DaaS

So, what do you think? Could Revit in the cloud be a good option for your firm?

Bonus Section: What do different Revit users think about using their software in the cloud?

LinkedIn’s polling tools allowed us to further analyze the survey’s responses according to regional and demographic characteristics. This helps shed more light on Revit users’ attitudes to using the software in the cloud. 

Interest in Revit in the cloud: regional trends

All global regions were represented in our poll. Most respondents (35%) were based in North America, followed by Europe (27%) and Asia-Pacific (21%). 

We analyzed how people from different regions responded to the poll. In the following table, we’ve picked out notably lower than average results in blue, and higher than average responses in purple:

Broadly speaking, interest in using Revit in the cloud was spread evenly across regions, and mirrored the overall survey results (a third saying ‘yes’, just over a third saying ‘maybe’ and a quarter saying ‘no’). 

However, European respondents were noticeably less open to using Revit in the cloud than other regions. Only 25.5% of European respondents said they’d consider it, and 30.7% said they wouldn’t. On the other hand, respondents in the APAC region were most open to Revit in the cloud (37% said ‘yes’), and only 10% said they wouldn’t be interested. 

It’s unclear why Europeans appear least cloud-ready. It may have something to do with European regulations related to data sovereignty - but we’d need to do more research to find out. 

Interest in Revit in the cloud: company size

We received responses from people in a wide range of company sizes - from those with no company (14.1% - likely students, freelancers or unemployed designers), micro businesses (15.9%, less than 10 employees),  small businesses (14.7%, 11-50 employees), medium-sized firms (28.2%, 51-500 employees) and large enterprises (27.2%, over 500 employees). 

We looked at how people working at different sized companies responded to the poll. Again, we’ve picked out notably lower than average results in blue, and higher than average responses in purple:

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Once again, these results generally mirror the overall findings, with about a third of people in all companies saying ‘Yes’, just over a third saying ‘maybe’ and around a quarter saying ‘no’. 

It’s interesting that there isn’t a noticeable difference between company size and interest in Revit in the cloud. One might expect nimble startups would be most interested, and large enterprises with massive capital budgets would be least interested. In reality, openness to the cloud is fairly evenly spread across company sizes. 

One of the most surprising findings was that people with no company were least interested in using Revit online. Our assumption is that this group is primarily made up of students, freelancers or unemployed designers. Since a cloud-based version of Revit would mean they could avoid the cost of buying a powerful workstation (typically several thousand dollars up front), you might assume this group would be most interested in a low-cost cloud alternative. 

One explanation might be that, if a student has already spent a few thousand dollars on their Revit workstation for university, they’re unlikely to want to switch to a cloud-based alternative (having already sunk their money in a physical machine). 

Interest in Revit in the cloud: by industry

Revit is used by BIM designers in a range of industries, and our survey respondents mirrored that. The majority (just over a third) worked in architecture and planning, followed by construction (a fifth), civil engineering, engineering services, building construction and others (15%). 

We analyzed how people responded depending on their industry. Again, we’ve picked out notably lower than average results in blue, and higher than average responses in purple:

The most striking finding here is how strong demand appears to be among engineering and building construction respondents. While these two groups admittedly only represent 7% of the total survey population, the data shows almost half of them want to use Revit in the cloud. 

One explanation might be the nature of their work. Professionals in these industries are often out in the field, and would benefit from access to BIM models wherever they are. A cloud-based BIM solution would mean they can check plans on building sites or at customer offices. 

Architects, by contrast, appeared less interested in fully cloud-based BIM. Again, we hypothesise that this could be related to the nature of their work. Architects are less often required to actually do their work at sites, so can simply work on their models in the office. There’s less immediate need for a cloud-based service. 

Interest in Revit in the cloud: by professional experience

LinkedIn also provides data on the years of work experience our respondents had. The majority (47%) had more than 10 years’ experience, followed by 22% who had 6-10 years experience, and 18% who had 3-5 years’ experience. Less experienced age groups represented about 13% of the total. 

We analyzed how people responded depending on their length of professional experience. Again, we’ve picked out notably lower than average results in blue, and higher than average responses in purple:

What’s particularly interesting about these results is that they show a trend where experienced workers appear especially interested in using Revit in the cloud. Over 35% of workers with 10 years’ experience were open to this approach, compared to just under 20% of those with 3-5 years experience. 

This suggests that more experienced staff might be frustrated with being ‘chained’ to their desk. They may have looked at their peers in other sectors, where cloud-based working is more common, and would like the same flexibility. Less experienced workers might be less concerned about this sort of issue.