Beckhoff alternatives

Beckhoff is a family-owned German automation company founded in 1980 and headquartered in Verl, best known for PC-based control: its TwinCAT software turns standard PCs into real-time machine controllers, and its EtherCAT fieldbus is widely used in high-performance automation. It serves customers in more than 75 countries through 41 subsidiaries and records several thousand employees. Buyers comparing robot components and motion systems often start with a control-platform need like Beckhoff's, then check drive, motion and mechanical specialists alongside it. Bonfiglioli, headquartered at Calderara di Reno near Bologna and founded in 1956, is a privately held power-transmission group whose Motion and Robotics division supplies precision gearboxes and drive platforms for automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots. Festo, based in Esslingen am Neckar and founded in 1925, is a family-owned supplier of pneumatic and electric drive technology, process automation and technical education, with services in 176 countries. igus, headquartered in Cologne and founded in 1964, makes motion plastics and low-cost automation products, including cobots and linear robots, selling through subsidiaries and distributors in more than 80 countries. THK, headquartered in Tokyo and founded in 1971, commercialised the first LM Guide in 1972 and supplies linear motion guides, ball screws and electric actuators worldwide. Choose Beckhoff for PC-based control, Bonfiglioli for gearboxes and vehicle drives, Festo for pneumatic and electric drives, igus for low-cost automation components and THK for linear motion guides.

Alternatives to Beckhoff

Bonfiglioli

Bonfiglioli is a privately held Italian power-transmission group, founded in 1956 and headquartered at Calderara di Reno near Bologna, whose Motion & Robotics business supplies the drive components robots and automated vehicles run on.

Festo

Festo is a German family-owned engineering group that is one of the world’s largest suppliers of factory and process automation technology.

igus

igus is a family-owned German manufacturer of motion plastics, founded in Cologne in 1964 and still wholly owned by its founding family.

THK

THK Co., Ltd. is the Japanese company that invented the linear motion guide: in 1972 it became the first in the world to commercialise rolling-contact linear motion, and its LM Guide remains a standard component inside machine tools, semiconductor equipment and industrial robots.

Full profile, with every fact and its source: Beckhoff. Profile facts last verified 6 November 2026.