WinCC variants: WinCC in TIA Portal, WinCC Unified, WinCC V8 and WinCC OA
Four different products share the WinCC name. What each one is, which panels and PC stations it covers and where it is engineered.
Four products, one name
| Product | What it is | Engineering | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|
| WinCC in TIA Portal (Basic, Comfort, Advanced, Professional) | panel engineering plus PC runtimes WinCC Runtime Advanced and Runtime Professional | TIA Portal | Basic/Comfort/Mobile Panels, PC |
| WinCC Unified | current visualization for Unified panels and PC stations, web-based (HTML5) runtime, JavaScript, OPC UA | TIA Portal | Unified Comfort/Basic Panels, PC |
| WinCC V7 / V8 | stand-alone PC SCADA with client/server, redundancy, tag and alarm logging, reporting; basis of the PCS 7 operator station | WinCC Explorer / Graphics Designer (not TIA Portal) | PC |
| WinCC OA | scalable, platform-independent SCADA for large distributed systems (energy, infrastructure, transport) with its own object model and CTRL scripting | WinCC OA tools | PC/servers (also Linux) |
WinCC V7/V8 and WinCC OA are separate product lines: projects, scripts and drivers are not interchangeable, and neither is configured in TIA Portal.
WinCC in TIA Portal: what the editions mean
The edition is the engineering scope, not the runtime:
- Basic — Basic Panels only.
- Comfort — adds Comfort and Mobile Panels.
- Advanced — adds a PC single-station runtime (WinCC Runtime Advanced).
- Professional — adds the SCADA-type PC runtime (WinCC Runtime Professional).
Panel engineering licences and PC runtime licences (sized by PowerTags) are separate.
WinCC Unified
Unified replaces the Comfort/Advanced/Professional generation step by step: Unified Comfort Panels (7–22 inch) and Unified Basic Panels (4–12 inch) run the same web-based runtime as Unified PC stations, so screens can be opened in a browser. Scripts are JavaScript instead of VBS/C, so an existing Comfort or Professional project cannot simply be recompiled for Unified — screens and scripts have to be migrated.
Which one to choose
- New machine with a panel, S7-1200/1500: WinCC Unified with Unified Comfort or Basic Panels.
- Existing Comfort Panel projects: keep WinCC Comfort/Advanced in TIA Portal or plan the Unified migration.
- Plant-level SCADA with client/server and redundancy on Siemens controllers, or a PCS 7 environment: WinCC V7/V8, or WinCC Unified PC for TIA-based plants.
- Large, geographically distributed systems with many protocols (telecontrol, energy): WinCC OA.
Connections
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Sources
- SIMATIC HMI WinCC Unified (from V20) — System Manual — Siemens AG
- WinCC V8.1: General information and installation — Siemens AG
- SIMATIC WinCC Professional V14 SP1 (online help printout) — Siemens AG
- WinCC OA Documentation — ETM professional control (Siemens)
- SIMATIC HMI HMI devices Comfort Panels — Operating Instructions (A5E36770603-AE) — Siemens AG
Updated 2026-10-02