Every year, we survey SolarQuotes installers about their favourite solar panel. For the 2026 edition of the Installer’s Choice Awards, we asked them:
“If you were putting solar panels on your own roof today, which brand would you choose? Not the house of a customer. Not a display home. Not a hypothetical stranger you’ll never see again. Your own roof, your own money and a system you’ll be living with for decades.”
Which Solar Panel Is Best For Australian Homes?
For the second year running, Aiko came out on top, attracting 28% of installer votes and comfortably outpacing the rest of the field.
Jinko and SunPower claimed the remaining podium positions, with REC and Trina Solar rounding out the top five.
The result is based on the votes of 125 SolarQuotes-vetted installers who responded to this year’s survey.
And before anyone asks – the results aren’t influenced by advertising, sponsorships or manufacturer incentives.
SolarQuotes does not accept payments, kickbacks, favours or other inducements from manufacturers in exchange for favourable survey results or coverage.
First Place: Aiko Solar
Aiko is the favourite solar panel brand among SolarQuotes installers.
Aiko’s win is a remarkable result for a company who only officially launched in Australia in 2024.
The company’s appeal appears to come down to how it’s priced, how it’s built and, above all, its back-contact cell design.
The company specialises in back-contact solar cells, where the electrical contacts sit on the rear of each cell rather than the front.
In theory, that design reduces shading losses, improves efficiency and creates a cleaner-looking panel. It’s also why Aiko’s panels consistently rank among the most efficient residential solar panels available today.
The company recently released a 500-watt panel that still fits within the standard sub-two-metre panel size and reaches around 25% efficiency — pushing the limits of what silicon solar technology can achieve.
Installers also seem to like the fact that Aiko delivers all that performance without carrying the price tag you’d normally expect.
The company also maintains an Australian support office in Melbourne, something many installers value when recommending products to customers.
Not everyone is convinced by every claim the company makes. Aiko’s partial-shading claims have attracted debate within the industry, and its parent company recently paid more than US$200 million to settle a patent dispute with SunPower and Maxeon relating to back-contact solar cell technology.
Whatever installers think about those issues, they clearly haven’t stopped them from voting for Aiko.
Second Place: Jinko Solar
2026 SolarQuotes Installer Choice Awards – Best Solar Panel 2nd place – Jinko
Coming in second place is Jinko Solar with 14% of the vote.
If Aiko is the new kid on the block, Jinko is the established heavyweight.
Jinko has been the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer by volume for five years running and remains one of the most recognisable names in the industry.
Its Tiger Neo range has been particularly successful. According to the company, more than 200 gigawatts of Tiger Neo panels have been shipped worldwide, making it arguably the most popular solar panel ever produced.
Jinko’s panels use TOPCon technology, which is generally cheaper to manufacture than back-contact designs while still delivering excellent performance.
That combination of performance, reliability and sharp pricing continues to win plenty of fans among installers.
Third Place: SunPower
2026 SolarQuotes Installer Choice Awards – Best Solar Panel 3rd place – SunPower
Rounding out the podium is SunPower with 11% of installer votes.
That result might raise a few eyebrows.
The SunPower business in the USA (a large retailer that installed SunPower panels) entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2024, leading many to assume it had disappeared for good. Since then, the SunPower brand and Maxeon have been acquired by TCL, a Chinese company worth tens of billions of dollars.
TCL will continue to make high-end SunPower branded panels. They’ve told me, in Australia, these will be sold only via installers they trust to do a good job, whilst the cheaper TCL branded panels will also be sold in Australia but through the wholesalers for all installers.
What hasn’t changed is the reputation of the technology itself.
SunPower panels have long been regarded as some of the best-built solar panels on the market, with exceptionally low reported failure rates and warranties extending to 40 years on some models.
This year’s result suggests installers still have plenty of confidence in the brand’s future.
We’re interested to see how SunPower fares in the coming years under its new ownership, which recently issued a legal threat to SolarQuotes, partly because they didn’t appreciate their TCL Solar range be described as “low cost” on our review page. Hopefully, SunPower panels continue to be less fragile than the company that now owns them.
An Industry Under Pressure
One of the more surprising themes to emerge from this year’s awards is that while solar panels continue to improve, the companies making them are facing some serious challenges.
Solar panel prices have fallen dramatically in recent years, creating fierce competition among manufacturers.
For consumers, that’s largely been good news. Solar panels have become both better and cheaper.
For manufacturers, it’s a very different story. Even some of the biggest names in solar are operating on razor-thin margins, and in some cases at a loss.
How that eventually shakes out remains to be seen.
The Best Solar Panels Available
Congratulations to Aiko on taking out top spot in the 2026 SolarQuotes Installer’s Choice Awards for solar panels.
The results also highlight the strength of today’s solar panel market. Whether installers favour Aiko’s back-contact technology, Jinko’s proven value or SunPower’s build quality, there are plenty of quality options available.
Now you know what installers prefer, but what about the Aussie homeowner? Find out in our top 10 panel brands page, which is ranked based on review scores.
If you’re comparing solar panels for your own home, check out SolarQuotes’ Solar Panel Comparison Table, where you can compare efficiency, warranties, performance and more from many of the brands featured in this year’s awards.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we reveal the winners of the other categories: best inverter, best solar battery, best home EV charger and best hot water heat pump.
Or if you’re ready to pull the trigger on getting solar, get up to three quotes from our vetted network of installers.
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“And before anyone asks – the results aren’t influenced by advertising, sponsorships or manufacturer incentives.”
As far as SQ goes, I would not question this statement in the article at all. That said, as far as installers themselves go this is very much debatable.
With programs like the AIC from Aiko in place, do you really think installer opinions rather than data are the best basis for choosing a solar panel?
I know that any opinions of the dodgy company I unfortunately used are not something I would value.
Has SQ every considered other ways of ranking panels and inverters as a means of supporting consumer choices?
Hey Matthew – fair question. We have pretty strict vetting standards with our installers and we think they’d answer this honestly. But we do also rank products based on customer reviews and have our own recommended brands chart which is based on our own assessment.
You dont like Tindo? any reasons. thank you, Margaret
SQ simply polled selected installers, they’re not saying anything about Tindo.
According to the graphic at https://www.solarquotes.com.au/panels/#best-panels SQ rate Tindo as closer to the top end of town – competing with Sunpower Performance series and REC Alpha series, whatever they are.
So CCP companies take out 1st, 2nd, and 5th place, 3rd place was American but now also CCP owned, and 4th place was CCP owned (ChemChina) but was bought out by a controversial Indian company in 2021.
That seems like a terrifying degree of market control!
Do these installers really believe the products they’re voting for will last decades? Or do they simply think they’ll offload their house and attached solar before it becomes an issue?
John,
USA is deploying renewables & batteries at high speed, not least in Texas, despite the deluded despot at their helm. But their inability to ever repay their national debt is making them an ex-superpower – though not as fast or hard as Russia becomes Muscovy again.
That leaves China, pulling >$1T p.a. positive balance of trade, as it saves the world from itself. OK, improved solar cells are Aussie tech, but China made them cheap enough for exponential global deployment. Chinese tech & industry do it all for batteries, critical for renewable grids.
And as VW sacks another 100,000 workers, and closes factories, while Toyota may fold, Chinese EV cars & trucks replace all else – cheaper by the month.
If we depended on our own efforts, we’d be lost. It is China’s wares which can take a degree off the global heating peak in a century, saving millions of lives, if we deploy them fast enough. It will take all hands – productive cooperation & competition, not wasteful conflict.
The US is already working on developing new nuclear plants, & also attempting new coal plants. Unlike Communist China they can’t simply round up political opponents & send them off for re-education so the activist groups, many getting funding from China, plus European billionaires, use lawfare to obstruct them at every turn.
Wind & solar by contrast, despite environmental & national security issues, are simply fast tracked in Democrat states & any opposition simply bulldozed &\or ignored. Big Green has a lot of money & political power behind it.
I’d say America’s political inability to deal with the national debt rather than inability to pay, but close enough.
China isn’t saving the world, they only do what’s in their own mercantilist and imperialistic interests.
Yes Western labour is too expensive to compete with CCP, hence why 1900s journals opposed free trade – Chinese labour would bankrupt ‘British’ craftsmen.
Don’t rely on the CCP to save anything other than your data.
Hi John,
Deep regressive red Texas is deploying record amounts of wind and solar simply because it’s the cheapest.
Despite setting up a loan scheme for gas generators, they’re not being built.
Fun Fact: the US gaols it’s own citizens at *triple* the rate of China.
And despite saying that illegal migrants have no right to work in the US, the private for profit detention gulags that ICE have filled with brown people are now using these detainees as a workforce and paying them as little as $1 or $2 per day.
Can we not just use Occam’s razor here and think that installers are voting for a product they’ve found to be good without second-guessing weird motives?