Good (possibly free) tools for running Monte Carlo Simulations?

Question

We need to perform a good deal of Monte Carlo analysis on some of our project plans - basically creating tornado diagrams, sensitivity analysis and follow it up with Monte Carlos. I am aware of commercial tools like @Risk by Palisade, Risk Simulator, Crystal Ball etc.,

Is there anything which is free and good? (i.e., can consider a large number of distributions and also help perform the aforementioned analyses). What has been your experience with them?

Answer 1

You could build it into excel. There are a few different tutorials online and some add-ins. Here is a link to one that looked well written.

http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/MonteCarloSimulation.html

Answer 2

If you are not afraid of a command line, I suggest R, which can be integrated into Excel