Looking for the best alternatives to Illustrator? We’ve got you covered! Adobe Illustrator CC is a graphic design application for desktops and tablets. Its primary feature is the ability to work with vector graphics—images that don’t lose quality on scaling.
If you’re a graphic designer or digital artist, working with both raster and vector images is a compulsory part of your day-to-day workflow. While you can use one of the best photo-editing applications like Adobe Photoshop to work with raster images, Illustrator is the most popular graphic design tool and ranks highly among the best drawing apps specifically when it comes to working with vector images.
However, Adobe Illustrator certainly isn’t the only vector design tool in the market, and there are many less expensive and more beginner-friendly options. We've tested the top Adobe Illustrator alternatives based on their features, pricing, and ease of use. In this buying guide, we take a look at five of the best.
The top 3 alternatives to Illustrator right now
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The best alternatives to Illustrator of 2023 in full
Developed by UK-based software company Serif, Affinity Designer is powerful graphic design software with features to match and a price tag to compete with Illustrator. In fact, Affinity Designer can be yours forever for the same price that would have normally bought you a single month of subscription to Adobe’s software.
Affinity Designer has most of the features graphic designers have come to know and love in Illustrator. It even adds a few extras, like unlimited redos, one-million plus zoom, and a bonus workspace for working with raster images within the app. Performance-wise, Designer’s lack of legacy code means that it generally runs faster than Illustrator. Some users may even find Affinity Designer easier to navigate, thanks to a more streamlined interface.
Affinity Designer costs $52.99 on Windows and $52.99 on Mac. Each license is valid for unlimited use, meaning that you only pay for another subscription if you’re using the software on a different platform. Affinity Designer is even available on the iPad for $13.99, which means that you can also draw using the Apple Pencil. A final option is purchasing an Affinity V2 Universal license that includes all three Affinity products (Designer 2, Photo 2, and Publisher 2) for $123.99.
Canva is a web-based design suite that allows you to create attractive graphics quickly and easily. Unlike Illustrator or Affinity Designer, it doesn’t allow you to export files in vector format. However, the main draw is simplicity and ease of use, rather than the advanced graphics manipulation offered by the likes of Illustrator.
Canva lets you create brochures, posters, invitations, social media content, presentations, logos, infographics, and more. The app is layer-based, allowing you to stack objects on top of each other to create a composite graphic. You can easily add text, upload images, and use preset templates to get the designs you want without a huge fuss. If you are a paid subscriber to Canva, you also get access to a huge library of assets to choose from—including photography, videos, backgrounds, and clip art.
Canva, the base tool, is available completely free of charge. It includes access to all the tools and a basic asset library. If you want more features, such as more templates, fancy effects, and a larger asset library, you can subscribe to Canva Pro for $12.99 a month. You can also pay annually to get the discounted price of $119.99 a year. A plan for teams costs $14.99 a month for the first five people.
Sketch was launched primarily as a design application for logos and websites. It’s immensely popular for website prototyping, but can also be used to create other forms of vector art. UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) designers in particular are known to swear by this software.
Sketch’s intended use is wireframing and prototyping, as well as website and app design. Thus, it does not contain the tools required to draw complex illustrations from scratch. However, the lack of complex features makes Sketch the perfect tool for web designers looking to draw a quick mockup of their website or app. It’s even better when used collaboratively, allowing a team of designers to make changes to a design mockup simultaneously.
Sketch costs $10 per user a month. It's an app primarily for macOS, but you can also preview designs on your iPhone, iPad, and in your browser, making it easier to hand-off designs to developers and clients.
There's also a business plan at $20 per user per month that adds unlimited cloud storage and invoice-based billing. Finally, there's a perpetual license for a standalone Mac-only version that costs $120.
Corel Vector (previously known as Gravit Designer) is a robust, cloud-based vector graphics application designed to cater to design hobbyists and aspiring professionals. Accessible from any device with a web browser, it allows users to create and save their design projects to the cloud, ensuring availability from anywhere.
The application is easy to learn and use, offering a smooth learning curve without unnecessary complexity. It comes with diverse, curated templates to kick-start your creations.
Corel Vector is flexible and affordable, equipped with fast, intuitive tools that won't break the bank. It offers unlimited cloud storage, keeping your designs safe, synced, and accessible across devices. The application features powerful vector editing, text and typography, image editing, compatibility and files, intuitive user interface, effects and adjustments, and color. It is suitable for all skill levels and offers graphic design options for every creator.
There's a 15-day free trial, then Corel Vector costs $69.99 for the first year. Following years, it costs $99.99 a year.
Developed by Linearity GmbH, a company founded only in 2017, Vectornator has already positioned itself as one of the most versatile drawing and illustration applications for the iPad, iPhone, and Mac. It allows you to design interfaces, create layouts, and draw entire illustrations from scratch.
Vectornator’s UI is designed specifically for the macOS interface. Everything feels familiar to the operating system, to the point where you might even mistake it for a native application. Since the launch of version 4.0, you get a layer-based vector design tool with features like artboards, auto trace, a color picker, a free icon library, and much more. That’s all in addition to detailed documentation to help you get started with the software.
Vectornator is available completely free of charge for iOS and macOS. It can be downloaded and used without paying any one-time or monthly subscription fee.
| Alternative to Illustrator | Platform | Developer | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affinity Designer | Windows, MacOS, iOS (iPad only) | Serif | $52.99 (Windows/Mac) / $13.99 (iPad) |
| Canva | Web, iOS, Android | Canva | Free, $12.99 or $14.99 a month |
| Sketch | macOS | Sketch | $10 per user a month |
| Corel Vector | Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome OS, Web | Corel | $69-99 a year |
| Vectornator | macOS, iOS | Linearity | Free |
How to choose the best alternative to Illustrator for you
Adobe Illustrator is the oldest and the most well-known vector design app in the market. As with most software, the best alternative will depend largely on your purpose for it. Features like touchscreen support, platform compatibility, and pricing models also have an important role to play.
Users looking for a tool that allows them to quickly create simple designs may prefer Canva, while those with more advanced requirements will find the platform completely unsatisfactory. Meanwhile, Affinity Designer is great for advanced users but not beginners. If you want to do some freehand drawing, Vectornator is your best bet, but UI and UX designers will find Sketch much more useful.
How we review the best alternatives to Illustrator
We take our product evaluation process seriously. With Illustrator's reputation as a high-power tool for vector graphics, we understand why some users may be looking for similar alternatives that are more affordable, easier to navigate or more versatile.
We begin by installing and assessing each software on multiple devices and operating systems. We examine the software's layout and features, testing how easily users can navigate through the platform.
Since vector editing tools are critical for graphic design and other industries, we compare the features of each alternative with those of Adobe Illustrator, checking for layering, text handling, and shape tools, among others. We also assess each software's ability to handle multiple file types to ensure continuity of work.
Pricing is a major consideration, and we take it seriously in our evaluation process, comparing the features of different alternatives at different price points.
Support is a critical aspect of our recommendations, as we prioritize software providers who invest in providing helpful documentation and technical assistance services.
At the end of our testing process, we systematically weigh each software product's performance, ease of use, compatibility, functionality, price and support to offer an informed opinion to our readers. We hope that our review process will help you make an educated decision and find the most suitable alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
For more information on our testing process, see our methodology page.
Next steps with vector art software
We've recently discussed how to try Illustrator for free, and how ChatGPT can now work with vector graphics.
We also recommend checking out our guide to the best drawing apps, and ways that you can get free website content legally and without fuss.
