Compare top design platforms for UI, branding, and visual content. Find the best design software by features and pricing.
34 tools
Tools in Design
Canva — Canva is a web-based design platform offering drag-and-drop tools, AI-powered Magic Studio features, and hundreds of thousands of templates for social media, presentations, and print.
Figma — Figma is a browser-based, real-time collaborative interface design platform used by product teams for UI design, prototyping, whiteboarding, and developer handoff, now publicly traded on the NYSE.
Sketch — Sketch is a vector-based digital design tool for Mac used by UI/UX designers to create interfaces, prototypes, and design systems, made by Sketch B.V.
Penpot — Penpot is an open-source, web-based design and prototyping platform built by Kaleidos that lets designers and developers collaborate on UI design, design systems and interactive prototypes.
Lunacy — Lunacy is a free, cross-platform graphic and UI design tool by Icons8 with built-in AI tools and design assets, positioned as an alternative to Figma and Sketch.
Rive — Rive is a real-time interactive design and animation tool that lets designers and developers create animated, state-driven graphics for apps, games, and websites.
Spline — Spline is a browser-based 3D design tool that lets designers and developers create, animate, and publish interactive 3D scenes for the web without a traditional 3D pipeline.
ProtoPie — ProtoPie is a no-code interaction design tool that lets UX and product designers build highly realistic, code-free prototypes for mobile, desktop, web, and IoT interfaces.
Principle — Principle is a Mac-only app for designing animated, interactive UI prototypes with a timeline-based editor, created by former Apple engineer Daniel Hooper and sold as a one-time perpetual license.
99designs — A design marketplace, now part of Vista, that connects businesses with freelance designers through design contests and one-to-one projects for logos, branding, packaging, and web design.
Ableton Live — A professional digital audio workstation for music production and live performance, sold as a one-time perpetual license across Intro, Standard, and Suite editions rather than a subscription.
Abstract — Design version control and collaboration platform that lets design teams track, branch, and review changes to Sketch and Figma files the way developers use Git.
AdminMart — AdminMart sells ready-made admin dashboard templates and UI kits for React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, Nuxt, and Bootstrap, helping developers ship back-office and SaaS interfaces faster.
Aftershot — Corel AfterShot Pro (originally Bibble) is a one-time-purchase RAW photo processing and batch workflow application for Windows, Mac, and Linux, now maintained by Alludo in a limited, low-frequency update cycle.
Aseprite — Aseprite is a dedicated pixel-art and sprite animation editor used by game developers and pixel artists to draw, animate, and export 2D graphics, sold as a low-cost one-time purchase instead of a subscription.
AudioNodes — AudioNodes is a browser-based and downloadable modular synthesizer and digital audio workstation that lets users patch together synths, effects, and audio files on a node-based canvas.
Autodesk — Autodesk is a large public software company that makes design and engineering applications, including AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, and Fusion, used across architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and media and entertainment.
Avocode — Avocode was a design handoff tool that let developers inspect Sketch, Photoshop, XD, and Figma files for specs, assets, and code snippets; the product was discontinued (sunset) on October 1, 2023 after its 2021 acquisition by Ceros.
Blender — Blender is a free, open-source 3D creation suite covering modeling, sculpting, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, and video editing, maintained by the nonprofit Blender Foundation.
BlueJ — BlueJ is a free, education-focused integrated development environment for Java that visualizes class structure and lets students interactively create and test objects, originally developed at the University of Kent and Monash University.
Brightidea — Brightidea is an enterprise innovation management platform that helps large organizations collect, evaluate, and act on ideas at scale. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in San Francisco, it is one of the longest-running players in the idea and innovation management category, serving 500-plus enterprise customers including Amazon, 3M, Dell, Lockheed Martin, LinkedIn, Mastercard, and Nike. The Brightidea Innovation Cloud bundles six purpose-built products - Idea Box for continuous idea collection, Program for time-boxed innovation campaigns, Hackathon for internal competitions, Lab for structured experimentation, Ecosystem for open and external innovation, and Transformation for enterprise-wide change initiatives - into a single configurable suite. The platform emphasizes enterprise readiness: SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, and architecture built to scale from a few hundred users to several hundred thousand without performance loss. Brightidea reports over 2 million users worldwide and more than 15 billion dollars in recorded business impact from ideas sourced and implemented through its platform. It is not a self-serve SaaS tool - pricing is quote-based and sales-assisted, reflecting its focus on large, complex organizations with dedicated innovation teams rather than small businesses or individual users.
Budgie — Budgie, formally Budgie Desktop, is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, built around a traditional desktop metaphor with an emphasis on simplicity, elegance, and light resource usage. It was created by developer Ikey Doherty, first announced in December 2013 and publicly released in February 2014 as the default desktop for his EvolveOS distribution, which was later renamed Solus. Budgie initially borrowed heavily from GNOME's underlying components while presenting a more conventional desktop layout than GNOME Shell, and it introduced a distinctive feature called Raven, an all-in-one sidebar that consolidates notifications, a calendar, media playback controls, volume adjustment, and system resource monitoring in one place. After years as Solus's flagship desktop, Budgie became an independent project in January 2022 under a new organization called Buddies of Budgie, following lead developer Joshua Strobl's departure from Solus. The project is now undergoing a major re-architecture with Budgie 11, rebuilt from the ground up using Qt6 and C++ with a modular core and pluggable shell design intended to carry the desktop environment forward for the next decade. Budgie is available as the default environment on Solus and as the official Ubuntu Budgie flavor of Ubuntu, and is also packaged for Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Arch Linux, Debian, and several other distributions. Being free and open-source software, Budgie has no purchase price or subscription plans.
Calendar Icons Generator — Calendar Icons Generator is a free, browser-based web tool that creates a full year's worth of custom, dated calendar-style icons in a single click, designed primarily for people who want personalized daily folder or app icons in tools like Notion, Windows folders, and mobile home screens. Built with Next.js by an independent developer, the tool grew out of the creator's own use of Notion for journaling and project tracking, where distinct, date-specific icons make it easier to visually navigate daily pages at a glance. Users design one icon template, choosing background, header, outline, and font colors, selecting a date format (such as 1, 01, or 1st) and a day-label style (full name, abbreviation, or single initial), and adjusting font style and size, with a live preview showing how the icon looks across a full month before committing. Selecting a target year and clicking generate produces a downloadable zip file containing 365 (or 366 in a leap year) individually dated icon images, ready to drop into a Notion icon library, a folder-naming workflow, or any other system that supports custom per-item icons. Because the tool is explicitly free with no account, subscription, or payment required, it functions more as a niche utility and portfolio project than a commercial SaaS product, and it should be evaluated on convenience and customization depth rather than pricing or support tiers.
Carbon Five — Carbon Five is a digital product design and software development consultancy founded in 2000, known for pairing agile and extreme programming practices with product design and engineering to help clients build custom web and mobile applications. Acquired by West Monroe in December 2021, it now operates as Carbon Five, A West Monroe Company, with studios in San Francisco, Santa Monica, New York, and Chattanooga.
Ceres Imaging — Ceres Imaging, now operating as Ceres AI, is an agricultural technology company that captures high-resolution aerial spectral imagery of farmland via fixed-wing aircraft and turns it into crop health, irrigation, and risk analytics for growers, insurers, and lenders.
Clementine — Clementine is a free, open-source, cross-platform music player for Windows, macOS, and Linux, forked from Amarok 1.4 in 2010 amid user backlash to Amarok 2's redesign. Built with Qt and GStreamer, it offers local music library management, smart playlists, podcast support, and streaming integrations. Development slowed after 2016 but resumed on GitHub, and a more actively maintained fork called Strawberry Music Player was created in 2018.
CodedThemes — CodedThemes is an Indian software vendor that designs and sells premium admin dashboard templates and UI kits for React, Angular, Vue, Bootstrap, Laravel, and CodeIgniter. Founded in 2017 and based in Surat, Gujarat, it operates a template marketplace with both free and paid products, with Able Pro, Berry, and Mantis as its best-known lines. Customers buy per-template licenses rather than a recurring platform subscription.
Daily Reddit Wallpaper — Daily Reddit Wallpaper is a free, open-source Python script that automatically sets your desktop background to the most upvoted image from a chosen subreddit, such as r/wallpapers, typically running on system startup. It supports Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop environments including GNOME, KDE, MATE, and LXDE, and is distributed under the GPL-3.0 license on GitHub.
DeaDBeeF — DeaDBeeF is a free, open-source, plugin-based audio player originally built for Linux and other Unix-like systems, with additional builds for Windows and macOS. First released in 2009, it emphasizes a modular architecture where nearly every feature, from format decoders to on-screen notifications, is delivered through plugins that users can enable or disable. It supports a very wide range of audio formats and is popular among Linux users who want a lightweight, highly customizable music player.
Docker Hub — Docker Hub is Docker Inc.'s container image registry, letting developers push, pull, and share container images, with team collaboration and automated build features.
Flows — Flows is a headless, code-customizable product adoption platform for building in-app tours, checklists, surveys, and announcements, priced by active users rather than database size.
Hivemapper — Hivemapper is a decentralized mapping network that pays drivers in HONEY tokens to capture street-level imagery with dashcams, producing continuously refreshed map data for developers and businesses.
Houzz — Houzz is a home renovation and design platform connecting homeowners with professionals, plus Houzz Pro business software for contractors and designers.
Google Meet — Google Meet is Google's video conferencing platform, offering free meetings for individuals and tiered Google Workspace plans for businesses with longer calls, recording, and AI features.