In August 2022, Adobe announced it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, the largest acquisition in Adobe's history. The design community's reaction was immediate and largely hostile. Figma had built its success in part by being the alternative to Adobe's design tools. The prospect of it being absorbed into Creative Cloud, and priced accordingly, prompted many designers and organizations to begin evaluating what a post-acquisition landscape would look like. The European Commission ultimately blocked the deal in December 2023, citing competition concerns. Figma remains independent. But the episode accelerated a conversation that had been developing for some time about vendor lock-in, pricing risk, and the availability of credible alternatives.
Figma's dominance is real and largely earned. The browser-based, real-time collaborative editing it pioneered changed how design teams work. The Components and Auto Layout systems are genuinely sophisticated. The plugin ecosystem is the most extensive in UI design tooling. But Figma's free tier became significantly more restrictive in 2023, its pricing for larger teams is substantial, and the proprietary file format creates meaningful lock-in risk that the failed Adobe acquisition made viscerally clear.
This article evaluates ten alternatives to Figma — from established professional tools to newer entrants and open-source options — covering collaboration features, prototyping depth, developer handoff capabilities, and the specific contexts each tool serves best.
"Design tools are not neutral. The constraints they impose, the workflows they reward, and the communities they build shape the products that emerge from them. Choosing a design tool is a design decision." — Jonas Doebertin, design systems lead, Config 2023
Key Definitions
Prototyping: Creating interactive simulations of a product's user interface to test flows and interactions before development begins. Prototyping fidelity ranges from clickable wireframes to near-production simulations.
Component Library: A set of reusable design elements (buttons, forms, navigation) that maintain consistent visual properties across a design system. All major tools support components in some form.
Developer Handoff: The process of communicating design specifications, assets, and behavior documentation to engineers. Quality developer handoff tooling reduces implementation errors and back-and-forth.
Design Token: A named variable representing a design decision (color, spacing, typography). Tokens allow design systems to maintain consistency and enable theming. Advanced token support is a differentiating feature among design tools.
Auto Layout: A feature that allows design elements to resize and reposition automatically based on rules, similar to CSS flexbox. Figma's Auto Layout is widely considered one of its most powerful features; alternatives vary in implementation quality.
Multiplayer editing: Real-time simultaneous editing by multiple users in the same file, with visible cursors and live updates. Figma pioneered this for design tools; adoption across alternatives is uneven.
Design Tools Compared
| Tool | Platform | Real-Time Collab | Self-Hostable | Prototyping | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sketch | macOS only | Limited | No | Basic | macOS teams, plugin power users |
| Adobe XD | Mac/Win | Yes (reduced dev) | No | Good | Avoid for new projects |
| Penpot | Browser | Yes | Yes (free) | Good | Open-source, GDPR, data sovereignty |
| Framer | Browser | Yes | No | Web-native | Web design to code, marketing sites |
| Lunacy | Windows | Limited | No | Basic | Windows designers, free tool |
| InVision | Browser | Legacy | No | Yes | Avoid for new projects |
| Axure | Mac/Win | Limited | No | Advanced logic | Enterprise UX, complex prototypes |
| Marvel | Browser | Yes | No | Basic | Non-designers, quick user research |
| Zeplin | Browser | Yes | No | N/A | Developer handoff (complement tool) |
| UXPin | Browser | Yes | No | Code components | Design-code alignment |
Sketch: The Professional's Legacy Tool
Sketch launched in 2010 and for several years was the dominant UI design tool, displacing Photoshop for screen design work. It introduced the concept of Symbols (reusable components), artboards, and the plugin ecosystem that Figma later inherited and expanded. Sketch is a macOS application — it does not run on Windows or Linux.
What Sketch Does Well
Sketch's plugin ecosystem, while smaller than Figma's, is mature and includes many specialized tools for design system management, accessibility checking, and development workflow. The offline-first workflow is genuinely useful for designers who work without reliable internet access. Sketch's pricing model, which uses a subscription for updates but allows perpetual use of the version current at subscription end, is fairer to users than most SaaS models.
In 2021, Sketch introduced a browser-based viewer and limited web collaboration. Real-time multiplayer editing arrived in subsequent updates. The collaboration features still do not match Figma's, but for small teams where one designer primarily owns a file, they are adequate.
Where Sketch Falls Short
Sketch is macOS-only. Any team with Windows users or cross-platform requirements cannot use it. The collaboration model, while improved, still does not enable the simultaneous multi-cursor editing that Figma normalized. The product has also lost significant market share since Figma's rise, which affects ecosystem momentum and the pace of plugin development.
Pricing
$12 per editor per month (annual) or $120 per year. Viewers are free.
Adobe XD: Do Not Start New Projects Here
Adobe XD launched in 2016 as Adobe's response to Sketch. It offered vector design, prototyping, and a simplified workflow compared to Illustrator. The co-editing feature, introduced in 2019, enabled real-time collaboration before Figma had fully dominated the market.
The failed Figma acquisition changed XD's trajectory. Adobe significantly reduced XD investment from 2022 onward. The tool received no major feature updates through 2024. Adobe's public communications have shifted toward positioning Creative Cloud components as design tooling rather than developing XD as a standalone product. Designers who built workflows around XD have been migrating to Figma, Penpot, or Sketch.
This article includes XD for completeness but does not recommend starting new design projects on the platform given the reduced development investment and unclear long-term roadmap.
Penpot: Open-Source, Self-Hostable, and Growing
Penpot was developed by Kaleidos, a Spanish software company, and launched publicly in 2021. It is the only major UI design tool that is fully open-source (Mozilla Public License 2.0), browser-based, and self-hostable. The design community's response to the attempted Adobe-Figma acquisition drove a significant surge in Penpot adoption.
What Penpot Does Well
Penpot is built on open web standards. Designs are stored as SVG with CSS styling, which means design files are readable by any SVG-compatible tool — not locked into a proprietary format. The prototyping features, components, and grids are functionally comparable to Figma for most UI design workflows.
The open-source nature means organizations can self-host a Penpot instance for data sovereignty, compliance requirements, or cost reasons. Kaleidos maintains a cloud-hosted version (penpot.app) that is free for teams of any size with unlimited projects and files, which is significantly more generous than Figma's current free tier.
Where Penpot Falls Short
Penpot's Auto Layout implementation is less mature than Figma's. The plugin ecosystem is nascent compared to Figma or Sketch. Some advanced design system features (variable fonts, interactive components with advanced logic) are still being developed. Performance on very large files can be slower than Figma's infrastructure.
Pricing
Free cloud hosting. Self-hosted Community Edition is free. Enterprise cloud pricing is custom.
Framer: Design to Code for Web
Framer began as a high-fidelity prototyping tool popular with designers who wanted realistic, code-backed interactions. It pivoted around 2021 to become a design-to-code and web publishing platform. Framer now allows designers to create websites that export production-quality React code, or publish directly from the Framer canvas.
What Framer Does Well
For web design projects where design-code fidelity matters, Framer eliminates the translation gap between design and implementation. A designer building a marketing site in Framer can publish it directly without developer handoff. Advanced interactions, scroll animations, and responsive breakpoints are handled visually without writing CSS.
Framer's component system and CMS capabilities make it capable for genuinely production web properties, not just prototypes. For teams building marketing sites, portfolios, and product landing pages, Framer competes as much with Webflow as with Figma.
Where Framer Falls Short
Framer is a web-first tool. Native mobile app design, complex enterprise product design, and design systems work involving platform-agnostic design tokens are not its strength. The pricing model, which charges per published site rather than per editor seat, can be expensive for agencies managing many client sites.
Pricing
Free plan available with limitations. Mini starts at $5 per month. Basic at $15 per month. Plus at $30 per month. All per site.
Lunacy: Free Offline Design Tool for Windows
Lunacy is developed by Icons8 and is notable for being free and Windows-native. It supports Sketch file format, which means Windows-based designers can open and edit Sketch files without a Mac. It includes built-in stock photos, icons, and illustration assets from Icons8's library.
For Windows designers who need a capable UI design tool without a subscription, Lunacy is one of the few serious options. Its feature set covers the basics well: artboards, components, prototyping, and export. The collaboration features are limited, and the plugin ecosystem is sparse compared to Figma or Sketch.
Pricing
Free. Premium content from Icons8 library requires a paid Icons8 subscription.
InVision: Prototyping's First Mover
InVision was one of the first tools to make interactive design prototyping accessible without code, launching in 2011. At its peak, InVision was used by teams at Netflix, HBO, and Amazon for design review and stakeholder communication. The company raised over $350 million in venture capital.
InVision's trajectory since approximately 2020 has been difficult. The company laid off significant portions of its team in 2022 and 2023. Freehand, the collaborative whiteboard product, was sunset. The core InVision prototyping product remains operational but development investment has visibly declined. Teams building new design workflows should not anchor on InVision.
Axure: Complex Prototyping for Enterprise UX
Axure RP has served enterprise UX teams, particularly in financial services, government, and healthcare, since 2002. Its defining feature is prototyping fidelity and logic complexity. Axure prototypes can include conditional logic, dynamic panels, variables, and multi-state components that simulate application behavior more closely than most visual design tools.
Axure is the right tool when stakeholder testing requires high-fidelity functional simulation before a line of code is written. It is not a visual design tool in Figma's sense; the output is not pixel-perfect design specs but interactive prototypes for usability testing. The interface is not modern, but it serves its specialized purpose reliably.
Pricing
$29 per user per month (Pro). $49 per user per month (Enterprise).
Marvel: Fast Prototyping for Non-Designers
Marvel is a streamlined prototyping tool oriented toward product managers, researchers, and non-design stakeholders who need to communicate interaction flows without design expertise. Uploading a sketch scan and linking it to a next screen is genuinely fast. Marvel also offers user testing features that connect directly to prototypes, enabling remote unmoderated testing without a separate platform.
Marvel's design features are limited. It is a communication and testing tool, not a UI design tool in the professional sense. For teams that need quick click-through prototypes for user research, it is approachable and affordable.
Pricing
Free plan with 1 project. Pro is $12 per month. Team pricing starts at $42 per month for multiple users.
Zeplin: The Developer Handoff Specialist
Zeplin deserves distinct treatment because it serves a different role than design tools. It is a developer handoff platform that receives designs exported from Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD and generates component specifications, CSS code snippets, spacing measurements, and asset export packages for developers.
Zeplin's value is reducing the friction between design and engineering. When a designer finishes a component in Figma and exports it to Zeplin, the developer receives accurate spacing values, hex codes, font sizes, and downloadable assets without needing Figma access or the ability to interpret design files.
Zeplin has lost some differentiation as Figma improved its own developer mode. But for teams that prefer to keep design and development tooling separate, Zeplin remains useful as a dedicated communication layer.
Pricing
Free for 1 project. Starter is $8 per editor per month. Growing is $16 per editor per month.
UXPin: Design and Code Merged
UXPin takes a different architectural approach than most design tools. Designers can import actual React components from code repositories and use them directly in prototypes — meaning the prototype uses real components with real behavior, not visual approximations. The resulting prototypes are more accurate representations of the final product than pixel-based alternatives.
For design system teams and organizations where design-code alignment is a persistent challenge, UXPin's approach addresses the root cause rather than improving translation quality at the handoff step.
Pricing
Basic is $19 per editor per month. Advanced is $39 per editor per month. Enterprise is custom.
How to Choose
For teams leaving Figma primarily due to pricing, Penpot's free cloud tier offers the most comparable experience with no cost. For macOS-only design teams that value offline workflow and a mature plugin ecosystem, Sketch's perpetual-ish license model and familiarity make it a solid alternative. For web-focused projects where design and publishing merge, Framer eliminates translation overhead entirely. For enterprise UX teams that need complex prototype logic for stakeholder testing, Axure remains the specialist choice.
The main message is that Figma's dominance, while real, is not technical. The alternatives have genuine capabilities. The switching cost is primarily organizational, not functional.
Practical Takeaways
Penpot is the most defensible Figma alternative for teams concerned about vendor lock-in or pricing risk, given its open-source and self-hostable architecture. Sketch is the right answer for macOS-only teams that prioritize plugin ecosystem depth and offline workflow. Do not start new projects on Adobe XD given the reduced investment and unclear roadmap. Framer is a design tool and a web publisher simultaneously, which is a meaningful advantage for marketing and web teams. Zeplin is a complement to any design tool, not a replacement. UXPin's code-component integration is the most technically correct approach to design-development alignment for teams that can invest in the setup.
References
- Adobe. (2023). Adobe and Figma mutually agree to terminate merger agreement. adobe.com/newsroom
- Figma. (2023). Figma free plan changes. figma.com/blog
- Kaleidos. (2024). Penpot 2.0 release notes. penpot.app/blog
- Sketch. (2024). Sketch pricing and features. sketch.com/pricing
- Framer. (2024). Framer website and pricing. framer.com
- Icons8. (2024). Lunacy design tool for Windows. icons8.com/lunacy
- InVision. (2023). InVision product changes announcement. invisionapp.com
- Axure Software. (2024). Axure RP 10 documentation. axure.com
- Marvel. (2024). Marvel app pricing. marvelapp.com
- Zeplin. (2024). Zeplin developer handoff pricing. zeplin.io/pricing
- UXPin. (2024). UXPin Merge for code components. uxpin.com
- Nielsen Norman Group. (2023). Design tools survey results. nngroup.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best open-source alternative to Figma?
Penpot is the leading open-source UI design and prototyping tool — browser-based, self-hostable, built on open web standards (SVG/CSS), and free for unlimited teams on its cloud platform. It gained significant adoption after Adobe's attempted Figma acquisition raised vendor lock-in concerns.
Is Sketch still relevant now that Figma dominates?
Sketch remains a strong choice for macOS-only teams that value its mature plugin ecosystem, offline-first workflow, and its pricing model that allows perpetual use of the version current at subscription end. Its real-time collaboration is weaker than Figma's, making it primarily a single-designer or small team tool.
What happened to Adobe XD after Adobe tried to acquire Figma?
Adobe significantly reduced XD investment after the failed $20 billion acquisition was blocked in December 2023, and the tool received no major feature updates through 2024. New projects should not be started on Adobe XD.
Can Framer replace Figma for web design?
For web projects specifically, yes — Framer generates production React code from designs and can publish sites directly, eliminating the design-to-code translation gap. It is not a Figma replacement for native mobile design or complex enterprise product design.
What is Zeplin used for?
Zeplin is a developer handoff platform, not a design tool — it receives designs exported from Figma, Sketch, or XD and generates CSS specifications, spacing measurements, and asset packages for developers. It complements design tools rather than replacing them.