The 6 best Illustrator alternatives

Adobe's software might be the industry standard, but Illustrator alternatives are available. Why is Adobe's vector graphics editor so popular? Well, Illustrator was first released in 1987 and has dominated digital art, illustration, and graphic design for several decades. There are many benefits of using the software, you can find out more via our download Illustrator post.

However, as it's part of Adobe's Creative Cloud, to use Illustrator, you'll need a monthly subscription, either to the app itself or to the Creative Cloud suite as a whole.

1. Affinity Designer

In our view, the best all-round alternative to Illustrator is Affinity Designer. First launched in 2014, this vector editor from British software company Serif has gradually grown in popularity and influence, and for good reason.

And while Illustrator still isn’t available on iPad (although it's coming soon, and it looks very cool), you can now use the full version of Affinity Designer on iPad (for £19.99), with optimized features for the Apple Pencil.

Affinity Designer can also boast a few unique features that Illustrator doesn’t have, including the ability to switch between raster and vector workspaces within the same tool, one-million plus zoom, and unlimited redos. Unencumbered by legacy code, the software generally runs a little bit faster than Illustrator, and if you have a relatively new Mac, a lot faster (which is largely why it won an Apple Design Award).

2. Sketch

If your need for a vector drawing program is primarily for digital design, then Sketch is probably your best alternative to Illustrator: as long as you’re using a Mac.

It’s not a fully comprehensive drawing program, with all the features offered by Illustrator, so you wouldn’t use it to create complex illustrations or art. But by the same token, this means it has a simpler and more user-friendly interface that makes an icon and UI design quick and easy.

First launched in 2010, Sketch has a strong focus on UI and icon design that quickly led it to become the industry’s go-to for the app and website prototyping. A Sketch license costs $99 and will give you one year of free updates. Once your license has expired you can still use the app for as long as you want, but you will need to renew if you want the latest updates.

3. CorelDRAW

First launched in 1989, CorelDRAW is a vector drawing program with a big following among artists and illustrators. For most of this time, it was Windows-only, but this Spring a Mac version was finally released too. There’s no easy way to say whether CorelDRAW or Illustrator is the 'better' tool. Both are packed with features and both have their passionate advocates.

CorelDRAW is available for a one-off fee, but the upfront cost is relatively large: £599 at the time of writing. Essentially, then, the main reason to buy Corel Draw over Illustrator seems to be if you prefer the interface and workflow. What is the objective fact is that Illustrator is the standard software for the design and illustration industry, but that said, you can easily import and export AI and PDF files to CorelDRAW. The two tools can’t easily be separated on price, either.

4. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a tool that allows you to work on a diverse range of design tasks, including illustration, UI and screen design, printed artwork and logo design. You save your work onto your computer in the .gvdesign format, and you can export it as SVG, PDV, PNG or JPEG files. Gravit Designer is available either online in your browser or on your desktop as a downloadable app for Mac OS, Windows, Linux or Chrome OS.

The tool supports a number of vector and raster file formats, including AI and Sketch files. It has a lot of similar features to Illustrator, including a freehand drawing tool that smooths the paths as you draw, the ability to create custom shapes and the equivalent of the Pen tool.

5. Inkscape

Inkscape is a free and open-source vector editor using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as the native format. As well as Windows and Mac, it will also run on Linux. The main downside lies in its performance: it can be quite slow and laggy at times.

It’s lightweight, so will run on quite low-powered computers, but it’s surprisingly capable for a free tool, with a lot of useful features including layers, object grouping, drawing, shape, calligraphy, pencil and pen tools, path simplification with variable threshold, bitmap tracing and Boolean operations. Inkscape natively supports opening or importing a range of formats, including SVG, PDF, EPS, AI (Adobe Illustrator) and CDR (CorelDraw).

6. Vectr

Overall, Vectr is super-simple, which can be viewed as a positive or a negative. In other words, it’s never going to replace the feature-rich capabilities of Illustrator, Affinity Designer or Corel Draw, but that also means a very low learning curve (there are very good tutorials featured within the app itself).

Vectr is a totally free, browser-based tool that offers a quick and easy way to get started with vector editing via an intuitive interface. Because it’s based on the web browser, anyone with an internet connection can use it, and that makes it quite straightforward for multiple people to collaborate on a design, too. Each image has a bespoke URL you can share with others, and you can export your finished work as an SVG, PNG or JPEG file.