Design software covers everything from quick mockups to production-ready creative work. This category covers UI/UX design and prototyping tools where product teams design interfaces and hand off specs to developers; graphic design editors for marketing assets, presentations, and social content; vector illustration and photo editing software; whiteboarding and brainstorming tools for visual collaboration; and font, icon, and stock asset libraries. It also includes design-system tooling and developer handoff platforms that bridge design and code. They are used by product designers, marketers, freelancers, and founders who need professional visuals without a full creative team. Pricing is usually per-editor subscription with free starter plans for individuals and view-only collaborators. Team libraries, shared components, and advanced prototyping sit behind paid tiers. Several tools in this space run affiliate or creator programs aimed at design educators and agencies.
Adobe Photoshop is Adobe's flagship imaging and graphic design software, at the core of creative projects from photo editing and compositing to digital painting, animation, and graphic design. It brings ideas to life on desktop, web, and mobile, with generative AI features like Generative Fill and Generative Expand powered by Adobe Firefly built in. A 7-day free trial is available.
Adobe Stock is Adobe's stock marketplace with more than 200 million photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, motion graphics templates, design templates, and 3D assets, adding over 200,000 new high-quality assets daily from 700,000 contributors in 180+ countries. It is built into Creative Cloud desktop apps like Photoshop and Illustrator so designers can search, preview, and license assets without leaving their workflow. A 30-day free trial includes 10 free standard assets.
Affinity is Serif's professional creative software suite comprising Affinity Photo 2 for photo editing and raster painting, Affinity Designer 2 for vector graphic design and illustration, and Affinity Publisher 2 for page layout with StudioLink. It offers desktop-grade creative tools for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS sold as a one-time purchase with no subscription. Serif, the company behind Affinity, was acquired by Canva, and the product line is being relaunched.
Canva is an all-in-one Visual Suite for everyone, used to create AI-powered social posts, videos, presentations, docs, whiteboards, websites, and print designs. Users start from templates for anything, edit with AI tools such as Magic Write, Magic Eraser, and Background Remover, and can start designing for free.
CapCut is an all-in-one AI-powered photo and video editor designed for creators of all levels to edit anywhere, anytime, across web, desktop, and mobile. It offers trending video templates, AI-generated effects, auto captions, background removal, text-to-video generation, and HD video export without watermark for YouTube, TikTok, and Reels. CapCut has over 100M downloads and a 4.7 App Store rating.
Descript is an AI video and audio editor that lets you edit by editing text — you record or upload, Descript's AI transcribes it, then you cut, trim, and rearrange by changing the transcript. It includes Underlord, an AI co-editor that can turn a raw recording into a tight cut, and Studio Sound for AI-powered background-noise removal and voice enhancement. Enterprise teams at Amazon, Canva, Salesforce, and others use Descript, and it holds a 4.6/5 G2 rating.
Envato Elements is Envato's all-in-one subscription giving unlimited access to millions of high-quality creative assets — stock photos, graphics, videos, templates, and fonts — perfect for powering any creative project. It offers the broadest range of creative assets with unlimited downloads in one simple subscription. Related products under the Envato umbrella include Envato Market, Placeit, Envato Tuts+, Mixkit, and Reshot.
Figma is a collaborative, AI-native canvas for design, code, and AI where teams go from work-in-progress to shipped product together. It covers interface design, interactive prototyping, and developer handoff with dev tools that take work all the way to production, and teammates and AI agents share context on the same canvas. 95% of the Fortune 500 uses Figma (per Figma, based on March 2025 data).
Framer is an AI-powered website design and publishing platform — 'the design agent for every step from idea to launch.' A professional design agent native to the canvas generates and refines sites in place, and the platform bundles a CMS, hosting with 99.99% uptime, analytics, A/B testing, and SEO so teams design, manage, and publish high-quality websites without code.
IconScout is a design marketplace offering over 13.8 million design assets — 3D icons, Lottie animations, vector illustrations, and SVG icons — trusted by over 9 million users worldwide. It provides 11.6M+ scalable vector icons, 862K+ royalty-free 3D icons, 1.4M+ Lottie animations, and 791K+ editable vector illustrations. The platform adds 10,000+ new assets daily and offers AI generators, Lottie smart tools, and plugins for Figma, Canva, and Adobe XD.
Miro is an AI innovation workspace and visual collaboration platform built on an infinite, multiplayer canvas. Over 100 million people and 250,000+ companies collaborate on Miro for brainstorming, planning, and product design. It offers 6,000+ templates, 250+ apps and integrations, collaborative AI workflows, and formats like Docs, Tables, Slides, and Diagrams.
Penpot is the open-source design platform for teams that need scalable collaboration, built for designers, developers, and AI agents. It supports UI design with wireframes, interactive prototypes, and CSS Grid and Flex layouts, plus design systems with native design tokens and AI workflows. Penpot works with open standards like CSS, HTML, SVG, and JSON plus its own open file format, and can be self-hosted on your own servers.
Pexels is a free stock photo and video platform offering completely free, no-strings-attached photos and videos from a global community of photographers and videographers. All content is licensed under the Pexels license for free personal and commercial use without attribution. Pexels is owned by Canva and its library is accessible via web, mobile apps, and plugins for tools like Photoshop and Google Slides.
ProtoPie is an AI-driven advanced prototyping platform for creating high-fidelity, interactive prototypes. It uses AI to generate interactions that designers refine credit-free before handing off clean specs, and supports realistic simulations across automotive HMI, web, mobile, smartwatch, TV, and games. Designs import from tools like Figma and can be tested on real devices using native sensors.
Shutterstock is a global provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools. Its library holds around 200 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, plus around 10 million video clips and music tracks available for licensing. The platform offers straightforward pricing and simple licensing for creators, designers, marketers, and businesses.
Sketch is a toolkit made by designers, for designers — a native Mac app for designing, prototyping, collaborating, and handing off. It offers a vector editor with stack layouts, prototyping with Smart Animate and overlays, real-time collaboration in a shared Workspace, and free developer handoff tools. Sketch requires macOS Sequoia or newer and offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card.
Unsplash is a stock photography platform where photographers share high-resolution images free for anyone to use, including for commercial work, under the Unsplash license. The library holds millions of photos from hundreds of thousands of contributing photographers, with attribution appreciated but not required. Unsplash has been owned by Getty Images since 2021 and operates as a standalone brand; a paid Unsplash+ tier offers premium licensed content with extra legal protections.
Webflow is an agentic web platform for modern businesses that gives teams the tools to build, manage, and grow websites that drive revenue. Its visual canvas lets marketers and designers edit content, control layout and typography, and publish without developers, while Webflow generates clean HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The platform adds AI-powered optimization, A/B testing, personalization, SEO and AEO tools, analytics, and enterprise-grade hosting.
Based on listings currently tracked on TechTool, Adobe Photoshop leads the Design & Creative category — Adobe Photoshop is Adobe's flagship imaging and graphic design software, at the core of creative projects from photo editing and compositing to digital painting, animation, and graphic design. Rankings update as we verify more tools.
Yes — 13 of the 18 design & creative tools we track offer a free plan or free tier. Check each listing's pricing details.
We rank by verified listing data — feature completeness, publicly stated pricing, and user ratings where available. Featured placements are marked and never affect editorial order.