Figma still owns the collaborative interface-design space, but the value question has shifted since Adobe walked away from the acquisition. Editor seats run $15 to $20 per month each, dev mode is now a separate add-on, AI features sit behind a higher tier, and the Adobe-flavoured pricing direction makes finance teams nervous. If you’ve been hunting for a Figma alternative for desktop that handles real UI work, you have better choices in 2026 than at any point in the last five years.
The shortest version: Penpot is the open-source pick that finally caught up on the basics, Sketch is still the Mac-native default with the deepest plugin ecosystem, and Affinity Designer 2 ditches subscriptions entirely. We tested seven Figma alternatives across Windows, macOS, and Linux and ranked them by what they actually replace, not by what the marketing pages claim.
Why people are looking past Figma in 2026
The product is excellent. The pricing is the problem.
- The editor-seat tax adds up. A four-designer team plus a couple of engineers needing dev mode is north of $1,200 a year before the AI tier. Mid-sized teams notice.
- Offline work is still painful. Figma is fundamentally a browser product wrapped in an Electron shell. If you’ve ever opened the desktop app on a flaky connection, you know.
- AI features live behind another tier. Figma AI shipped, but unlocking the useful pieces means paying again on top of the Organization plan.
- Vendor concentration concerns. Larger design orgs are explicitly diversifying after the Adobe deal collapse and the FedRAMP discussions. Penpot in particular has become the open-source insurance policy.
None of this makes Figma a bad product. It’s still the best collaborative UI tool when budget isn’t the constraint. But the gap between Figma and the alternatives has narrowed enough that the alternatives are worth a serious look.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Free plan | Starting paid tier | Open source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penpot | Open-source teams that need to self-host | Yes, unlimited | $9/editor/mo (cloud, optional) | Yes |
| Sketch | Mac-only design teams with a plugin habit | 30-day trial | Around $12/editor/mo | No |
| Affinity Designer 2 | Solo designers and small studios on a one-time spend | Free trial | One-time around $70 | No |
| Lunacy | Windows designers who want a fast native Sketch viewer | Yes, full app | Free | No |
| Excalidraw | Whiteboarding, low-fidelity wireframes, diagrams | Yes, unlimited | Around $7/user/mo (Plus) | Yes |
| Framer | Designers who ship the live website | Yes, limited | Around $5/site/mo (Mini) | No |
| Adobe XD | Existing Adobe Creative Cloud holdouts | No new licences | Maintenance only | No |
The 7 best Figma alternatives for desktop
Penpot — best open-source Figma replacement
Penpot (Kaleidos) is the open-source design tool that crossed the line from “promising” to “production-ready” during 2025. The 2.0 release added components 2.0, design tokens, and a flex layout system that finally matches Figma’s auto-layout. You can run it in a browser against the public cloud or host the Docker stack on your own infrastructure, which is the part enterprise teams care about. File format is open, exports are clean, and the AGPL licence keeps the project from getting acquired and shut down.
The hosted plan is free with unlimited editors, which makes the cost story unambiguous. Self-hosting takes about an hour for a competent DevOps person and removes the vendor relationship entirely.
Where it falls short: Plugin ecosystem is small compared to Figma’s marketplace. Performance on very large files (1000+ frames) is behind Figma. AI features are catching up but aren’t at parity.
Pricing:
- Free: unlimited editors, unlimited projects, hosted on penpot.app
- Paid: optional Penpot Cloud paid tiers around $9/editor/mo if you want managed hosting with priority support
- vs Figma: dramatically cheaper at any team size
Platforms: Web (works in any modern browser); Windows, macOS, and Linux via Docker for self-hosted deployments.
Download: penpot.app · Self-host via GitHub
Bottom line: The right pick if open-source matters or your finance team has banned per-seat SaaS. The biggest jump in viability of any tool on this list during the last 12 months.
Sketch — best Mac-native option with a deep plugin library
Sketch is the original Figma alternative and the one most ex-Sketch designers keep coming back to. The Mac-native app feels different from an Electron tool in a way that’s hard to articulate until you’ve used both for a few hours: panning is smoother, the inspector is denser, and the file format is local-first. Sketch Cloud handles collaboration without forcing you to live in a browser, and the plugin ecosystem covers nearly every workflow gap.
The Sketch team has stayed close to the core craft of vector UI design instead of chasing every adjacent product category. That’s a strength in 2026 when many tools are spreading thin across whiteboarding, dev handoff, AI generation, and prototyping.
Where it falls short: macOS only. Designers on Windows or Linux are simply not the target market. Real-time multiplayer is good but a step behind Figma’s multi-cursor experience.
Pricing:
- Free: 30-day trial, no permanent free tier
- Paid: around $12/editor/mo on annual, with a Mac-only standalone licence option at roughly $120/year
- vs Figma: comparable price, lower TCO if your team is Mac-only
Platforms: macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel). Sketch Web Viewer for read-only access from any device.
Download: sketch.com · Mac App Store
Bottom line: The default choice for Mac-only studios who care about craft. Skip if your team is mixed-platform.
Affinity Designer 2 — best one-time-purchase pick
Affinity Designer 2 is Serif’s response to subscription fatigue: pay once, own forever, no renewal pressure. The vector engine is genuinely excellent, the persona model (Design, Pixel, Export) lets the same file move between vector illustration and pixel-perfect UI work without a separate tool, and the iPad version syncs cleanly via iCloud. Canva acquired Serif in 2024, and the post-acquisition product has stayed independent of Canva’s web stack.
The interface trades some of Figma’s collaboration polish for desktop-native responsiveness. There is no real-time multiplayer, and the prototyping story is thin — Affinity Designer is a design tool, not a UI/UX-workflow tool. But for solo designers and small studios doing brand, illustration, or static UI work, the value math is hard to argue with.
Where it falls short: No real-time collaboration. No prototyping or dev handoff features. Cloud-document story is bare compared to Figma or Sketch.
Pricing:
- Free: 30-day trial
- Paid: one-time purchase around $70 for the standalone licence; the Affinity V2 Universal Licence bundling Designer, Photo, and Publisher is around $165 one-time
- vs Figma: pays for itself in roughly four months at one editor seat
Platforms: Windows 10 and 11, macOS, iPadOS. No Linux support.
Download: affinity.serif.com · Microsoft Store · Mac App Store
Bottom line: Pick this if you’re a solo designer or a small studio that hates subscriptions and doesn’t need real-time multiplayer. The one-time licence pays back fast.
Lunacy — best free Windows-native viewer and editor
Lunacy from Icons8 is the closest thing Windows users have to a native Sketch viewer that can also edit. It opens .sketch files without a Mac in sight, runs locally without an account, and bundles a generous library of icons, illustrations, and photos under permissive licences. The AI features (background removal, image upscaling) are baked in rather than gated behind a premium plan, which is genuinely useful for quick asset work.
The catch is that Lunacy is a tool, not a platform. It doesn’t pretend to compete with Figma on team collaboration, design systems, or developer handoff — it lives in the gap between “open this .sketch file my agency sent me” and “do a quick UI mockup without launching the browser”.
Where it falls short: No real team collaboration. Design system features are thin. File format compatibility with Sketch is good but not 100%.
Pricing:
- Free: yes, the full app with no time limit
- Paid: there is no paid tier; Icons8 monetises the asset libraries, not the editor
- vs Figma: free, but at the cost of team features
Platforms: Windows 10 and 11, macOS, Linux.
Download: icons8.com/lunacy
Bottom line: The right pick for Windows designers who need a free editor and a fast way to open Sketch files. Not a Figma replacement for a team.
Excalidraw — best for whiteboarding and lo-fi wireframes
Excalidraw is the open-source whiteboarding tool that quietly displaced FigJam in a lot of engineering orgs. The hand-drawn aesthetic is a feature, not a limitation — it signals “this is a sketch, not a spec”, which keeps stakeholders from arguing about pixel decisions before the idea is settled. Real-time multiplayer works through end-to-end-encrypted rooms, and the desktop app runs the same code as the web version with offline support.
For interface design at the wireframe level, this is the fastest tool we tested. Boxes, arrows, a library of common UI primitives, and you’re done. For finished UI work, you still need a Figma or Penpot — Excalidraw doesn’t replace those, it sits cleanly upstream of them.
Where it falls short: Not a fidelity tool. Component libraries and design systems aren’t the focus. Export options are limited compared to a dedicated UI tool.
Pricing:
- Free: yes, full functionality, including self-hosted Excalidraw+
- Paid: Excalidraw Plus around $7/user/mo for managed hosting, team workspaces, and history
- vs Figma: free for the core feature; even the paid tier undercuts Figma’s editor seat
Platforms: Web; Windows, macOS, Linux as a PWA or via Obsidian / VS Code extension; iPad PWA.
Download: excalidraw.com · GitHub
Bottom line: Pick this for ideation, system diagrams, and whiteboarding. Pair it with Penpot or Sketch for the actual UI work.
Framer — best for designers who ship the live website
Framer stopped being a Figma competitor and became something more interesting: a design tool that publishes the final website. You can still do UI design and prototyping in it, but the gravity of the product points toward marketing sites and landing pages that go live from the same canvas. The visual editor exports clean code, the CMS is decent, and the hosted publishing handles SSL and CDN.
The shift in positioning means Framer is less direct as a Figma replacement for product design teams. But for designers whose work ends in a website launch — agency designers, indie founders, marketing-site teams — the round-trip from canvas to production is faster than any other tool we tested.
Where it falls short: Not the right pick for SaaS product UI design where the deliverable is a spec for engineering. AI-powered code generation is impressive but still produces output that needs review.
Pricing:
- Free: Free tier with unlimited drafts and a framer.website subdomain
- Paid: Mini plan around $5/site/mo, Basic around $15/site/mo, with team plans on top
- vs Figma: priced per site, not per editor — different model
Platforms: Web; Windows, macOS, Linux as Electron app.
Download: framer.com
Bottom line: Pick Framer if your design output ends in a deployed website. Skip it if your output is a spec handed to engineering.
Adobe XD — only if you're already in Creative Cloud
Adobe XD is on this list mostly to tell you the truth about it. Adobe stopped accepting new individual subscriptions for XD in 2023 after the Figma acquisition collapse, and the product has been in maintenance mode since. Existing licences continue to work, Creative Cloud subscribers can still install it, and the file format imports cleanly into Figma if you ever decide to migrate.
If you have an existing XD-based design system and your team uses Creative Cloud for everything else (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects), XD still has value as the lightweight UI tool in the suite. For anyone not already in that ecosystem, this is not a tool to start with in 2026.
Where it falls short: Effectively in sunset. No new features. New individual subscriptions are not available.
Pricing:
- Free: no longer available as a standalone free starter plan
- Paid: included in Creative Cloud all-apps plans, around $60/mo
- vs Figma: only makes sense if you’re already paying for the rest of CC
Platforms: Windows 10 and 11, macOS.
Download: adobe.com/products/xd.html
Bottom line: Stay on it if you’re already there and your team likes it. Don’t start fresh on XD.
How to choose
Pick Penpot if you want the open-source future, if your finance team has SaaS-fatigue, or if you need to self-host for compliance reasons. The biggest 2025-into-2026 jump in capability of any tool on this list.
Pick Sketch if your studio is all-Mac and you value craft and a deep plugin library over multi-cursor editing. Sketch’s vector engine is still excellent, and the file-format-on-disk philosophy fits how some teams want to work.
Pick Affinity Designer 2 if you hate subscriptions and you want to own the licence outright. Solo designers and small studios get the best deal here. Just understand you’re trading collaboration for ownership.
Pick Lunacy if you’re on Windows, need to open .sketch files occasionally, and want a free, capable editor that runs locally without an account.
Pick Excalidraw for whiteboarding, system diagrams, and early-stage wireframes. Pair it with Penpot, Sketch, or Figma for the fidelity layer.
Pick Framer if you’re shipping marketing sites, landing pages, or anything where the canvas becomes a live website. Skip it for SaaS product UI work.
Stay on Figma if your team is large, your workflow depends on the plugin ecosystem and AI features, and you can absorb the per-seat cost. Figma is still the deepest tool for collaborative UI work — the alternatives have closed the gap, not eliminated it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free Figma alternative for desktop?
Yes. Penpot is the closest like-for-like replacement with no editor cap on the free plan, Lunacy is fully free with no paid tier, and Excalidraw is free for individuals and small teams. Affinity Designer 2 isn’t free but pays for itself against a single year of Figma’s pricing.
What is the best open-source Figma alternative?
Penpot. It crossed the line from “interesting” to “viable” with the 2.0 release. Excalidraw is the better open-source pick for whiteboarding specifically, but for vector UI work, Penpot is the answer.
Can I import my Figma files into Penpot?
Yes. Penpot supports Figma file imports — components, styles, and frames transfer reliably. Some advanced auto-layout setups need touch-up after import, and prototyping interactions don’t all map perfectly, but the design fidelity is preserved.
Is Sketch still relevant in 2026?
Yes, on Mac. The product has stayed focused on vector UI craft instead of chasing every adjacent feature, and the desktop-native performance and plugin library are still distinctive. Sketch is not the right answer for a Windows or mixed-platform team.
Which Figma alternative works offline?
Affinity Designer 2 is the clearest pick — it’s a fully native desktop app with local file storage. Sketch saves to local files too. Penpot has limited offline functionality with self-hosted deployments. Excalidraw works offline as a PWA after first load.
Is Adobe XD shut down?
Not officially shut down, but it’s been in maintenance mode since 2023 with no new feature work. Adobe stopped selling new standalone XD subscriptions; the app is available through Creative Cloud for existing subscribers. We do not recommend starting a new project on XD in 2026.
