What is the best alternative to Affinity Designer?

Affinity Designer was one of the first vector graphics editors available on macOS. Years have passed since then, and the first entrants to the vector graphics market now face serious competition by new and innovative tools like Vectornator. On this page, you will discover why professional vector artists choose Vectornator over Affinity Designer.

iPad with Vectornator interface

Why choose Vectornator over Affinity Designer?

Features
Affinity
Vectornator
Pen Tool
Isometric Grid
Timelapse
Autotrace
3rd Party Pencils
Figma Import
Sketch Import
Unsplash & Iconator
Vectornator is App Of The Day
23000 reviews fro Vectornator
Brands using Vectornator
4.7 score in AppStore for Vectornator

Why doesn’t Affinity support my language?

As of today, Affinity Designer only supports nine different languages. We at Vectornator believe that a design can only speak the artist's language if the tool is also speaking the language of the designer. That's why we translated Vectornator into 14 different languages!

14 different languages
Languages
Apple products

Vectornator truly feels like a native Apple product.

If you truly breathe the Apple spirit, you will be confused when you open Affinity Designer the first time. To be honest, it looks like an Android application. This is another reason why modern designers prefer to use Vectornator in their Apple ecosystem. Vectornator is built to look and feel like an Apple product, and to integrate seamlessly into your workflow.

Affinity Designer and Third-Party Pencils...

Have you ever tried to connect your third-party pencils to Affinity? It probably didn’t work since Affinity limits you to using only the Apple Pencil. But Vectornator allows you to use third-party pencils like the Wacom Bamboo Stylus or even drawing tablets as the Wacom Bamboo Slate! So get the slate & pencil of your choice and start designing!

border video

Take a quick timelapse

border video

Vectorize images in one tap with Autotrace

pen image

The tools you need, Taken further

Timelapse
AutoTrace
Pen & Brush
Our Time Lapse feature allows you to record your whole design process from the blank canvas  to the finished product. You can share this beautiful video afterwards with your clients or your followers. P.S: We at Vectornator also love to receive videos sent by our community.
Sometimes you see a design you want to have in vectors and you used to spend hours vectorizing assets from scratch. We save you valuable time with our innovative auto trace technology. Press a button and instantly have your designs brought to life in vectors. Another unique feature we offer and can’t be found in Adobe Illustrator.
Pen and Brush are like the bread and butter of your graphic design experience. That’s why we worked hard to ensure that these essential tools work and feel great for your long design sessions. In result, we built a revolutionary user experience that let you draw paths with desktop level precision on your iPad.

A million more reasons to switch.

Drag and drop anything!

Since Vectornator is built by designers for designers, we’ve experienced the pain of bad import and export options in other tools before as well. That's why we’ve built Vectornator as a software that can be used completely standalone and in combination with other tools.

Drag&Drop

Superior compatibility

Vectornator’s Import Options:
AI
PDF
PNG
JPG
SVG
Sketch
Figma
Vectornator
Vectornator’s Export Options:
AI
PDF
PNG
JPG
SVG
Vectornator
Timelapse
In Affinity Designer, you are limited to:
AI
PDF
PNG
SVG
PSD

Figma is a very popular design tool, especially for teams working collaboratively.  That's why we support easy import options for Figma files. You can't import Figma files in Affinity.

You also can’t import files from Sketch into Affinity.  Luckily you can use Vectornator; which of course allows you to easily import Sketch files without any reduction in quality.

Our built-in Unsplash integration  allows you to find free images for your design. And best of all, you can directly import them in Vectornator without leaving the tool.

You can use our free Iconator integration to pick the right icon from our library of  over 80k different icons directly in Vectornator.

CMYK
CMYK Preview
AR
AR Preview
Keyboard

Keyboard Shortcuts

Seamlessly perform shortcuts with over 40 keyboard shortcuts on your connected keyboard with Vectornator on iPad, iPhone, or Mac.

Vectornator on iPad

Designed for iPad

With a full split-screen you can work on two different Vectornator files simultaneously and slide over support for great multitasking workflows.

Up to 4X Faster Real-Time Rendering Performance

Since Vectornator was natively created in the Apple ecosystem, we offer more reliable and  much faster performance than Affinity Designer. Try it yourself, you will feel the difference!

Vectornator
4X
Affinity Designer

Feeling lost in Affinity Designer as a beginner?

We all started as beginners. In Vectornator you only have to long press on a tool in order to bring up more information about it.  We call this feature “long press for help”, and our users are loving it. If the help text isn't enough, you can also follow a link in the tooltip to get more detailed information on our Learning Hub.

Question Icon
From Affinity to Vectornator

How to switch from Affinity Designer to Vectornator?

Switching has never been easier with the broad import options Vectornator offers.

Download Vectornator

Any Questions?

What is Affinity Designer similar to?

There are many Affinity Designer alternatives available, including many different vector graphic design programs, such as Inkscape, CorelDraw, or Gravit Designer. Other programs support both raster and vector graphics, like Gimp.

In terms of layout and design, Affinity Designer is the most similar to Adobe Illustrator, and designers who are familiar with either one will find it fairly seamless to switch.

However, for designers who haven't spent years learning the complex submenus of Adobe Illustrator, both programs can be difficult to learn. That's why you should try Vectornator! It's the perfect alternative to Affinity Designer because it's built from the ground up to be intuitive and easy to learn, but powerful enough to keep up with your design workflow.

Does Affinity Designer have a free version?

Many designers are looking for a vector graphic design software platform with a free version. Unfortunately, Affinity Designer doesn't have a free version.

Whether you're on iOS, Linux, or Windows, you'll be able to find an open-source or free graphic design platform if you look hard enough. It just depends on your use case - whether you need something like Adobe Photoshop for photo editing and working on raster images for social media (check out Gimp and its many plugins) or something like Affinity Designer or Adobe Illustrator to edit vector shapes and images, such as logos and typography.  

If vector editing is what you need, look no further than Vectornator. You'll have all the tools you need at your disposal for free! Plus, with features like Vectornator's Quick Actions bar, you'll be able to work up to 30% faster than in other vector design platforms. And with our library of templates, it's easy to design projects directly for the devices you intend them to be viewed on. Try it out today on iPad, macOS, and iPhone!

What are the primary benefits of Affinity Designer?

Affinity Designer is a vector graphic design software platform. Its suite of vector editing tools offers you the industry-standard functionality of an image editing software designed for vector illustration.

However, it can be difficult to learn how to use Affinity Designer without extensive tutorials and time spent learning how to navigate the tool. And most designers these days have a lot of things competing for their time.

That's why more and more designers are switching to Vectornator. Whether your primary use case is illustration work, typography, or UI design, you'll find Vectornator's intuitive interface gives you a faster learning curve than other platforms and helps ensure that your projects are pixel-perfect. Plus, Vectornator supports many different file formats, including Figma files, Sketch files, and Adobe Illustrator files.

Get started with Vectornator today.

Vectornator runs on iPadOS 14 & iOS 14 and later,
or macOS Big Sur and later (with native M1 support).