Sketch
the ui design classic, still sold as a mac licence you keep
This version
Updates are included for twelve months only; after that you keep the version you own and pay again to move forward, which makes this version-locked rather than updates-forever. The licence covers the native app and nothing else: no Workspace, no shareable web links, no real-time collaboration, no iOS mirroring, and Sketch offers no free trial on this tier. Mac only, so handing files to Windows collaborators is awkward. Separately, if you ever run a Workspace subscription and let it lapse, its documents go read-only — that is the subscription's behaviour, not the licence's.
Cost over five years
$120 once = 8 months of Figma Professional. Over five years that is $960 rented against $120 owned — $840 kept, and you still have the app.
Figma Professional priced at $192 a year — Professional full seat at the $16 a month rate on Figma's pricing page. Checked 2026-09-22.
Sketch defined UI design on the Mac before Figma moved the whole discipline into a browser tab, and the app itself never got worse. Symbols, shared libraries, smart layout, prototyping and a vector engine that still feels precise — running locally, against .sketch files sitting in a folder you control, at native speed and with no network in the loop.
The $120 Mac-only licence is the reason it belongs here. It is the one mainstream UI tool you can still buy rather than rent, and for a solo designer or a two-person studio that passes files around instead of living in a shared canvas, the maths is straightforward against $192 a year for a Figma seat.
Read the boundary carefully, though. Twelve months of updates come with the purchase; after that the app keeps working exactly as it is, and moving to a newer version costs again. Everything collaborative sits on the subscription side — web sharing, live editing, iOS preview — and there is no trial on this tier, so you are buying unseen.
If your work involves handing links to developers and clients, or anyone on your team uses Windows, buy the Workspace or use Figma; fighting that is not worth $120. If you design alone on a Mac and want the file to be a file, this is the obvious purchase.
What it looks like
What it does
- Native Mac app with symbols, shared libraries and responsive layout tools
- Prototyping and vector illustration without a browser
- Documents saved locally as files you own, fully offline
- Plug-in ecosystem built up over more than a decade
- One payment per seat instead of a monthly per-editor fee
Cancel instead
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IconJar
icon library manager with a real buy-once option next to the yearly plan
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RightFont
font manager that charges once where its rivals charge monthly
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Pixelmator Pro
mac-native image editor you can still buy outright for $49.99
$49.99The facts
- Price
- $120
- Licence
- Own this version forever
- What you get
- One payment buys this major version outright. The next major version is a separate purchase, if you want it.
- Details
- $120 per seat, one-time, for the Mac-only licence, which includes one year of updates and is described on the pricing page as yours to keep, forever. The collaborative Workspace is a separate subscription at $12 per editor per month on the Standard tier, $24 on Professional and $44 on Enterprise, all billed yearly.
- Free trial
- No
- On Setapp
- No
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Sketch B.V.
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22
Check it yourself - Price band
- $120 and up