Design, graphics & illustration
Vector and raster editors, UI tools, icon and colour utilities. The main escape route from Creative Cloud.
| Licence type | App | Price | Licence | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Acorn 8Flying Meat Inc. | $29.99 | Paid upgrades | Each major version is a fresh $29.99 purchase, not a discounted upgrade | |
 AffinityCanva (Serif) | Free | Free | Free, but the download runs through a Canva account and the AI tools need a paid Canva plan | |
 AmadineBeLight Software | $29.99 | Lifetime tier | The iPhone and iPad app is a separate purchase with its own monthly subscription | |
| AsepriteIgara Studio S.A. | $19.99 | This version | The $19.99 covers the 1.x series only; a future 2.0 would be a separate purchase | |
 Boxy SVGJarosław Foksa | $19.99 | Perpetual | Buy it on the Mac App Store — the developer's own site sells a separate web version | |
 Glyphs 4Glyphs GmbH | €319 | Paid upgrades | Major versions are paid again — Glyphs 2 and 3 owners paid 199 to move up to Glyphs 4 | |
 IconJarDavey Heuser and Curtis Hard | $75 | Lifetime tier | The pricing page never states what future major versions the 75 dollar licence covers | |
 ImageOptimKornel Lesiński | Free | Open source | Free covers the Mac app only — server-side compression is the paid ImageOptim API | |
 InkscapeThe Inkscape Project | Free | Open source | The macOS build is a GTK port — menus, shortcuts and dialogs don't behave like a Mac app | |
 KritaKrita Foundation / KDE community | Free | Open source | The $12.99 Mac App Store build unlocks nothing extra — it is a donation with auto-updates | |
 Pixelmator ProApple (originally Pixelmator Team) | $49.99 | Perpetual | The one-time build is drifting behind the subscription one, which gets the Warp Tool exclusively | |
 RetrobatchFlying Meat Inc. | $29.99 | Paid upgrades | The nodes worth having are Pro-only, which is $49.99 rather than the $29.99 standard edition | |
 RightFontRightFont | $59 | Paid upgrades | One Mac per licence, and updates stop after a year unless you pay half price again | |
 SketchSketch B.V. | $120 | This version | Updates stop after a year, and the licence buys the Mac app alone with no trial first | |
 VectorStylerVectorStyler | $95 | Perpetual | One person builds it, so "lifetime" means the app's lifetime rather than yours |