Professional vector and raster design at a one-time price with no subscription
Affinity Designer is a professional vector and raster design application from Serif that has won hundreds of thousands of users from Adobe with its one-time pricing, smooth performance, and dual vector/raster workflow in a single document. Available on Mac, Windows, and iPad, it handles logo design, UI design, illustration, and print artwork at professional quality without a monthly subscription.
Affinity Designer is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
Affinity Designer launched in 2014 at a moment when Adobe's move to subscription pricing had alienated a significant portion of its user base. Serif's promise — professional-calibre design tools at a one-time price — resonated immediately, and Affinity has since grown into the most credible Adobe alternative in the design software market, with millions of users across its suite of design, photo, and publishing applications.
The case for Affinity Designer is substantially economic. Adobe Illustrator costs $22.99/month — $275.88/year — in perpetuity, with no ownership option. Affinity Designer 2 is $69.99 as a one-time purchase. After four months of Adobe Illustrator subscription, you have spent more than the cost of Affinity Designer outright and still own nothing. After five years on Adobe, the cost differential is $1,099 vs $69.99.
The Universal Licence ($164.99 one-time) provides all three Affinity applications (Designer, Photo, Publisher) on Mac, Windows, and iPad — six applications for the price of three months of Adobe's Creative Cloud photography plan. For freelancers and small studios managing software budgets, this value proposition is difficult to dismiss.
Affinity Designer's most technically distinctive feature is its dual-persona architecture. The same document can contain vector objects (paths, shapes, text) edited in the Vector Persona and raster content (pixel brushwork, photo editing) edited in the Pixel Persona. Switching between personas requires a single click; the document view updates instantly.
This means a product illustration can include vector-drawn technical components and hand-painted texture brushwork in the same file, with the ability to edit either layer type without file conversion or application switching. Adobe requires Illustrator for the vector elements and Photoshop for the raster work, with linked file management between them. Affinity Designer handles both in a single workspace.
Affinity Designer runs on Mac, Windows, and iPad — with the same feature set on all platforms. The iPad version is particularly strong: it is the most complete professional design application available on iPad, with Apple Pencil support for precise drawing and the full vector toolset. This cross-platform capability is unusual in professional design software — Sketch is macOS-only, and most desktop tools have no genuine iPad equivalents.
Affinity Designer opens and exports PSD (Photoshop) and SVG files with high fidelity. AI file import (Adobe Illustrator) works via PDF compatibility. For teams with existing Adobe files, Affinity Designer handles most practical cases well. For print production workflows that specifically require native AI format or need to round-trip files between Illustrator and Affinity repeatedly, occasional compatibility edge cases can arise.
The plugin and extension ecosystem is substantially smaller than Adobe's. Custom brushes, third-party export plug-ins, and specialised production tools available for Illustrator through Adobe Exchange often have no Affinity equivalent. For designers whose workflows depend on specific third-party extensions, this gap requires evaluation.
Creative Cloud's asset syncing, shared libraries across team members, and integration with Adobe Fonts have no equivalent in Affinity's current offering. Team collaboration and asset management rely on external tools.
For independent designers and small studios, Affinity Designer delivers 85–90% of Illustrator's capability at a fraction of the cost. For enterprise teams with complex collaboration requirements, plugin dependencies, or print production workflows that specifically require native AI output, Adobe Illustrator's ecosystem depth remains the safer choice.
Score: 8.2/10 — Best value professional design tool in the category; smaller ecosystem and limited collaboration features versus Adobe.
$16.99/mo
$169.99/mo billed annually
Affinity Designer is best for Freelance designers and small studios that cannot justify Adobe subscription costs but need professional-quality vector tools, Illustrators who want a single application handling both vector illustration and raster painting without Adobe's pricing, iPad users who want a genuinely professional design application — Affinity Designer for iPad is the strongest full-featured design tool on the platform.
No. Affinity Designer does not currently list a permanent free plan in ToolRankr data.
Paid plans start at $16.99/mo.
Affinity Designer is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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