This combined with its full suite of vector editing tools makes Affinity Designer our top Adobe Illustrator alternative in 2023. Perhaps the best part of Affinity Designer is its price: it’s available for a one-off payment of less than $60! No subscription fees and all of the updates are included! That’s less than a single month of subscription to Illustrator. If your clients or colleagues are still working in the Adobe Creative Cloud, have no fear – Affinity Designer works seamlessly with both Illustrator AI and Photoshop PSD files. Oh, and did we mention that Affinity Designer is fast? Even if you’re not using the latest M1 Mac, you can expect great responsiveness. Other features that graphic designers will love include previews for all different screen sizes, a saveable history with alternate futures, unlimited artboards, and the ability to have each change you make to a design automatically exported.

The most notable is Affinity Designer’s ability to switch personas, toggling between editing vectors and raster graphics. Used by professional designers, illustrators, and game developers from all over the world, Affinity Designer has most of the vector editing features Illustrator has, while also adding in a few of its own. The winner of the Apple Design award in 2015, Affinity Designer is Illustrator’s biggest competitor and our top pick for the best Illustrator alternative.

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