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Developer Tools
Prototyping
Graphical User Interface
What are the best desktop-based prototyping tools?
9
Options
Considered
13
User
Recs.
Mar 9, 2022
Last
Updated
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8
Options
Considered
Best desktop-based prototyping tools
Price
Platforms
Technology
--
Pencil Project
Free
Windows Linux Mac
-
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Whimsical
Free / paid
Windows, Linux, Mac, Web
-
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Vectr
Free
Windows, Linux, Mac, Web
-
--
Penpot
Free
Web, Self-Hosted, Docker
Clojure
--
Mokup
Free
Windows, Mac
-
See Full List
--
Pencil Project
My Rec
ommendation
for
Pencil Project
My Recommendation for
Pencil Project
All
5
Pros
4
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Inter-page linking
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows Linux Mac
Top
Pro
•••
GUI prototyping
Can be used for GUI (Graphical User Interface) prototyping.
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Top
Pro
•••
Export to SVG and PDF
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Pencil Project as a Firefox extension
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Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
1
--
Whimsical
My Rec
ommendation
for
Whimsical
My Recommendation for
Whimsical
All
4
Experiences
2
Pros
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Free version
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roo's Experience
very intuitive with a classy palette
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Web
RickZeeland's Experience
Simple and fast with a rich library, allows collaboration, also for mind maps and flow charts.
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Hide
See All
Free / paid
Recommend
3
--
Vectr
My Rec
ommendation
for
Vectr
My Recommendation for
Vectr
All
9
Pros
8
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Cross-platform
You may download Vectr for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chromebook.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Web
Top
Pro
•••
Free
The app is going to remain free forever.
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Top
Pro
•••
Designing offline
Vectr's desktop app works offline for up to 100 edits, and then once you get online it automatically synchronizes all of the projects with your online account. So you can work whenever you want without fearing for your projects.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports collaboration
You can send the unique URL to your Vectr project to friends and colleagues for collaboration.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports importing various image formats
You may import your previous designs or downloaded graphics and edit them in Vectr as you like.
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Top
Pro
•••
Grid and snapping
The grid and snap lines in your workspace serve as a visual aid and guideline for the composition and alignment of your designs.
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Top
Pro
•••
WordPress plugin
Embedded editor in WordPress is perfect for editing / creating: annotated images, watermarks, banners, image-collages, infographics, logotypes.
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Top
Pro
•••
Intuitive
Vectr is simpler than other web design or vector graphics design tools, and has all the features needed to make designs beautiful.
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Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
1
--
Penpot
My Rec
ommendation
for
Penpot
My Recommendation for
Penpot
All
2
Pros
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Free
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Web, Self-Hosted, Docker
Technology:
Clojure
Hide
Free
Recommend
1
--
Mokup
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mokup
My Recommendation for
Mokup
All
3
Pros
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Export to MP4
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac
Top
Pro
•••
Free
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
1
--
Balsamiq
My Rec
ommendation
for
Balsamiq
My Recommendation for
Balsamiq
All
9
Pros
7
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Awesome team collaboration features
myBalsamiq has been built with teams in mind and has a variety of featured to support collaborating on the mockups: Notifications - Real-time notifications to enable you to keep track of team member actions Revision Control - All mockups have a revision history to enable reverting to previous versions and keeping track of design decisions. Skype Integration - Easy to use Skype integration to host design reviews. Access Control - Access controls allow sharing projects with team members as well as allowing external reviewers to leave comments on the designs.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Stifling innovation
Doing anything that is not directly supported by Balsamiq's conservative component library is next to impossible. User is forced to think within the corset of yesterday's standards.
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Top
Pro
•••
Clean and easy to use interface
Balsamiq has a very easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you quickly build and adjust your mockups. The UI is centered around low-fidelity wireframes that help focus the reviews on the core layout and functionality instead of getting hung-up on visual design.
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Top
Con
•••
No easy way to quickly play with the product
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Top
Pro
•••
Usability testing features
You can link together pages to create shareable user demos
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Top
Pro
•••
30-day trial available
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Top
Pro
•••
Large & extensible UI element library
Balsamiq has a built in library of over 75 built-in user interface components and 187 icons, as well as community generated plug-ins.
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Top
Pro
•••
Keyboard shortcuts
You can use common keyboard shortcuts like Shift to select multiple elements or to resize while maintaing proportions, F2 for renaming labels etc.
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Top
Pro
•••
Low-fidelity UI elements
All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.
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Hide
See All
$12-249/m
Recommend
1
--
Mockplus
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mockplus
My Recommendation for
Mockplus
All
6
Pros
3
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use
As a prototyping tool, it uses the way of dragging and dropping as the basis of operation.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Lack of complicated functions
The support of judgement, condition and some advanced features are still under development thus far.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Web
Top
Pro
•••
Multiple preview functions are convenient
Mockplus has very comprehensive ways of previewing a prototype. There are basic functions of exporting into picture in two formats. Mockplus also has two ways for preview on cellphone app: scanning QR code and entering view code after uploading project to cloud. QR code scanning for preview is really rare in this kind of software. You don’t need to connect to the computer, or upload the project to cloud, just open your app and scan the code. Exporting into demo package is also a rare but useful function which Mockplus has. Reportedly, Mockplus: 2.2 beta version will have the function exporting into HTML, and the launch of 2.2 version should come soon. The HTML exporting of Mockplus has two ways: first one is to export offline package. You could send this package to your colleagues directly or put it on the local sever for downloading and preview. The second way is online HTML previews. After publishing the HTML online, you could send a link to people who want to have a preview of your prototype.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Can't export to .pdf or .docx
Mockplus can't export prototypes to .pdf or .docx files, which may cause issues if you want to view a prototype locally.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Visualized interaction & ready-made UI components
The interactive design in Mockplus is fully visualized, that's WYSIWYG. With a simple drag-and-drop to build interactive prototypes effortlessly. A set of pre-designed components, including pop-up panel, stack panel, scroll box, sliding drawer and image carousel, make you create fully interactions faster and easier.
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Hide
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Free / paid
Recommend
2
--
Sketch
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sketch
My Recommendation for
Sketch
All
14
Pros
10
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Easily align layers with smart guides
Holding down alt will show the smart guides that show the distances between any layer you hover over to nearby layers or the edges of the artboard. Very useful for checking your spacing or aligning layers.
See More
Top
Con
•••
License based payment model
Sketch has recently decided to cease development of major version (2.0, 3.0, 4.0) with free updates in between, and has switched to a license based subscription model. A yearly license costs $99 and includes the latest version of the Sketch software, plus a year of free updates. After this license expires, you can renew for another year of updates - or continue to use the current software without updates.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Mac
Top
Pro
•••
Designed specifically for web and mobile UI design & workflows
Sketch is essentially a version of Photoshop built from the ground up to suit the workflow of web designers.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No Windows/Linux versions
Sketch is currently Mac only, which can make it hard to collaborate if you have teammates using another OS.
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Top
Pro
•••
Vector based yet pixel aware
You can rescale assets without quality loss, easily export x2 assets for retina designs and design high quality icons & artwork. Being pixel aware lets you set a grid and snap objects to it as well as round to the nearest pixel edge to clean up your layers.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Limited compatibility with Photoshop and Illustrator
Although it is possible to export certain Adobe file types in Sketch, compatibility is mostly hit and miss. For example, some elements seem a little offset in Adobe products.
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Top
Pro
•••
Symbols and shared styles
Sketch lets you re-use the same design in multiple places, with changes synced throughout the various places it is used. You can also create text styles to sync typography changes.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
"Mirror" makes it really easy to test designs on multiple devices
Mirror lets you connect your iPhone to sketch and see how your current artboard looks on mobile. It's really useful as you can live check changes which lets you rapidly iterate mobile design.
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Top
Pro
•••
Clean UI
Reactive panels keep the UI for Sketch clean from the sort of clutter the panel system in Photoshop suffers from. The panels in Sketch change based on the object in question, saving you from having to have a multiple separate panels.
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Top
Pro
•••
Active community with a lot of resources
Sketch is hugely popular among designers so there are a lot of well maintained community resources for everything from iPhone frames to iOS/Android UI elements & icons.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in grid system
You can set the square grid to whatever dimensions you like as well as set thicker lines every x blocks. You can also configure the color of the lines to make them as obvious or subtle as you wish and toggle the grid with a keyboard shortcut (crtl+g).
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Top
Pro
•••
Makes it easy to export assets
Sketch has a built in exporter that supports PDF, JPG and PNG.
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Top
Pro
•••
"Artboards" are great for working on multiple views simultaneously
Artboards let you easily work on multiple views side by side. Great for having a separate artboard on each page for the various responsive sizes.
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Hide
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Paid
Recommend
1
Don't see your favorite option? Add it.
--
ProtoPie
My Rec
ommendation
for
ProtoPie
My Recommendation for
ProtoPie
$129
Recommend
2
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