Affinity Designer vs Sketch

Affinity Designer is a professional vector and raster design application originally built by Serif, a UK software company that Canva acquired in 2024. It is used for illustration, logos and brand identity, icons, UI mockups and print layouts, and has long been the most credible alternative to Adobe Illustrator for designers who refuse to pay a monthly subscription. The new unified Affinity app runs natively on macOS and Windows, with an iPad version announced to follow; the earlier Affinity Designer 2 also has a full iPad edition.

The core strength is the persona system: a Designer persona for precise vector work (pen, node, boolean and shape tools, symbols, artboards, constraints) and a Pixel persona for raster retouching and texture inside the same document. Performance is fast even with complex files, and it imports and exports PSD, PDF, SVG and EPS, with partial support for AI files. In late 2025 Canva merged Designer, Photo and Publisher into a single Affinity app and made it free to download, while generative AI features are tied to a Canva Pro subscription.

Affinity fits freelance designers, illustrators, small studios and students who want professional output without Adobe Creative Cloud costs. It is weaker for real-time collaboration and shared design systems, where Figma is the standard, and agencies whose clients send native Illustrator files may still hit compatibility issues. Compared with Illustrator it has a smaller plugin and tutorial ecosystem; compared with Inkscape, which is also free, it is faster and more polished, especially for print work.

Sketch is a native macOS design tool made by Sketch B.V., a company based in the Netherlands, first released in 2010. It popularized many of the concepts modern UI design tools rely on, including symbols, shared libraries and artboards for screens, and it was the industry standard for interface design before browser-based Figma overtook it.

Editing happens in the Mac app, which works offline and takes advantage of native performance on Apple hardware. Components, shared libraries, Smart Layout, color variables and styles, and prototyping with interactive flows cover day-to-day UI work. A web app adds real-time collaboration, comments, developer handoff with inspection and asset export, and viewing access from any platform. A large plugin ecosystem built over a decade extends the app. Subscriptions are priced per editor, and a Mac-only license with a year of updates is still available for those who prefer to own their software.

Sketch fits Mac-based designers and teams who value native speed, offline work and the option of a perpetual license, and organizations with years of Sketch libraries. Editing requires a Mac, collaboration and handoff lag Figma's, and community and plugin activity have shrunk as the industry moved on. Figma is the cross-platform default, Penpot is the open-source browser-based option, and Lunacy can open Sketch files on Windows and Linux.