The best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more

If you’re not quite ready to pony up the $70 a month it takes to access Adobe’s Creative Cloud Pro plan, there are plenty of low-cost and no-cost alternatives out there. Here are our favorites, updated on May 21, 2025.

Five colorful software icons on a dark gradient background, arranged in a circle, with a multicolored Creative Cloud icon in the center.

The best alternatives to Adobe’s big-name software

Adobe products are industry standard, and, for many people, nothing else will do. I get it.

While I know that there are a plethora of alternatives to Photoshop available, I’ve also been using Photoshop since I was fourteen, which means I’ve got two more decades of experience with it. Photoshop is muscle memory for me, and that convenience is worth quite a bit.

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