Could Affinity Designer Replace Sketch?

Affinity Designer has gained significant traction over the past year and is quickly becoming a strong option for designers and creatives alike. Now that Affinity is free, the barrier to trying it has virtually disappeared, making it an appealing choice for newcomers and professionals alike.

Sketch, meanwhile, has long been the go-to tool for user interface and web designers. It filled the gap left by Adobe Fireworks, providing designers with a dedicated environment specifically designed for digital design rather than photo editing. Over time, Sketch has continued to evolve with features such as symbols, artboards, and streamlined export tools that many designers now rely on daily.

As Sketch carved out its niche, more competitors entered the scene — including Figma, Affinity Designer, and even new offerings from Adobe, such as Experience Design (XD). What was once a market dominated by a single player has now evolved into a dynamic, highly competitive ecosystem. This competition benefits designers, who now have access to a wider range of powerful tools from companies eager to innovate, refine, and add new functionality.

Pricing has also become a key differentiator. Adobe Photoshop, once priced in the hundreds, now sits under $10 a month through subscription. Sketch costs $99, while Figma remains free, and Affinity Designer’s transition to a free model adds even more accessibility to the mix.

As I’ve integrated these tools into my own workflow, Affinity Designer stands out as one of the strongest alternatives to Sketch, offering a balance of performance, flexibility, and affordability. The pros and cons of each are worth exploring in more detail below.

One of my favourite features from Affinity is the ability to switch from draw persona to pixel persona, allowing you to work in both vector and raster formats within the same file, and just the click of a tab. It takes the design software a step further than Sketch, almost seeming to combine features of Sketch and Adobe Photoshop into one, albeit with some loss of features. This is particularly useful when working with images and illustration work. It effectively eliminates the need for a complimentary app to Sketch. It’s ability to open and edit Adobe Illustrator files further expands its capabilities, and allows for the potential cancellation of an Adobe Illustrator plan.

Winner: Affinity

Affinity Designer is priced extremely attractively, even compared with Sketch. Its $39 price-point is well below that of Sketch at $99. Targeted toward mass adoption of the software, it has a good chance of becoming industry standard in the next few years. Adobe CC pales in comparison to Affinity’s pricing model. A one month full Adobe CC plan can cost more than a lifetime licence for Affinity. With Adobe’s inconsistent updates to their suite, it makes the pricing model even less competitive.

Winner: Affinity

Bohemian Coding, the creators of Sketch, are an exceptional small company. There can be issues, however, when beginning to compete with the likes of Serif (who produce Affinity). The resources and investment of a company like Serif are on another level, and make it very difficult to compete with on aspects such as scalability, human resources, pricing, and marketing just to name a few. Sketch is becoming better and better at fixing bugs, however some aspects of the software trail well behind Affinity Designer, such as undo performance and history.

Winner: Affinity

Following on from this, Sketch has also ruled out the possibility of developing a Windows app. This is likely to be down to lack of resources to maintain software to a high level, cross-platform, and the potential for it gaining little traction on a new OS with it catering to a Mac-dominated industry. This could be extremely short-sighted, particularly with the growing discontent in regard to Apple’s Mac division. As Windows machines continue to improve, some designers may look to softwares that have cross-platform functionality when working in teams. The iMac is no longer the dominant all-in-one product it once was, and its disregard for Mac Pro users now sees them cater more to the more average user than ever. A setup such as the high-spec Razer Blade or HP Spectre laptop alongside Affinity Designer has the potential to attract current Mac users, and in doing so would leave Sketch behind.

Winner: Affinity

Affinity Designer will continue to iterate and build upon the software to the point where it is likely to offer the functionality of Sketch alongside a host of other useful features, across both major desktop operating systems, and at a price point verging on the ridiculous. All this taken into account leads me to conclude that Affinity Designer is Sketch’s biggest current competitor as the go-to tool for UI and web designers, and time will tell whether it can replace it in the coming years.