Photo, video and design3 picks
The best drawing and design apps for iPad, iPhone and Mac
Procreate is the drawing app most iPad owners should buy, and Affinity is the best free design app on the Mac.
ProcreatePick it if you own an iPad and Apple Pencil and want to paint or illustrate seriously.$12.99 onceProcreate is a $12.99 one-time drawing studio for iPad and Apple Pencil, with over 300 brushes and no generative AI. Procreate Pocket brings the same brushes and layers to iPhone for $5.99 once. Affinity covers design on the Mac instead, with photo editing, vector design and page layout free with a Canva account.
How we chose
- 1Apple Pencil support and brush quality
- 2One-time price, no subscription
- 3Which device you'll draw on
Compare at a glance
Tap a name to jump to its write-up.
| App | Price | How you pay | Mac | iPhone | iPad | App Store | Developer | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Procreate | $12.99 once | Pay once | 4.4 | |||||
 Procreate Pocket | $5.99 once | Pay once | 3.8 | |||||
 Affinity | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | Too few ratings |
Swipe the table sideways to see more
The picks, in order
-
Pick it if you own an iPad and Apple Pencil and want to paint or illustrate seriously.
Drawing on an iPad with Freeform or Notes gets frustrating once you want real brushes, layers and clean lines. Procreate has over 300 brushes you can rebuild in Brush Studio, QuickShape to snap shaky strokes into clean shapes, and desktop-style layers, all for $12.99 once with no generative AI. It runs on iPad only, so on iPhone you need the separate $5.99 Procreate Pocket.
-
Pick this if your iPhone is the only screen you have with you when you want to draw.
If you sketch on the train or in a waiting room, this is the closest thing to real Procreate on an iPhone, with hundreds of brushes, layers with 25+ blend modes and frame-by-frame animation. QuickShape cleans up a wobbly circle or line when you hold the stroke, and it costs $5.99 once with no data collected. A phone screen is still cramped for detailed work, so iPad owners should spend $12.99 on full Procreate instead.
-
Pick it if you design on a Mac with vectors and page layout and don't want to pay anything.
Retouch photos, draw vector logos and lay out a brochure in 1 free program, now that Canva has merged Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher into a single app. For anyone pricing out Adobe's subscription, it costs nothing and runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. You need a Canva account to download it and a Canva premium plan for the AI tools, and Pixelmator Pro is the no-account alternative at $49.99 once.
