Open-source alternatives to Adobe Illustrator
3 alternatives, ranked by a published maintenance score computed from live GitHub signals (fetched 2026-09-04). We flag unmaintained projects on both sides — including Adobe Illustrator itself when the data says so.
About Adobe Illustrator: Proprietary, subscription-only vector editor. It is closed-source, so the same public maintenance signals do not exist for it — we score only the alternatives below.
The alternatives
Graphite
New node-based 2D graphics editor in the browser, raster and vector.
How this 90/100 was computed
| Last commit | today | 40/40 |
|---|---|---|
| Latest release | 35 days ago | 25/25 |
| Community size | GitHub stars | 15/15 |
| Open-issue trend | not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile | 10/20 |
| Total | 90/100 |
Penpot
SVG-based design platform; covers much of the vector-design workflow.
How this 90/100 was computed
| Last commit | today | 40/40 |
|---|---|---|
| Latest release | 8 days ago | 25/25 |
| Community size | GitHub stars | 15/15 |
| Open-issue trend | not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile | 10/20 |
| Total | 90/100 |
SVG-edit
Browser-based SVG editor; lightweight, embeddable.
How this 87/100 was computed
| Last commit | 30 days ago | 40/40 |
|---|---|---|
| Latest release | 55 days ago | 25/25 |
| Community size | GitHub stars | 12/15 |
| Open-issue trend | not enough history yet — needs snapshots 21+ days apart; neutral 10/20 awarded meanwhile | 10/20 |
| Total | 87/100 |
Inkscape
The standard free vector graphics editor; SVG-native.