The best InVision alternatives, compared honestly
InVision invented the workflow most design teams still use: upload static screens, share one link, collect comments pinned to the pixel, hand off with Inspect. It did that better than anyone for most of a decade. Then it ended service on 31 December 2024 at 23:59 EST and deleted every document, including prototypes, Freehand boards and Design System Manager libraries. This page compares the seven replacements that are actually maintained in 2026, on price, licence, and the question InVision made unavoidable: if the vendor disappears, what do you still have?
The best InVision replacement depends on which of its jobs you are refilling:
- All of it, with the least friction → Figma: $16 Full, $12 Dev, $3 Collab per seat/month billed annually, so commenters do not need a designer seat.
- Never being deleted again → Penpot: MPL-2.0, free to self-host, cloud from $0 and total billing capped at $175/month.
- Files you can open without the vendor → Sketch: local documents against a published JSON schema, $12/editor/month or $120 once, Mac only.
- Just the Freehand whiteboard → Miro: it bought Freehand on 6 November 2023, so this is the same product with a new owner.
Why this page is a post-mortem
What actually happened to InVision
InVision did not get worse at its core job; it lost the category and then wound itself down in public, in four datable steps. Those dates matter because they are still shaping bad advice: most listicles you will find were written before step four, and some recommend a tool that is itself no longer developed.
The data is gone, not archived
Service ended 31 December 2024, 23:59 EST, announced by chief executive Michael Shenkman on 5 January 2024. All prototypes, Freehand boards, specs, DSM libraries and attached assets were deleted at the deadline. There is no read-only tier and no reopened export window.
The whiteboard was sold first
On 6 November 2023 Miro bought Freehand: technology, brand, customers and team. InVision's own chief executive, Jeff Chow, went with it to become Miro's Chief Product and Technology Officer. The shutdown of everything else was announced eight weeks later.
The domain now points at Miro
Checked 10 August 2026: a request to invisionapp.com ends up on miro.com, and support.invisionapp.com, which hosted the end-of-service notice, no longer resolves in DNS. Every guide still linking InVision is sending readers to someone else's homepage.
Half the guides point to a second dead tool
Adobe XD is in maintenance mode: security and bug fixes only, no new features since mid-2023, and no longer sold standalone to new customers after Adobe abandoned its Figma acquisition in December 2023. No end-of-life date has been published, which is not the same as being alive.
Funding was never continuity
InVision raised a $115M Series F at a $1.9B valuation in December 2018, $350M in total, with Atlassian and Goldman Sachs among its backers. Six years later the files were deleted. Balance-sheet strength is not a reason to keep your only copy inside a vendor.
Which is why custody is the axis here
Feature checklists did not predict this outcome; file custody would have. So the table below carries a column no generic listicle has: what you are left holding if a vendor folds. On that measure the popular answer and the safe answer are different tools.
The shortlist
7 InVision alternatives worth evaluating
InVision did four separable jobs: prototypes from static screens, review by link without a seat, handoff through Inspect, and whiteboarding in Freehand. No single tool refills all four the way it did, so this ranking optimises for coverage first and custody second, and it names where those two pull apart. Every pick lists one honest strength and one real weakness; prices are per seat per month billed annually unless stated.
Design, prototyping and handoff in one place, and the seat split answers InVision's best idea directly: $16 Full for designers, $12 Dev for engineers who need Dev Mode, $3 Collab for everyone who only comments. Plugins, design-system tooling and job descriptions all assume it. Weakness: custody is the worst on this list, since a local copy is a proprietary .fig that only Figma opens, exports one file at a time, and cannot be edited offline; the jump to Organization triples the Full seat to $55.
MPL-2.0, an OSI-approved licence, free to self-host with Docker, files stored as native SVG. Cloud is $0 up to 8 members with unlimited viewers, $7/user above that with total billing capped at $175/month, which undercuts eleven Figma Full seats for a forty-person org. Release 2.17.0 landed 22 July 2026 and the repository is still active daily. Weakness: prototyping is real but shallower than Figma's, the plugin ecosystem is a fraction of the size, and imported Figma files need cleanup.
A .sketch document sits on your disk and is a ZIP of JSON validated against a published JSON schema, so other software can read your work without Sketch existing. $12 Standard, $24 Professional, $44 Enterprise per editor, or $120 once for a Mac-only licence, with unlimited free viewers: structurally the closest thing to how InVision review felt. Weakness: the editor is macOS 14 or newer only and the web app is view, comment and inspect, so a mixed-OS team is out on day one.
If the thing you miss is the whiteboard, this is not a comparison: Miro acquired Freehand on 6 November 2023, honoured existing subscriptions at no extra cost and folded its capabilities into Miro during 2024. Free covers 3 editable boards; Starter is $8 and Business $20 per member, Enterprise from 30 members. Weakness: it is a whiteboard, so it replaces none of prototyping, Inspect or DSM, and it is cloud-only with no export story worth the name.
Merge renders your real React components inside the design file, so the spec and the shipped UI are the same objects rather than two descriptions of one intention. That is the strongest available answer to the problem InVision Inspect only approximated. $29 Core and $40 Growth annually, $49 and $69 monthly, plus AI credit packs from $13. Weakness: the priciest per seat here, cloud-only, and Merge needs engineering work before any designer sees the benefit.
Conditional logic, variables, sensor and hardware input: the high-fidelity interaction work InVision never did. Free covers 2 prototypes with 8 scenes each, Basic $25 monthly for a single seat, Pro $47 per editor, Enterprise from 3 seats, with Connect Core a $20 add-on. Weakness: it is only a prototyping tool, with no design canvas and no spec system, Basic cannot be shared with a colleague, and saving files locally is gated to Pro.
A free desktop editor for Windows, macOS and Linux that runs without an internet connection and opens and saves .sketch, which makes it the practical way to read inherited Sketch files on a PC. Free for personal and commercial use, with an optional tier from $11.99/month for extras. Weakness: closed source and single-vendor, so today's price is a business decision rather than a licence guarantee, and team collaboration is thinner than everything above it.
Deliberately left off: Adobe XD, for the maintenance-mode reasons above; Framer, which has become a website builder at $10 and $30 per site plan with extra editors at $20, excellent at publishing but not a handoff tool; and Marvel, which is still running and cheap but publishes no prices on its own pricing page in 2026, which is hard to recommend on a page about vendor continuity.
Side by side
InVision alternatives compared
Prices as of August 2026, read from each vendor's own pricing page. The column that decides most of these migrations is the third one: what you are left holding if the vendor goes away, because that is the exact thing InVision's users discovered they had no answer for. InVision's own row is included as the baseline.
| Tool | Type | Your files if the vendor vanished | Free tier | Self-host / licence | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| InVision | Prototyping, review and handoff (ended) | ✗ nothing: all documents deleted 31 Dec 2024, 23:59 EST | None: service ended | ✗ proprietary SaaS | Nothing: the domain now redirects to miro.com |
| Figma | Design, prototyping, Dev Mode handoff | ✗ a proprietary .fig per file, Figma-only, no bulk export, no offline editing |
Starter: 3 design + 3 FigJam files, 30-day history | ✗ proprietary SaaS | Teams that want the category default and cheap commenter seats |
| Penpot | Design and prototyping | ✓ everything: native SVG files on infrastructure you control | $0 for up to 8 members, unlimited viewers, 10 GB | ✓ MPL-2.0, free self-host | Anyone who refuses to repeat this experience |
| Sketch | Design and prototyping (Mac editor) | ✓ local .sketch files, a documented ZIP of JSON other tools can read |
None by policy; 30-day trial, unlimited free viewers | ✗ proprietary, but the file format is published | Mac-only teams that want their work on their own disk |
| Miro | Whiteboard (the former Freehand) | ✗ cloud-only boards | 3 editable boards | ✗ proprietary SaaS | Replacing Freehand specifically, since Miro owns it |
| UXPin | Prototyping on real components | ✗ cloud-only, though your React components stay in your repo | Limited free plan after the 14-day trial: 2 prototypes | ✗ proprietary SaaS | Design systems that must match shipped code exactly |
| ProtoPie | High-fidelity interaction prototyping | ✓ local .pie files, but only on Pro at $47 |
2 prototypes, 8 scenes each, 50 MB | ✗ proprietary; private server on Enterprise | Motion, logic and hardware-driven prototypes |
| Lunacy | Desktop design editor | ✓ local files by default, and it reads .sketch too |
Free for personal and commercial use | ✗ proprietary, free of charge | Windows and Linux designers, and opening inherited Sketch files |
Numbers that do not fit in cells: Figma Organization is $55 Full, $25 Dev, $5 Collab and Enterprise $90, $35, $5; Penpot Unlimited is $7/user with billing capped at $175/month, Enterprise $25/user with a $950/month minimum, and a managed private server is quoted at $50,000/year; Sketch monthly billing costs more than the yearly rate shown; Miro Starter and Business are the annual rates, 20% below monthly. Pricing and free tiers change often; check each vendor for current terms. Compiled August 2026.
Official pages: Figma · Penpot · Sketch · Miro · UXPin · ProtoPie · Lunacy · Sketch file format spec · Figma local copies · Miro on the Freehand deal
A fair call
The case for doing less than you think
Usually this section argues for staying put. Here that option does not exist, so the honest version is the opposite warning: the most expensive mistake in 2026 is treating a deleted service as a migration project. There is nothing to move, only a decision about what to re-create and what to buy, and both are smaller than a vendor would like you to believe.
Doing almost nothing is right if…
- Your InVision content was never exported. It is gone; budget for re-creating the roughly one screen in ten that anything still links to, not for a recovery effort.
- Your team already works in local
.sketchor.penpotfiles. You have no urgency at all, and adopting a cloud tool because the category did is how the original problem started. - Most of your reviewers are not designers. InVision's static-screens-plus-a-link model was genuinely lighter than a live multiplayer canvas, and the modern echo of its bill is paying designer prices for people who only comment.
- You are mid-quarter on a shipping product. Prototype tooling is not on the critical path; pick in the gap between cycles, not during one.
Move deliberately if…
- Continuity is the requirement: Penpot under MPL-2.0, self-hosted, or Sketch with local files against a published format.
- You need the whole workflow and default conventions: Figma, buying $3 Collab seats for everyone who is not opening the design tool.
- You only lost the whiteboard: Miro, which bought Freehand outright in November 2023.
- Your specs keep drifting from the shipped UI: UXPin with Merge, so the design file and the components are the same thing.
- Someone hands you an Adobe XD file and calls it the plan: check the maintenance-mode status first, then pick from the list above instead.
Common questions
Common questions about InVision alternatives
What is the best InVision alternative in 2026?
For most teams it is Figma, because the whole category moved there: handoff conventions, plugins, design systems and hiring all assume it. Professional seats cost 16 dollars for a Full seat, 12 for a Dev seat and 3 for a Collab seat per month billed annually, which lets reviewers comment without a designer seat. If your priority is never losing your work to a shutdown again, pick Penpot instead: it is MPL-2.0 licensed, free to self-host, and its cloud tier starts at zero. If you only miss the Freehand whiteboard, that product is now part of Miro.
Is InVision really shut down, and can I still recover my prototypes?
Yes, and no. InVision ended service on 31 December 2024 at 23:59 EST and deleted all documents at that moment: prototypes, Freehand boards, specs and Design System Manager libraries. There is no archive, no read-only mode and no reopened export window. As of August 2026 invisionapp.com redirects to miro.com and the support subdomain no longer resolves in DNS. If your content was not exported before the deadline it does not exist anywhere, so plan to re-create the small share that is still referenced rather than to run a migration project.
What happened to InVision Freehand?
Freehand was sold to Miro on 6 November 2023, roughly two months before InVision announced it was closing everything else. The deal covered the technology, the brand, customer relationships and the team, and InVision chief executive Jeff Chow moved to Miro as its Chief Product and Technology Officer. Miro honoured existing Freehand subscriptions at no extra cost and provided migration during 2024, folding Freehand capabilities into Miro itself. So for the whiteboard specifically, Miro is not an alternative to Freehand: it is the same product under a new owner.
Why do so many guides still recommend Adobe XD?
Because they were written before XD stopped moving and have only been date-stamped since. Adobe XD is in maintenance mode: it gets bug and security fixes, has shipped no new features since mid-2023, and is no longer sold as a standalone app to new customers. Adobe stopped investing after its Figma acquisition was abandoned in December 2023. There is no published end-of-life date, which is not the same as being alive. Moving from one abandoned tool to another is the specific mistake worth avoiding here, so XD is left off this shortlist deliberately.
Is there a truly open-source InVision alternative?
Penpot is the only one on this list under a real open-source licence: Mozilla Public License 2.0, which is OSI-approved, not a source-available licence such as BSL or Elastic 2.0. You can run it with Docker at no cost, files are native SVG, and release 2.17.0 shipped on 22 July 2026 with the repository still active. Lunacy is free for commercial use but closed source, so its price is a business decision rather than a guarantee. Sketch is proprietary, though its file format is a documented ZIP of JSON that third-party tools can read.
What does replacing InVision actually cost per person?
It depends on how many of your people actually design. Billed annually, Figma Professional is 16 dollars per Full seat, 12 per Dev seat and 3 per Collab seat each month; Organization triples that to 55, 25 and 5. Sketch is 12 dollars per editor per month with unlimited free viewers, or 120 dollars once for a Mac-only licence. Penpot is free up to 8 members and 7 dollars per user above that, with total billing capped at 175 dollars a month. The common overspend is buying full design seats for people who only comment.