VectorCraft Review: We Tested the Free Illustrator Clone

Short verdict: VectorCraft is the closest thing to Adobe Illustrator you can run for free, and the browser version works better than an 11-day-old alpha has any right to. Opening files, editing paths, tracing an image and exporting SVG all worked in our tests. It is still alpha: Illustrator .ai files don't round-trip reliably, 3D and many raster effects are missing, and there are no generative AI tools. Use it for posters, icons and flat illustrations today. Keep Illustrator if clients send you .ai files every week.

Disclosure: AI Vector hosts the VectorCraft web build at VectorCraft Online. We are not affiliated with ArtCraft, the team that makes VectorCraft, and nobody paid for this review.

What VectorCraft is

VectorCraft is an open-source vector illustration app from the ArtCraft team. It is a clean-room reimplementation of Illustrator, written in Rust: the layout, tools, menus and shortcuts follow Illustrator, but none of Adobe's code is used. The license is MIT or Apache-2.0, so it is free for personal and commercial work.

The project appeared on GitHub on September 30, 2026, and had about 6,700 stars eleven days later. Releases come fast: 0.7.0 on October 8, 0.8.0 on October 10 and 0.9.0 on October 11. The same code runs as a desktop app on Windows, macOS, Linux and FreeBSD, and as a WebAssembly app in the browser.

How we tested

We tested the official 0.9.0 web build, the same files we host on VectorCraft Online. It ran in Chromium on a Mac, scripted with Playwright so every step could be repeated, on the CPU (software) renderer rather than a graphics card. That is a worst case for speed. All screenshots in this review come from those runs.

We used:

• the example files from VectorCraft's own repository (a .vectorcraft poster, a multi-artboard feature sheet, a perspective scene and an SVG poster),
• a 320 × 320 px PNG flower logo for Image Trace,
• File › Save, Export As SVG and Export As PNG to check what comes out.

We did not test real Illustrator .ai files from clients, pressure-sensitive tablets or the desktop apps.

First launch and the interface

The web app is one WebAssembly file of about 56 MB, or about 14 MB with Brotli compression. After it loads, you get a welcome screen with New file, Open and a row of preset sizes: Letter, A4, Web 1920×1080, Phone 390×844, Postcard and Social Square Post.

If you know Illustrator, you'll find your way around in minutes. Tools sit in a left toolbar grouped as Select, Shapes, Draw, Modify, Type, Navigate and Color. Panel icons run down the right side, and a Properties panel changes with the selection. Two details stood out:

• The menus list Ctrl shortcuts (Ctrl+N, Ctrl+S) even on a Mac.
• A status bar at the bottom shows render time and frames per second. Even on the software renderer it reported between 35 and 75 fps while we worked on the Neon Drive poster.

Opening files

The Neon Drive example (a 491 KB .vectorcraft file with glowing type, a striped sun and a perspective grid) opened in a couple of seconds and looked the same as the project's own screenshots. An SVG poster opened just as cleanly, with its gradient sky, text and layered mountains intact.

VectorCraft also opens PDF, EPS, Affinity files and the PDF-compatible part of .ai files. That last point matters: VectorCraft can read the artwork in an .ai file saved with PDF compatibility, but Illustrator's own editing data and layer structure may not come through. The maintainers list reliable .ai exchange as their biggest gap.

Drawing and editing

Path editing feels like Illustrator. The Direct Selection tool shows real Bézier anchors and handles, and a small task bar appears under the selection with context actions: Remove Anchor Points, Cut Path and Duplicate for a path, Create Outlines for text.

The Properties panel is the best part of the interface. Select the title on the Neon Drive poster and it switches to Character and Paragraph settings (Source Sans 3 Bold, 132 pt, tracking 60), Appearance with an fx button for effects, Align, and Quick Actions. Select a rectangle and you get corner radius and Expand Shape instead.

The menus go deep. The Object menu alone has Pattern, Repeat, Blend, Envelope Distort, Perspective, Live Paint and Image Trace entries, and the feature sheet example shows Pathfinder, Gradient Mesh, radial Repeat and Envelope Distort on separate artboards. The perspective example keeps its building facades editable on a two-point grid.

Image Trace: PNG to SVG

We placed a 320 × 320 px PNG of a pink flower with a red border and a thin black outline (File › Place), opened Window › Image Trace and looked at the presets: Default, High Fidelity Photo, Low Fidelity Photo, 3 Colors, 6 Colors, 16 Colors and Shades of Gray.

With 6 Colors, Trace took a moment and reported 19 paths, 329 anchors and 6 colors. Expand turned it into normal paths. The result is usable: the petals and border are clean shapes. The thin black outline came out patchy, the thin stalks that hold the round stamen tips disappeared, and the round tips turned blocky. That's typical for a small, low-resolution source.

If tracing is the only thing you need, a dedicated converter is quicker: our image to SVG converter does it in one step without loading a full editor. VectorCraft makes sense when you want to trace and then keep drawing on the same artboard.

Saving and exporting

Everything leaves the web app as a normal browser download.

• File › Save opens a Save As dialog (format VectorCraft, version 3, with options such as Embed ICC Profiles and Create PDF-Compatible File) and downloads a .vectorcraft file. Ours was 364 KB, a JSON document that starts with "generator": "VectorCraft 0.9.0".
• Export As SVG offers an SVG profile (SVG 1.1), styling (Internal CSS), image embedding, decimal places, Minify and Responsive. Our traced flower came out as a 12.8 KB SVG with six CSS classes and readable paths.
• Export As PNG offers a resolution setting starting at Screen (72 ppi), a transparent background and anti-aliasing options. The Neon Drive poster exported at 1080 × 1350 px.
• Save as PDF and Export for Screens are in the File menu as well.

Privacy

The web app is static. In our test it loaded three files (the page, a JavaScript file and the WebAssembly file) and made no other network requests while we opened, traced, saved and exported. Your files are read by the browser and saved as downloads, so they never reach a server.

What's missing

The maintainers are open about the gaps. Their own estimate is that VectorCraft is about 65% of the way to "ready for real work" for a mainstream illustrator. Their list of missing pieces includes:

• reliable exchange of Illustrator's own .ai files,
• 3D and Materials beyond an early live Revolve,
• 29 of 57 Photoshop-style raster effects,
• vertical CJK type composition, scripting and most Variables features,
• generative AI tools.

In the browser you also lose the desktop extras: there is no MCP server or command-line tool for AI agents, and opening files goes through the browser's file picker. The interface is a desktop layout, so it is not usable on a phone. We'd also suggest saving often, as with any app in a browser tab.

VectorCraft vs Illustrator vs Inkscape

Inkscape is still the safer free choice for long projects, and its SVG handling is mature. VectorCraft wins if your hands already know Illustrator's tools and shortcuts, or if you want something that runs in a browser tab.

Who should use VectorCraft

• Illustrator users without a subscription who want familiar tools for posters, icons and flat illustrations.
• Students and hobbyists who want to learn Illustrator-style workflows for free.
• Developers and AI tinkerers who want an editor that agents can drive. That's the desktop app with its MCP server, not the web build.

Skip it for now if your work depends on exchanging .ai files with clients, on 3D effects, or on scripts.

Try it

You can run the same 0.9.0 web build we tested at VectorCraft Online. It's free, needs no install or account, and your files stay on your computer. For the desktop apps, download only from the official releases page, which lists a SHA-256 checksum for every file.

Adobe and Illustrator are trademarks of Adobe Inc. VectorCraft is an independent project by ArtCraft and is not affiliated with Adobe.