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Open-source Adobe Fresco alternatives

A curated, ranked list of the 2 best open-source alternatives to Adobe Fresco.

The best open-source alternative to Adobe Fresco is Krita. If that doesn't suit you, another good option is Paint Board.

Adobe Fresco alternatives are mainly design tools. 1 of them shipped code in the last 30 days, 2 can be self-hosted, and 1 uses a permissive licence.

Last updated October 3, 2026 · ranked by GitHub stars, growth and recent commits

Krita

Free digital painting application for illustrators, concept artists and comic creators, built on the KDE and Qt frameworks.

GitHub stars
10k
Last commit
today
Licence
GPL-3.0
invent.kde.orgKrita homepage screenshot

Krita is a free and open-source cross-platform application for creating digital art from scratch. It is a digital painting program meant for artists who want to produce professional work from start to finish, and it is used by comic book artists, illustrators, concept artists, matte and texture painters, and the digital VFX industry.

It is built on the KDE and Qt frameworks. The GitHub repository is only a mirror, since the real code lives on KDE's invent.kde.org. The project offers a user manual at docs.krita.org, API documentation, a bug tracker, a community forum at krita-artists.org and an IRC channel where most developers can be found. Nightly builds for both unstable and stable branches are available from KDE's CI server.

Krita is written in C++ and licensed under GPL-3.0. The README includes a repository status table with feature and string freeze information for the current branch, and developer builds for Linux with debug symbols can be fetched from the CI system.

Key features

  • Digital painting for illustration and concept art
  • Cross-platform on KDE and Qt
  • Nightly and stable builds from KDE CI
  • Online user manual and API docs
  • Community forum and IRC support

Pricing: Free and open source under the GPL-3.0 license.

Read more about KritaWebsite GitHub

Paint Board

Open-source web drawing board with many creative brushes, shapes, selection tools and multi-canvas files, available in several languages and deployable with Docker.

GitHub stars
2.6k
Last commit
11 mo ago
Latest release
2.0.0
Licence
MIT
Self-hosted
Yes
Hosted version
Available
songlh.topPaint Board homepage screenshot

Paint Board is a web-based creative canvas with a focus on expressive brushes. It runs in the browser, supports several interface languages and can also be built into a Docker image and served locally, so you can host your own copy.

Free drawing offers 12 brush styles, including rainbow, pixel, text, mesh, wave and thorn brushes, alongside shape drawing with built-in shapes and Lucide icons, configurable line width, line style, fill color and fill style. Other modes cover a line eraser, selection by click or box with drag, scale and rotate handles, and a canvas mode for background and custom size. An action bar provides undo, redo, copy, delete, text, image upload, clearing and saving as an image.

Several canvases can be kept as separate files with titles, ordering, and upload and download. The interface is available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean, and the project recommends a recent version of Chrome. It is written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT.

Key features

  • 12 creative brush styles
  • Shapes and icon drawing
  • Selection with drag, scale and rotate
  • Undo, redo and save as image
  • Multiple canvas files with sorting
  • Interface in five languages

Pricing: Free and open source under the MIT licence.

Adobe Fresco alternatives: questions

What is the best open-source alternative to Adobe Fresco?
Krita is the top-ranked open-source alternative to Adobe Fresco on Enlisted: Free digital painting application for illustrators, concept artists and comic creators, built on the KDE and Qt frameworks. Another strong option is Paint Board.
Are these Adobe Fresco alternatives free?
Both are open source, so the code is free to use under its licence, and both can be self-hosted on your own server or computer. 1 also offers a paid or managed cloud version if you'd rather not host it yourself.
How is this list of Adobe Fresco alternatives ranked?
By a score built from GitHub stars, star growth over the last 30 days and how recently the code changed. 1 of these projects shipped code in the last 30 days. Data is refreshed daily, and nobody can pay to move up.

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