23 UX/UI Design tools for better product design and UX

What makes a user keep coming back to your product? How do you design a product that looks great and feels just right? These questions are at the heart of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX)—where creativity meets empathy.

The best UX/UI tools offer a structured framework for organizing data, mapping the user journey, and bringing your design concepts to life. But remember, it's not about having every platform in your tech stack—it's about finding the ones which best serve your specific needs and complement your existing workflow.

Whether you're building an intuitive website or working on a must-have invention, we’ve compiled a list of the best UI and UX tools, so you can transition your design process from 'it works' to 'truly exceptional'. Here’s the tools we’ll be looking at:

UX/UI design is all about understanding the experience of your users and the make-up of your product. From wireframing initial concepts to prototyping interactive experiences, every step aims to create a design that resonates.

Whether you're a seasoned designer or a beginner, here are the most common types of UI and UX design tools:

User testing tools are essentially the ‘try before you buy’ mindset applied to the design process. You can test your designs with real users, gain insights into their experiences, and fine-tune your product based on their feedback. The best remote user research and usability testing tools, like Maze, provide features like task analysis, screen recording, A/B testing, surveys, and automated reports to guide your ideas into customer-centric products.

Wireframing tools help you create blueprints of your ideas, arrange content and functionality, and build the basic structure of your design before going into the details. These are low-fidelity, simplified frameworks of your design. Popular wireframing platforms like Balasmiq, Sketch, and UXPin let you sketch out your plans early on, so you can ensure your team and stakeholders are aligned on design objectives, and then conduct user research to test key functionality.

While wireframing tools set the foundation of your design, prototyping tools bring the wireframes to life. Prototypes simulate actual user experience, allowing users to navigate through the interface, interact with elements, and test functionality of the design. User testing software like Maze integrates with popular prototype tools like InVision, Figma, and Adobe XD to gather feedback, test and track usability metrics, and validate design decisions before moving forward with development.

Once wireframing and prototyping tools focused on structure and interaction, visual design tools focus on aesthetic elements—color selection, typography customization, image editing, and layout composition. These platforms often provide extensive libraries of pre-designed assets, templates, and style guides to streamline the design process and maintain consistency. It’s important to note that most prototyping tools also aid in visual designing.

Handoff tools are the bridge between design and product development. They eliminate the need for tedious manual documentation and serve as a centralized hub for design handoff. Popular handoff software like Framer, InVision, and Marvel offer features like design asset extraction, style guide generation, code snippets, annotation, commenting systems, and version control—resulting in accurate and pixel-perfect implementations of the design every time.

We’ll go into detail about the industry’s best design platforms in a moment—but first, here’s a quick overview of the tools.

Type: Tool for moderated and unmoderated user research

Maze is a complete user research platform empowers teams to build the right products faster, by making user insights available at the speed of product development. Maze has solutions for participant recruitment, product research, and reporting. You can run in-depth usability testing—with or without prototypes—and test or validate ideas, concepts, and copy.

The platform supports various user research methods, including usability testing, live website testing, card sorting, tree testing, and prototype testing. Since it's code-free, anyone on your team can quickly create and share a test, regardless of technical expertise. The drag-and-drop functionality and ready-to-use templates help you generate insights in hours, not days.

Maze offers pricing options for organizations and product teams of all sizes, including a free plan for a taste of what’s possible with Maze. The Starter plan comes in at $99 per month and provides added features and greater flexibility, with custom pricing available for the Organization plan, which includes more studies per year and additional solutions, like Open Card Sorting.

Type: Wireframing, prototyping, and handoff tool

Sketch is a vector-based platform with features tailored specifically for designing user interfaces and creating digital assets. It also provides real-time collaboration for easy design feedback, and workflow automation. However, Sketch is only available for macOS—so Linux and Windows users will have to opt for another tool.

The pricing ranges from $9 to $12 per editor for Standard monthly plans, and $99 to $120 per editor for Standard yearly plans.

Type: Prototyping tool

Adobe XD is a UI design software to create product prototypes, mobile apps, and websites. Its features help you create fully-fledged prototypes; including workflows, element creation, animated transitions, and other dynamic elements. If you’ve used the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, you’ll get a hang of this design tool easily. It’s supported on Windows, macOS, and Android devices.

Adobe XD is available as part of the Creative Cloud subscription, and starts at $9.99 per month for up to 100 GB of cloud storage. If you want access to all the Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat Pro, the plan starts at $54.99 per month.

Type: Prototyping and visual design tool

Figma is a design and prototyping platform for exploring different UIs. Its browser-based functionality and collaborative features allow multiple users to make changes to a design simultaneously, without downloading files locally. You can use Figma to create moodboards, wireframes, product roadmaps, and mockups for websites or mobile apps. Plus, FigJam, a brainstorming and whiteboard tool by Figma, gives your team a playground to collaborate and map out design processes.

The free plan is available for up to three projects, with paid plans starting at $12 per editor/month.

Type: Wireframing, prototyping and handoff tool

InVision is versatile design software that lets you create both low and high-fidelity prototypes with basic animations at an early stage. You can go from outlining the user journey to collaborating on early design, to wireframes and prototypes, and finally to its design handoff features. Since it’s a cloud-based tool, InVision works across all operating systems and devices.

InVision is free for up to 10 users and three documents. The Pro plan gives you access to unlimited documents and up to 15 users starting at $9.95 per user/month.

Type: Prototyping and wireframing tool

Marvel is an all-in-one design tool for quickly generating prototypes and designing simple and effective user interfaces. While this platform isn’t as sophisticated as other tools on this list, it’s a top choice for new designers and developers looking for a platform that can get them up and running quickly. Since Marvel is browser-based, it works across all devices, including Windows, Linux, Android, and Apple products. However some users do complain that the mobile app doesn’t offer as many options, and plugins make the app slow.

The Free plan is available for a single user and project. The Pro plan comes in at $10 per month with unlimited projects. If you need more seats, opt for the Team plan at $30 per month for up to three users.

Type: Prototyping and visual design tool

Framer (formerly Framer X) is a great tool for creating high-fidelity prototypes. It’s known for having somewhat of a high learning curve, as you’ll need a basic understanding of CSS and HTML code for interactions and animations. However, prototypes made with Framer are about as close to a final product as a prototype can get. The level of detail and interactivity in these prototypes enables designers and stakeholders to get a realistic sense of how the final product will function and behave.

Framer is free for up to three projects, and the Pro plan starts at $25 per site/month (charged annually) with access to analytics, CMS collections, and 100k visitors per month.

Type: Prototyping and wireframing tool

Axure RP is a rapid prototyping tool with a focus on building realistic, functional prototypes through mouse, touch, and keyboard event triggers. It’s a great platform for designing customer journeys, wireframes, and other UX documentation. You can use Axure Cloud in your browser or download the app for Mac, PC, iOS, and Android devices.

Axure RP offers a 30-day free trial, after which you can opt for the Pro plan with unlimited prototypes at $25 per month per user. Alternatively, choose the Team plan at $42 per user/month for cloud hosting.

Type: Wireframing, prototyping, and visual designing

Bubble is a no-code platform that allows users to build and launch full-stack web applications without writing any code. It is popular for creating SaaS tools, marketplaces, and CRMs. With Bubble, users can visually design their app, set up database structures, and configure workflows to handle complex logic, all within an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. The platform operates entirely in the browser, making it accessible from any device with internet connectivity.

Bubble offers a free plan for initial development. You can upgrade to the Starter plan for $32 per month for features like live app deployment and custom domains. The Growth plan at $134 per month supports more advanced needs, while the Team plan at $399 per month is designed for scaling businesses with up to 500k workload units.

Type: Prototyping and collaboration

Mockplus is an all-in-one prototyping tool designed to help teams create interactive prototypes for web, mobile, and desktop applications. With a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, Mockplus allows users to build and test prototypes quickly, without any coding required. Its library of pre-made components and templates enables rapid iteration and feedback collection from stakeholders.

Mockplus offers a free plan with up to 10 users and basic prototyping features. The Ultimate plan, priced at $29.50 per user/month, includes unlimited prototypes, advanced exporting options, and collaboration tools. For larger organizations, the Enterprise plan offers custom features and priority support.

You’ve seen our top 10, but if you’re looking to expand your search further, consider any of these platforms for your UI/UX kit:

There’s no single UX/UI design tool that perfectly fulfills the needs of all designers, so you’ll need to build a tech stack that’s tailored to your needs and your team.

While considering your options, it’s worth asking:

The best UX/UI toolkit is one that empowers you to build better designs. Whether it’s two tools or six, it depends on what you’re looking to achieve. Keep these considerations in mind when evaluating your options to ensure your toolkit is everything you need it to be.

Settling on UX/UI tools can be tough, as there are ample to consider. Hopefully everything is a little clearer now we’ve run through these 23 top tools.

If you’re looking for a tool that enables you to conduct usability testing, feedback surveys, prototype testing, card sorting, and more—try Maze. Maze is the leading user research platform empowering teams to build better designs. With both moderated and unmoderated research methods, a participant panel of over 280 million people, and automated reporting capabilities, Maze is the ideal research tool for teams looking to grow their research efforts.

Try the free forever plan today to find out how Maze can help you uncover game-changing user insights that help make data-driven decisions across your organization.