Top UX and UI Design Tools for 2026: A Comprehensive Guide

UI/UX design tools, also called user interface and user experience design tools, are specialized software applications that help designers create, modify, and explore user interfaces and user experiences. But they’re more than just software: They’re like bridges in a sense, or a way for you, dear designer, to turn abstract concepts into solid design solutions that your brand’s users will be delighted with and keep coming back to. To help you out choices-wise, we’ve put together a little “best of” list that features some top UX and UI design tools for 2026, so be sure to keep on reading.

Why Do You Need UX and UI Design Tools?

Sure enough, these tools are vital parts of a designer’s toolkit. With that said, it’s important to first be clear that what’s inside the designer’s head, as in, your head, is the most essential tool of all. You need a strong grasp of theoretical aspects, like color theory and design principles, to effectively use tools that help you turn abstract ideas into concrete designs. This can be through sketching, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing. That’s how you edge your way towards user-friendly designs that can really exceed user expectations and delight your target audience in seamless experiences that bring your brand (and design solution) to life.

Another massive bonus (or essential benefit) of UI and UX design and prototyping tools is how they help streamline your design process. That’s because they bring design teams and other project stakeholders closer for collaboration and feedback. What’s more, design tools help you do user research so you can understand user needs, behaviors, and preferences and then leverage the insights in the name of user-centered design. From there, you can create intuitive, engaging, and effective designs that can wow target users and secure their loyalty to your brand.

Watch UX Consultant and Strategist, William Hudson explain important points about user research and why you need it.

We won’t spend long on the history of UI and UX design tools, as they've evolved a great deal since the early days of web design, back when designers had to rely heavily on basic graphic design software. The modern era demands tools for designing complex interfaces and interactions, which is worlds apart from the static mockups of web pages from yesteryear. The tools mirror not just the rapid technological advancements, but great shifts in user behavior, too.

Think of a favorite app for a moment and consider what life was like before it, and then reflect on how people’s expectations may have built up around that app so that it’s become the norm as a design solution for them. It could be for listening to music, ordering food, or whatever the “problem” a user may need a design solution for. Tools come into play somewhere along the way as designers and design teams work out the best solutions to make.

What Types of UI and UX Design Tools Are There?

Before we start on our list, it’s important to keep in mind some sound advice from Author and Global UX Executive, Professor Daniel Rosenberg:

You’ve got various tools that cater to different stages of the design process, ranging from wireframing to prototyping. Each type of tool brings unique benefits and addresses distinct challenges.

1. Wireframing Tools

Wireframing tools are the blueprint machines of the design process. You use them to make a skeletal layout of a web page or app to illustrate the page structure, content arrangement, and intended functionalities. And so, you set the groundwork for more detailed design work later. Wireframes are crucial tools to have in the early design stages, because they help clarify the project’s scope and make it easier to get ideas across to (and from) stakeholders.

Wireframing software helps speed you through the initial design phase through simple drag-and-drop elements and make wireframes, which help you visualize the layout. You can explore different layout options that much more easily and make rapid iterations to them. What’s more, wireframing tools help you establish the basic structure of your design before things get more detailed, a point that also translates to the advantage that (since they look so malleable and are relatively simple and quick things) colleagues and users can be honest about suggesting changes. That’s as opposed to feeling reluctant to criticize high-fidelity prototypes, which, being more intricate and detailed, take more time and sweat to alter.

Really the only palpable drawback of wireframes is that, because they don’t have the visual design appeal of a fully designed interface, it can be harder for stakeholders who aren’t familiar with the design process to get a picture of what the final product is going to look like.

Figma, Balsamiq, and Sketch are popular choices for wireframing thanks to their simplicity and efficiency.

2. Prototyping Tools

Once you’ve got the basic structure of a design put into place, you can bring prototyping tools into the picture. They’re tools that let you create interactive mockups and showcase how the final product is going to work. This includes everything from button interactions and animations to transitions and user flow.

Prototypes can give a real feel for the user experience, and the tools for them can help you a great deal when you do usability testing because they give people you give them to a hands-on experience of the design before any coding begins. So, they enable you, through your test users, to find and resolve usability issues early in the process and so lessen the risk of costly changes needing to happen later in development. Another neat plus is how prototypes help you communicate design ideas; as in, get these ideas more effectively across to stakeholders because they’ll have something set in front of them to see in more detail. And so, it will secure you better feedback from them and alignment all around.

To be sure, high-fidelity prototypes can be time-consuming to make. And then, test users might feel bad about being honest with you if there’s something wrong with a prototype they’ve got in front of them since they’ll tend to think you sank a great deal of time and effort into it and may not want to upset you. Aside from that, there’s also the point that some prototyping tools may be limited in how they simulate complex interactions. And it may lead to there being discrepancies between the prototype and the final product.

Figma and Axure RP have got strong reputations for what they can do for designers prototyping-wise. And they’ll provide you with a wide array of interactive elements and transition effects, so you can get into full swing with making prototypes that get results.

3. User Research Tools

If there’s one thing that’s certain in design, there’s a fair likelihood that it’ll be the research side of it. Without adequate research, designers can end up creating something they believe will be popular, effective, and helpful, only to have it tank in the marketplace because it misses the mark, slips, and tumbles into obscurity. To not trip over your assumptions, you’re going to need to do user research and get into your users’ shoes, and, to a certain degree, their heads. That’s so you can get an accurate picture of who they are and what their contexts are like if you’re to build up the empathy you’ll need to design the best solution for them.

User research tools are critical instruments here, and they’re things you use to get insights about users’ behaviors, needs, and motivations. With tools that include heatmaps and card sorting, you can apply these insightfully to help you understand the user journey, find pain points, and craft a user experience that’s truly intuitive and satisfying for the end user.

The biggest plus about using user research tools is that they’ll provide you and your design team with data-driven insights that can inform every stage of the design process. That’s how you can create user-centric products while keeping valuable aspects about your brand’s users clearly in focus. These tools let you test hypotheses, validate designs, and understand user needs and preferences in a way that’s detailed, which helps you understand your users and their realities.

To a massive degree, how effective user research tools are is largely down to the sample size and representativeness of the user group that’s involved in the research. You’ll need to appreciate the intricacies of UX research and how it takes time and resources to set up studies and analyze data, too, and how sometimes the data can be challenging or even overwhelming to interpret if don't have the right expertise.

SurveyMonkey and Google Forms are simple, accessible tools you can use to conduct surveys, and Lookback is a solid example for user interviews. UserTesting provides audio and video feedback from users who are interacting with your designs. UX research tools like Hotjar offer you heatmaps, session recordings, and other tools for understanding user behavior on a website. Meanwhile, for early design, products such as Optimal Workshop provide card sorting, tree sorting, and first-click testing; so, there’s a good deal of options to pick from.

See our course Data-Driven Design to learn about early-design testing.

What Are 3 Key Factors to Choose UI and UX Design Tools?

1. Ease of Use

The first thing you’ll likely want to get a clear view about your potential picks of UX or UI design software is that all-important ease of use factor. An intuitive interface with straightforward functionalities can let you get down to matters and empower you to efficiently create, iterate, and test your ideas. Pick a tool with a steep learning curve, though, and it might slow you down as you get used to its various features and intricacies. Think carefully about how quickly you can adapt to a new tool, and whether it has a supportive community or good resources for troubleshooting and learning.

2. Features

Tool features are often what people focus on most, the “What’s it got?” factor. But the features that a design tool offers you should be in line with what you need for your project: You know, when you need a drill, reach for a drill, not a hammer sort of thing. And that’s why it’s vital when you know exactly what your needs are to match them with the right tool's features. Tools can “specialize” well in specific areas or phases of the design process, running the range across wireframing, prototyping, or what have you.

There’s a chance (or slightly more than just a chance) that one of your designer-ly tasks will find you working on high-fidelity interactive prototypes. To do this, you’ll likely want a tool with advanced prototyping capabilities, such as Figma or Axure RP. Meanwhile, for other tasks, tools like Balsamiq or Sketch can be excellent choices for creating wireframes or static design layouts.

3. Cost

Some design tools are free, while others come with a cost; that’s either as a one-time purchase or a recurring subscription fee. Perhaps counterintuitive at first glance, the most expensive tool might not necessarily be ideal for what you need to do. Many affordable (as in, cheaper) or even free tools do offer powerful functionalities and have just the right features for your needs. So, look at cost, but remember your particular requirements in the moment for each thing you need to do in a project. You might just surprise yourself!

What Are Tips and Best Practices to Use UI and UX Design Tools?

1. Check out templates and UI kits because many UI and UX design tools have pre-built templates and UI kits in them. You’ll find they can help fast-track your design process as they have pre-designed components that you can customize to fit your project's needs with nice precision.

2. Use grids and layouts, as grids are a massive help for keeping things ordered. They’re also great for maintaining alignment and consistency, providing a structured layout that guides element placement so a balanced and organized design can emerge with less effort.

3. Master shortcuts because keyboard shortcuts can speed up your design process by a good amount. So, get familiar with the shortcuts of the tool you pick as it will help you perform actions quickly and efficiently.

4. Sync with a design system as this helps keep everyone on the same page if you work on a large project or as part of a team. Plus, it sets down a shared language and set of components for all of you to enjoy a great amount of consistency across designs that you work on, too.

5. Prototype early and often, because prototyping isn’t just important, it’s something you should keep doing. It's best to start prototyping early on and then to keep on iterating on your prototypes from what you find out from feedback and usability testing as you go on. And what you find may surprise you so much that you’ll be glad you course-corrected or fine-tuned things to maximum effect.

6. Stay organized because your design files and layers need that sense of order. It’ll make it so much easier to navigate your design, make changes, and collaborate with other people who are involved in your project, so nobody ends up asking what’s where or furrows their brow in confusion from trying to make sense of a morass of sprawl.

7. Keep on learning and don’t worry, it goes with the territory, because UI and UX design tools keep evolving as new features and improvements get added regularly. So, it’s more than a little wise for you, dear designer, to stay updated with the latest advancements and learn how to apply useful ones so you’ve got a sharper extra edge in your craft.

8. Prioritize accessibility because accessible design is a massive issue to keep in mind, and it’s the law in many jurisdictions, in fact. So, do take advantage of many design tool features that help you test and improve accessibility with big plusses like adequate color contrasts, legible fonts, and clear navigation.

Some Top UI and UX Design Tools in 2025

1. Figma

Figma (a popular cloud-based design tool that’s known for its collaborative features) lets multiple designers work on a project at the same time, part of what makes it a go-to pick for design teams.

A neat and ultra-helpful point about Figma is how it supports advanced drawing tools, components, and real-time seamless collaboration. These are things you’ll be glad for when you’re using it and when you look back. Other juicy plusses are how you can create interactive wireframes within the application, its cloud-based nature is something that makes it accessible from any system that’s got a browser. What's more, Figma promotes design asset management and provides design systems that put consistency forward across designs.

2. Sketch

Sketch is a vector graphics editor tool for macOS (and another popular pic) and one thing it’s known for is how it stands for simplicity and efficiency. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s so widely used in designing interfaces, icons, and websites.

Sketch has got some neat features that make it a hot choice on the go-to list, especially as it provides you with symbols and styles for reusable components, plugins for extended functionality. And an extensive plugin ecosystem offers you a highly customizable design experience and shared libraries for that (yes, ultra-important) team collaboration factor that you’ll tend to need on projects.

3. Axure RP

Axure RP is a nice and solid, comprehensive tool if you’re in the market for wireframing, prototyping, and documenting design projects (and you probably will be). Its detailed specifications, documentation tools, and dynamic, conditional interactions are some of the key strengths Axure is known for.

here’s a great deal to like about Axure RP, as it allows designers to create highly interactive and dynamic prototypes with conditional logic, variables, and adaptive views. And, on top of that, it supports collaborative editing and automated specification documentation, too. Its advanced interaction features make it ideal if you just happen to be involved in complex projects and are doing things like detailed prototyping.

4. Balsamiq

Next up, and not that this is in any particular order, we’ve got a popular wireframing tool that helps designers and product managers create mockups nice and fast. Plus it's designed to mimic the speed and simplicity you’d find when sketching on a whiteboard.

Balsamiq’s got a lot to offer features-wise, too, not least since it provides an extensive library of UI components and icons, drag-and-drop functionality, and sketch-style wireframes for a low-fidelity look. It’s a marvelous pick for those lower-fidelity prototypes. In any case, the simplicity factor, which is a big one when you’re involved in early-stage concept development, makes Balsamiq a solid place to start for beginners and a welcome go-to whenever you need to get a lo-fi wireframe or prototype done.

How About an In-Depth Review of a Top UX and UI Design Tool?

Sketch

Why Did We Choose Sketch?

We’ll pop the hood on one of our picks now and get into it in far more detail; and we’ll take Sketch as an example. One of the reasons we like Sketch is that its lightweight, with a disk space of only 45MB. And it’s a point that makes it both a fast and responsive tool to use and a nifty asset to have your hands on when you’re in the design chair.

It’s a native Mac application, and it offers you an intuitive user interface with a familiar (and customizable) toolbar, navigator, and inspector. And it’s something that makes it a nifty and accessible tool for beginners and experienced designers alike.

How Does Sketch Work?

How to Customize Your Toolbar

To start, you need to personalize your toolbar so it suits your workflow. To do this, right-click on the toolbar and select the tools you use most frequently. Tools like Symbols, Scissors, Outlines, and Round to Pixel can be especially handy. Check out the screenshot below to see an example of a customized toolbar.

How to Use Artboards

One neat point about artboards is how they work as the screens of your application. To create a new artboard, first just press 'A,' and a list of preset screen sizes for various platformsappear in the top-right corner for your pleasure and decision-making. You can select any preset or create a customized size, and all your application screens can exist within a single Sketch file—and it’s a pretty neat plus that makes it easier to manage your project.

Pages

Pages in Sketch represent different platforms or resolutions. For example, you might have one page for iOS designs and another for Android, and so you can house an entire project within a single Sketch file. What’s more, you can switch between pages fast through the dropdown or the keyboard shortcuts Fn ↑ and ↓.

UI Templates

Templates are often a designer’s best friend, since it’s so nice when you’ve got something “prefabbed” to reach for. Sketch has preloaded UI templates for iOS, Material Design, and Responsive Web, which you can access through File > New From Template. You can also add your own templates, downloaded from the web.

How to Design at 1x

When you’re designing for iOS, it's best to start at 1x resolution, and that’s preferably from using the iPhone 8 screen size as a reference (375 x 667 pt). Remember a little golden rule here that 1 px in Sketch equals 1 pt on the device screen.

Alignment, Distances, and Guides

Sketch provides you with various tools that help you design with precision, and Smart Guides help align your elements. The Distances feature measures the space between layers, and rulers help to create guides for your design.

Layout Settings

Layout settings allow you to set up your own grid system. It’s a nifty plus that’s especially useful whenever you’re designing for larger screens that call for clean divisions, and for those we can think of web interfaces or tablet screens.

How to Work With Text

To add text to your design, you press 'T' and the inspector lets you select the font and adjust the styles. Text styles in Sketch work similarly to CSS, which allows you to apply consistent styles across multiple text layers.

Preferences

Set up your preferences according to your needs. This includes enabling Auto-Save to protect your work, adjusting Pixel Fitting for sharper designs, and setting up the color and gradient palettes you find preferable.

Colors and Gradients

Use the color picker to pick and save your preferred colors. Sketch also has an eyedropper tool to pick colors with from anywhere within or outside the application. On a similar note, you can apply gradients to your designs to add depth and visual interest.

Remember, practice is essential to mastering Sketch. Take the time to explore each feature and try out different tools and settings to see what works best for you, so you can produce deliverables that are both functional and impactful.

The Take Away

In any trade where professionals create, modify, or fix things, tools are essential. Knowing which tools to use for which tasks, along with the key principles and theory behind the work, is just as important. Digital design is no different. For UX and UI designers, having the right tools can make a huge difference, enabling you to craft innovative, user-friendly designs that delight your audience and bring them closer to your brand.

Because the nature of the industry is tech-based, it takes keeping a finger on the pulse of the latest tools and technologies and an eye on which features can serve you best in a project. We've given you a list of some neat and handy and popular tools here.

We would love to hear from you about your experiences with these tools. You can share your thoughts, insights, and tips in the comments section. This will not only help us but also benefit the wider design community.

Remember, this article is an evergreen resource, and we'll be updating it regularly to reflect the newest trends and tools in the UX/UI design world. So, do check back often for the latest information.

As the UX/UI design field grows, so does the demand for skilled professionals. Whether you're starting out or looking to upskill, our courses can provide the knowledge and skills you need to excel in this exciting industry.

1. If you're new to the field, consider joining our beginner UX courses today!

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Stay creative, stay curious, and most importantly, keep designing!