Best Prototyping Software
Prototyping software is used to create preliminary versions of web pages and applications. These tools build off of wireframes and add brand and design elements, interactions, and animations in order to simulate the final product. Prototypes help UI/UX designers to test page layouts, document errors, and iterate on drafts. UI/UX design teams use prototyping tools to increase the speed at which they build and improve their website and application drafts without the need of developers. Prototyping software helps save hefty development time and costs by allowing the testing and iteration process to occur prior to development.
There may be overlap in functionality between prototyping software products and wireframing software products. In the process of web or app development, wireframing takes place first, followed by prototyping. Wireframes are low-fidelity skeletons of a digital product with low functionality, while prototypes are high-fidelity visual representations of the end product. Wireframing products may have some prototyping functionality, and vice versa.
To qualify for inclusion in the Prototyping category, a product must:
Best Prototyping Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Figma is a design platform for teams who build products together. Born on the Web, Figma helps the entire product team create, test, and ship better designs, faster.
- Product Designer
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Design
- 58% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
488,703 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies. We exist to make every kind of work more collaborative, inclusive and impactful. Between our platform, our practi
- UX Designer
- Designer
- Design
- Marketing and Advertising
- 49% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
49 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Adobe XD is built to meet the needs of today's UX/UI designers, with intuitive tools that deliver breakthrough precision and performance and make everyday tasks feel effortless.
- Graphic Designer
- Designer
- Design
- Computer Software
- 58% Small-Business
- 23% Mid-Market
972,898 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Sketch puts the focus back on you and your work. We’re not a do-everything product. We’re a toolkit for design, prototyping, and collaboration — made by designers, for designers. Create, prototype,
- Product Designer
- UX Designer
- Design
- Computer Software
- 53% Small-Business
- 29% Mid-Market
162,543 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Builder.ai® pushes the boundaries to help everyone unlock their human potential. We do this by making our products simple, transparent, delightful and above all user-friendly; with Builder.ai anyone c
- Founder
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 78% Small-Business
- 20% Mid-Market
3,239 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Uizard is a rapid, AI-powered UI design tool used for designing wireframes, mockups, and prototypes in minutes. Uizard's AI features allow users to generate UI designs from text prompts, convert hand-
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 84% Small-Business
- 16% Mid-Market
38,353 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Visually style any website in any browser without code. Turn any design into a responsive prototype with an easy-to-use visual editor. Works with Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera
- Marketing and Advertising
- 90% Small-Business
- 5% Enterprise
33 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Design and Prototyping for everyone. No coding required. Sign up free!
- Product Designer
- UX Designer
- Design
- Computer Software
- 60% Small-Business
- 26% Mid-Market
35,391 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Build realistic prototypes of web and mobile apps without coding
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 58% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
5,206 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
UXPin is the design tool ideal for interactive prototyping, design systems and documentation. Some of our latest features include: Variables, conditional interactions, expressions, interactive states
- UX Designer
- Product Manager
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 49% Small-Business
- 41% Mid-Market
39,354 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Build a beautiful UX portfolio quickly and easily.
- Design
- 96% Small-Business
- 4% Mid-Market
520 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Moqups is a visual collaboration tool that combines whiteboard, diagram, and design features in a single, online app. Think, plan and communicate in real time to create a wide range of visual material
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 57% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
4,054 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
App Builder™ software is a cloud-based WYSIWYG drag & drop tool that eliminates the complexity of user interface design and development so you can build and deliver business applications 80% faste
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 58% Small-Business
- 27% Enterprise
37,946 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Axure drives innovative digital experiences. Our UX platform empowers the collaboration needed to bridge the gaps between design, development, customers, and your business. Product obsessed, we’ve dev
- UX Designer
- User Experience Designer
- Information Technology and Services
- Design
- 36% Enterprise
- 35% Small-Business
11,238 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Anima is an AI-powered design-to-code platform: Designers can create fully responsive prototypes that look and work exactly like the finished product, and publish websites and apps. Developers can shi
- Design
- Information Technology and Services
- 82% Small-Business
- 9% Mid-Market
9,043 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
HotGloo is a UX, wireframe and prototyping tool designed to build wireframes for web, mobile and wearables. HotGloo helps to visualize planning processes, build and test drive interactions very easily
- Banking
- 61% Small-Business
- 36% Mid-Market
1,114 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Fluid UI is the world's #1 Online Prototyping and Wireframing tool - for Desktop and Mobile.
- 59% Small-Business
- 36% Mid-Market
1,477 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Mockplus is a web-based collaborative design platform which connects designers, product managers and developers, built for making design faster and easier.
- 80% Small-Business
- 13% Mid-Market
5,446 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Ux-App is a browser based solution for enterprise mockup, prototyping, and presentation of designs, it has intuitive and fully featured prototpying language allowing users to create any sort of comple
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 56% Small-Business
- 24% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Crank Storyboard is GUI Design and Development software that enables engineers and designers to create optimized GUIs for embedded devices rapidly and with ease. So much so that device manufacturers
- 46% Small-Business
- 31% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Proto.io is an industry-leading prototyping platform. It gives designers, entrepreneurs, developers, and anyone with a great idea the power to create fully-interactive web and mobile prototypes of any
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 52% Small-Business
- 27% Mid-Market
33,344 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ProtoPie is the Number 1 Advanced prototyping tool for turning your UI/UX design ideas into highly interactive prototypes for mobile, desktop, web, IoT and custom hardware. We empower designers to cre
- Design
- 54% Small-Business
- 38% Mid-Market
9,414 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
iRise is the #1 wireframe, prototyping, and integrated agile requirements management tool - including real-time integrations with the top ALM tools like Jira and Azure Devops. All in one simple, sec
- Information Technology and Services
- 62% Enterprise
- 21% Small-Business
987 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Pidoco is a powerful prototyping software for rapidly creating clickable wireframes, mockups and interactive UX prototypes for web, mobile and enterprise applications.
- Design
- 72% Small-Business
- 34% Mid-Market
1,009 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Flinto for Mac is a comprehensive app prototyping tool that allows you to create anything from simple tap-through prototypes, to comprehensive prototypes with impressive interactions.
- Design
- Information Technology and Services
- 62% Small-Business
- 19% Enterprise
7,873 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Build, Publish and Inspect Prototypes In The Cloud.
- 60% Enterprise
- 30% Small-Business
11,238 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Penpot is the web-based open-source design tool for design & code collaboration. The only one that allows a true and full interaction between designers and developers. Penpot is ideal for inter
- 60% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
3,396 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Visily is the easiest and most powerful wireframe software that enables teams, regardless of size and skills, to brainstorm and create beautiful app wireframes. Through an intuitive interface, rich UI
- 43% Enterprise
- 43% Mid-Market
2,872 Twitter followers
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- User Satisfaction
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- Overview
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- User Satisfaction
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MockFrame by 500apps is a wireframe tool to create visual mockups, UI/UX prototypes, and wireframes that turn your ideas into reality. Features: UI Prototyping - Create highly interactive prototypes
- 40% Small-Business
- 40% Mid-Market
33 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
- 60% Small-Business
- 40% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Make beautiful products, faster. Material is a design system "backed by open-source code" that helps teams build digital experiences.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Creatie is a one-stop product design tool amplified by AI. Born from a passion for design, made delightful with AI magic. Ideate, design, collaborate, prototype, handoff - all in one tool, all mad
- 100% Small-Business
2,360 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Draftium is a turbo prototyping tool which helps you to build a website structure in a few minutes with ready-made block
- 100% Small-Business
422 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
FlairBuilder is a tool that helps designers create interactive wireframes for websites and mobile apps.
- 50% Enterprise
- 50% Mid-Market
677 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
IAutoDraw is a multifunctional tool software for domestic office business drawing such as complex process diagrams, flow charts, lane charts，system topology diagrams, network topology charts ,circuit
- 50% Mid-Market
- 50% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Koncept enables you to prototype faster and make smarter, data-backed UX design decisions. With real UX insights from you target users, you’ll be able to improve, refine, and de-risk your every app pr
- 50% Small-Business
- 50% Mid-Market
590 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
An online tool to document and map the user experience.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Altia provides state-of-the-art GUI development and code generation tools for embedded displays. Altia’s software allows designers to involve customers in the design process, collaborate with other de
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Prototyping studio for mobile apps and smart watches.
- 100% Enterprise
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- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Avonni specializes in elevating the Salesforce Flow Builder experience with our Avonni Flow Screen Components Library, while also offering Avonni Designer, a powerful prototyping tool. We empower user
- 100% Small-Business
267 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Free Design Collaboration & Prototyping tool for designers.
- 100% Small-Business
122 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Keynotopia offers a collection of UI design templates for creating mockups, wireframes, and interactive app prototypes.
- 100% Mid-Market
6,344 Twitter followers
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- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Professional Prototypes Powerful Mockups
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Mockup Your Website Or App Interactive, Instant and on FREE Stock Photography.
- 100% Mid-Market
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- User Satisfaction
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- 100% Small-Business
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- User Satisfaction
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The most interactive no code builder. Developed by a Parisian team and launched in 2015, PandaSuite is a simple & creative SaaS platform to build applications and interactive experiences without
- 86% Small-Business
- 7% Enterprise
1,040 Twitter followers
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- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Protoyping and team collaboration should be simple.
- 100% Small-Business
287 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
A playground for digital product teams.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Toolabs provides Component-Based and Design System oriented User Interface Design Platform
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
AI-driven conversion of Uizard layouts to web components (e.g. React, Angular, Vue)
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- User Satisfaction
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JitBlox is a visual environment that lets you design working, modern web apps without coding, leveraging leading UI libraries such as Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap and Material Design. JitBlox is an easy wa
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
A powerful animation and prototyping application for Mac & iOS.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Rivveo is a code based design and prototyping platforms that enables product teams to create production quality prototypes, make user testing more effective and ship faster
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We have created Savah, specifically for design teams to be transparent and more productive. With Savah, Teams can present designs in real-time, collect feedback and speed up the design approval pro
- 100% Small-Business
Learn More About Prototyping Software
What is Prototyping Software?
Prototyping software enables designers and developers to simulate how a finished digital product, such as a web page or application, will look and function before it is fully developed. These tools are often used in the development process to get early feedback, make changes, and test functionality.
Prototyping tools build off wireframes, allowing users to add branding and design elements, interactions, and animations to simulate the final product. This is beneficial because it can help save time and resources by identifying and fixing issues early on.
What Types of Prototyping Software Exist?
There are various prototyping solutions for different steps in the design process or for creating different types of prototypes.
Static prototyping tools
Static prototypes are simple mockups of a system interface. These tools will create simple mockups that include images or wireframes. However, they do not include any interactive elements, meaning the mockups don’t have any functionality.
Dynamic prototyping tools
These tools allow users to create designs with interactions, animations, and functionality. They also offer advanced visual design elements like buttons, forms, sliders, etc. They are great for creating interactive prototypes.
High-fidelity prototyping tools
With high-fidelity prototyping tools, users can create nearly complete versions of their product, allowing user testing of the interface and the interactions. These prototypes look and behave as closely as possible to the final product.
What are the Common Features of Prototyping Software?
The following are some core features within prototyping software that can help users create, design, test, and share prototypes:
Design interface: This is where the actual designs are created. These interfaces will include libraries with templates and predefined elements that users can select to design their products.
Interactions: This prototyping feature allows users to connect the various parts of their mockup by adding interactive elements, such as click, drag, hover, swipe, etc., to their designs.
Conditional logic: Users can set multiple actions and conditionals to handle different outcomes with the same interaction.
Animations: Users can create and fine-tune animations on their designs and manage transitions between different stages or screens.
Dynamic overlays: Users can create multiple layers of interactive content to make their designs organized and visually appealing.
Design assets: A brand asset library will store the brand’s guidelines, logos, and fonts. This makes it easier for designers to use the correct brand assets.
Collaboration: Many prototyping tools will include features allowing team collaboration, where multiple users can work on the same project simultaneously. They can also share comments and feedback.
User testing and feedback: These tools often include an integrated feature that allows users to gather real-time feedback from end users and stakeholders.
Version control: The tool will document version history and allow users to go back to previous versions of the design.
What are the Benefits of Prototyping Software?
Prototyping tools provide several benefits during the design and development process:
User feedback: Prototypes are useful for gathering feedback from end users and stakeholders before the development begins. This feedback helps refine and improve the final product, ensuring it meets user expectations and requirements.
Cost efficiency: Receiving feedback and addressing issues in the early stages of development is less costly than making changes later in the process. Prototyping software helps to catch design flaws before they become expensive to fix.
Improved user experience: Prototyping leads to user-centric design by focusing on user interactions. These tools allow users to keep the user journey in mind while designing the interfaces, which helps to create a product that closely aligns with user needs and preferences.
Collaboration and understanding: Prototyping software allows multiple designers and project stakeholders to collaborate, fostering better communication. This results in a more cohesive and efficient design and development process.
Who Uses Prototyping Software?
UX/UI designers: The most common users of prototyping tools are designers who create interactive and visual presentations of the user interface and user experience design. These tools help them refine the design, test usability, and ensure the final product meets the design specifications.
Product managers: Prototypes help product managers communicate the product vision and requirements to the development team. They will create these prototypes themselves using the software, or they will work together with designers to bring the vision to life.
Front-end developers: Developers will use prototyping software to understand the visual requirements of the product they are building. Looking at a prototype, a developer gets a better understanding of what the look and feel of the end product should be.
Marketing teams: Marketing teams may use prototypes to create marketing materials, including product demos and promotional videos, to generate interest in the software among potential users or investors.
Software Related to Prototyping Software
Related solutions that can be used together with prototyping software include:
Wireframing software: Wireframing software is often used before prototyping tools in the design process. Wireframes are low-fidelity skeletons of a digital product with low functionality, while prototypes are high-fidelity visual representations of the end product. Wireframing products may have some prototyping functionality and vice versa.
Web design software: While prototyping software is primarily used to create interactive and visual representations of the design of a website or web application, web design software is used to create and edit the actual design elements of a website or web application. It focuses on graphic design, layout, and other visual elements of web design.
Challenges with Prototyping Software
Prototyping solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Limited functionality: Prototypes focus on visually representing user experience and user interface design. However, sometimes, these tools don’t allow users to incorporate more complex functionality, such as back-end logic or database interactions. These product details need to be communicated in another way to the developers building the product.
Scope creep: When several stakeholders collaborate on one prototype, their feedback may lead to a prototype with much more functionality than the original requirements list intended. It’s essential to communicate the prototype's purpose and limitations to avoid misunderstandings.
Balancing detail: Balancing how much detail should go into a prototype can be challenging. Providing too much detail can lead to an overemphasis on aesthetics, while a lack of detail may result in an unrealistic and unintuitive user experience.
Feedback interpretation: Interpreting feedback from users may be difficult because they may not understand they are interacting with a prototype and may provide feedback based on expectations for a fully completed product. It’s important to communicate these expectations before receiving feedback.
How to Buy Prototyping Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Prototyping Software
When choosing prototyping software for your project, it's essential to consider your specific needs and preferences. Here is a general list of requirements and features to look for when evaluating prototyping software:
Ease of use: The software’s ease of use level should align with the team’s expertise and knowledge. It’s important to consider everyone using this product, from developers to marketers to product managers, and choose the product that everyone can quickly learn to use.
Compatibility and integration: The product should be compatible with the buyer's operating system and be able to be integrated with the existing design and development tools.
Types of prototypes: The buyer must ensure that the product can create the type of prototypes teams require, including wireframes, mockups, interactive prototypes, and high-fidelity prototypes.
Real data integration: Products should have support for importing real data to create realistic prototypes and test data-driven scenarios.
Testing and analytics: Buyers should check the user testing and feedback features to ensure they can receive the amount and type of feedback required to improve the prototype.
Accessibility testing: The product must have accessibility testing features to ensure that the end product can be used by all audiences, including those with disabilities.
Customer support: The buyers should ensure that the vendors on their long list can provide customer support, documentation, and a user community for assistance and troubleshooting to meet the needs of your team.
Learning resources: Buyers can also check for the availability of tutorials, video guides, and training materials to help users get started and improve their skills.
Compare Prototyping Software Products
Create a long list
After writing down requirements, buyers can browse products at a high level to make a long list. These products won’t necessarily meet every need of the buyer. They can visit G2’s category for prototyping software to add products to their “My List” within g2.com.
Create a short list
Once buyers have created a short list, they can further sort their options by checking the product’s ratings on the G2 Grid® and reading user reviews to understand their peers’ experience with the software. This way, buyers can find the best software for their needs.
Conduct demos
After narrowing down the selection, buyers should contact the vendors to schedule demonstrations of the solution. Businesses can contact many vendors directly on g2.com to request demos by selecting the “Get a Quote” button. At each demo, buyers must be sure to ask the same questions and use case scenarios to best evaluate each product.
Selection of Prototyping Software
Choose a selection team
The primary users of the product should be on the selection team. This includes designers, front-end developers, and possibly product managers.
Final decision
The selection team should make the final decision by considering which products meet the requirements, fit the budget, and will most seamlessly integrate with the existing tools.
Prototyping Software Trends
Real data integrations
The market is seeing prototyping tools increasingly allow designers to integrate real data into their prototypes instead of using fictitious content. Real, logical, and relevant data enables more realistic testing scenarios and user interactions. This data includes profile photos, street addresses, weather forecasts, transaction information, etc.
Accessibility testing
Prototyping tools are beginning to incorporate accessibility testing features, which helps designers ensure that their prototypes meet accessibility standards.
