13 free open-source Adobe alternatives: which ones actually work in 2026

From the evening of September 30 to October 1, the ArtCraft team open-sourced 7 Adobe-competitor applications on GitHub, one after another. Half a month later, it is 13 apps plus 1 launcher. I went through all 13 one by one: official site, README, license, star count. The conclusion looks a little different from "Adobe is dead."

The short version

Sorted by the maturity labels the project itself uses:

• The closest thing to usable is PhotoCraft (the Photoshop counterpart): it can read and write layered PSD files; the team validated it against 309 test files from psd-tools, and 307 of them render identically after a re-save; the project has 1700+ tests in total. But it is labeled early alpha, and the official wording is that "most features exist in some form, but it is not ready for daily professional work." The gaps are AI generation, about 20 missing tools, typography, and plugin compatibility.
• PdfCraft (the Acrobat counterpart) and FigCraft (the Figma counterpart) are labeled "early alpha," with a limited set of usable scenarios.
• The other 10 are all labeled "in development": LightCraft, VectorCraft, DesignCraft, FilmCraft, EffectCraft, SoundCraft, WordCraft, GridCraft, DeckCraft, CADCraft.

In one sentence: none of them can replace professional software today. Fine for trying out, lightweight work, and automation experiments; not yet for the tools you make a living with.

What the 13 apps are

By category:

• Photo editing: PhotoCraft (Photoshop), LightCraft (Lightroom)
• Design and UI: VectorCraft (Illustrator), FigCraft (Figma), DesignCraft (InDesign)
• Video and audio: FilmCraft (Premiere), EffectCraft (After Effects), SoundCraft (Pro Tools)
• Office documents: WordCraft (Word), GridCraft (Excel), DeckCraft (PowerPoint), PdfCraft (Acrobat)
• Engineering drafting: CADCraft (AutoCAD)
• Utilities: ArtCraft Launcher (one-click installer)

On the technical side: native Rust applications (macOS / Windows / Linux, not Electron wrappers); most can compile to WebAssembly and run in a browser (only FilmCraft has no web build); the GUI, CLI, JSON, and MCP interfaces share the same 500+ commands — anything you can click, a script or an agent can do.

The last point is the most unusual: they were designed for AI agents from the start. Batch color grading from the command line, or letting an agent run a retouching pipeline, are native workflows rather than bolt-ons.

What the star counts actually tell you

When the knowledge base first logged them on October 8, PhotoCraft had 17,800 stars. Checked again on October 15: 61,000 — more than 3x in 7 days.

The others (measured on October 15): PdfCraft 13,800, FilmCraft 13,400, LightCraft 12,700, WordCraft 12,600, VectorCraft 8,900+, EffectCraft 6,600, GridCraft and CADCraft 4,900 each, DesignCraft 4,000, DeckCraft 3,300, SoundCraft 2,800, Launcher 2,700, FigCraft 1,000+. Together the 13 projects have more than 150,000 stars.

Tripling in 7 days is real attention. But stars and usability are two different things — alpha software never lacks curious people.

Two competing stories about how they did it

The official line is "built from scratch": implemented only from public specifications and the software's observable behavior, using no Adobe code or assets.

Earlier coverage offered another version: decompile first, turn the result into a non-code specification document, feed that to Claude Code / Codex to generate Rust, then use computer use to compare and polish feature by feature.

Both narratives coexist, and the official account has not been independently verified. Either way, AI coding pushed the cost of "rewriting Photoshop" down to what a small team can afford — which matters more than arguing over whether decompilation was involved.

Why the core AI studio stayed closed

The 13 apps are dual-licensed MIT / Apache-2.0, standard open source. But ArtCraft's own main AI creation studio repository is fair-source — the code is visible, but it is not standard open source, and you cannot freely modify it or use it commercially.

The layering is clear: the tools are open, the productivity layer is kept. Open-sourcing the tools buys an ecosystem, traffic, and reputation; the studio that does AI generation and commercialization stays behind the door. Traffic on the outside, a moat on the inside — a textbook dual-track play, and it also explains why these "alternatives" are free: they are the funnel.

What you can actually use it for today

• Trying things out: see how far AI rewriting desktop software has come
• Lightweight needs: the occasional image fix, PDF conversion, or spreadsheet edit that does not justify a subscription
• Automation tinkerers: the CLI / MCP interfaces are real; using them as an agent's "hands" is worth a try
• Do not do: bet professional deliverables on early alpha software

Download note: the installers are on GitHub, direct connections may be slow from some regions, so the Launcher's one-click install is recommended. Most apps have an official self-hosted web build, so you can try them in a browser first.

I put all 13 into one navigation page

"Which alternative was that called again?" came up too often, so I built a Chinese-language navigation site: names, counterparts, star counts, maturity, and download links for all 13, on one page, continuously updated:

craft.cosmocat.dev

It is an unofficial site that only collects external links; always download from the official source.

Takeaways

1. To judge whether an "open-source alternative" is usable, read its own status label, not the media headline.
2. Stars = attention, not maturity. It took 7 days to go from 17,800 to 61,000, but the feature gaps do not disappear with the star count.
3. Want to try: start with the web build, zero install cost.
4. Want to rely on it: wait until PhotoCraft leaves early alpha, and treat the other 10 as if they do not exist for now.