About

A curated directory of design tools, rated across multiple dimensions to help you find the right tool for your workflow.

As AI permeates every corner of the product development lifecycle we're seeing a cambrian explosion of new tools on the market. This is exciting! For too long we've been constrained by the hegemony of Figma (and predecessors) as the centre of our workflows. But with it comes challenges. New tools require new workflows and often more monthly bills.

So this website aims to cut through the relentless product annoucmenents and give every designer a good idea of where to start, regardless of their focus or preferred ways of working.

How the ranking works

Every tool on designtools.fyi is rated across multiple facets — dimensions like ease of use, collaboration, advanced features, and more. Each facet gets a score from 1 to 10.

Archetypes: rankings that fit you

Not everyone needs the same thing from a design tool. A design engineer cares about different things than a non-designer picking up a tool for the first time. That’s where archetypes come in.

Each archetype represents a type of user with different priorities. Behind the scenes, every archetype assigns weights to each facet — boosting the ones that matter most and ignoring the ones that don’t. When you pick an archetype, the rankings re-sort to reflect what that persona actually cares about.

The score

A tool’s quality score is the weighted average of its facet ratings, adjusted by the selected archetype’s priorities. Pick a different archetype, and the same tool might rank very differently.

When no archetype is selected, you’ll see a simple unweighted average across all rated facets.

Why coverage matters

Not every tool has been rated on every facet yet. A tool with a perfect 10 on one facet but no other ratings shouldn’t outrank a tool with solid 8s across the board.

That’s why we factor in coverage — the proportion of relevant facets that have actually been rated. Tools are sorted by coverage first, then by score. This means well-reviewed tools surface higher, even if a less-reviewed tool has a slightly higher average.

For archetype views, coverage specifically tracks how many of that archetype’s important facets have been rated, so you’re seeing completeness that’s relevant to you.

In short

Score = quality × coverage, where quality is a weighted average tuned to your selected archetype, and coverage reflects how thoroughly the tool has been evaluated. More data = more trust = higher ranking.