Web UI Kits are great when you just need to quickly pop something together or when you’re in the middle of creating an app and want to model screens. They’re not always the best choice, though, for creating proper interactive prototypes. Prototyping tools used to fall into two categories: Low-fidelity desktop prototyping tools or high-fidelity web based wireframing applications. But nowadays there is best free prototyping tools for mobile apps to choose from, all with unique advantages.
There are many prototyping tools on the market. But there are not enough tools for mobile app prototypes. And that’s why this article will be helpful for you too. I’ll present you best free prototyping tools for apps. So let’s take a look at each of them one by one.
Framer
Framer is a design tool that lets you build interactive prototypes extremely fast. With Framer, you can create completely functional prototypes — everything from linking pages together to creating 3D effects.
Framer also has thousands of resources in the Framer X Store. You have access to everything from live maps, UI kits, and media players all at your fingertips.
Marvel
Do you need a prototyping tool that will let you whip up apps and websites quickly? And do it for free? Marvel gives you a complete suite of prototyping tools, without skimping on functionality.
Marvel lets you go beyond static mockups and offers interactivity, dynamic transitions, and gestures to bring prototypes to life and give a real user experience to anyone testing them out. Another nice addition is the handoff tool that gives developers all of the code and assets in their most current iteration to dive in and create a live website, automatically.
Marvel’s collaborative features let anyone on a design team — no matter how spread out, or whatever the stage of production — add notes, make changes, and share ideas in real time.
Proto.io
ESPN, Amazon, and PayPal are just a few of the big names that have used Proto.io. With a comprehensive selection of components and tools, interactive prototypes are made possible without having to type in a single line of code.
Within its web-based editor, Proto.io gives you a variety of drag-and-drop UI web components, templates, icon libraries, and audio and video integrations. You can also bring in anything you have created on your own in Photoshop or Sketch.
With an array of templates, tools, and other components to build prototypes, Proto.io has so much to offer.
Principle
Principle lets you create dazzling interactions and eye-catching animations, giving you prototypes that go beyond dull static representations.
With multiple artboards, a timeline-based animation builder, and the ability to import Figma frames, Principle allows you to design an impressive app or web design in a short amount of time.
With an attention to motion and interactivity, Principle stands out among the other prototyping apps out there.
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a low-fidelity wireframing tool. While it’s not necessarily designed specifically for ready prototypes, like some of the tools mentioned above, it is a great place to create website wireframe mockups. But it can be used for more than just websites. Balsamiq is great for sketching product design, web apps, desktop software, mobile apps, and user interface wireframes.
Best wireframe tool for beginners
Adobe XD (macOS, Windows)
While Adobe products are known for being feature-heavy and complicated to learn, Adobe XD really stands out as an easy-to-use option for wireframing and interface design projects. Everything from wireframing to basic prototyping can happen within XD. And compared to other feature-rich Adobe tools, XD’s minimal interface is a breath of fresh air.
The moment you open the app, a set of interactive onboarding lightboxes helps you get oriented quickly with the design tools at your fingertips. The clean interface and quick onboarding are invaluable for beginners who want to use a professional wireframe tool, without spending too much time trying to learn the software.
Basic wireframe vector design tools are easily found in the left-hand navigation. UI elements aren’t included, but you can find a variety of free options with a quick Google search. XD is full of responsive design aids, whether you choose to create multiple artboards, overlay a Bootstrap 12-column grid, or use the responsive resize tool to create variations of each element.
For many apps, the interface design files must be exported into a different tool before you can create an interactive prototype. Adobe XD makes it possible to create the wireframe, mockup, and prototype in the same design file, so you don’t have to integrate multiple tools or re-export dozens of times with each iteration. Then, you can use XD to publish your prototype—whether it’s a basic wireframe or a full interactive prototype—and share the link with others so they can view and make comments.
As a bonus, AdobeXD also keeps track of the basic CSS and HTML for your designs, so you can grab the code directly inside the interface when handing it all off to your programming team.
Adobe XD Price: Free for one prototype and 2GB of storage; from $9.99/month for the Single App plan that includes unlimited prototypes and 100GB of storage.
Sketch, InVision Studio, and AdobeXD have a lot in common. You can’t miss the resemblance in their interfaces: design layers on the left, a toolbox on the right, with the drawing and publishing tools on a very minimal top bar. All three also allow you to create vector graphics and move them around on a canvas that’s measured in pixels. The vector elements can then be anchored to the page so that they resize (or not) as you scale your design up and down to mimic responsive screen sizes.
Best free wireframe tool
Figma (Web, macOS, Windows, Linux)
Figma stands out as a powerful cloud-based alternative to tools like Sketch and XD. And the best part: it doesn’t hold back for free users, offering a suite of features that work well whether you’re a standalone designer or part of a bigger team.
The actual process of wireframing with Figma is straightforward and quick. You’ll have to design your own UI components (or add them from a separate, pre-designed kit), but it’s easy to create your artboards, add shapes and text, and even add some prototyping so you can get a better feel of the flow. The left-hand panel helps you keep everything organized, from layers to artboards to separate pages within the same design doc. For responsive design, you can apply a column overlay (if you prefer the Bootstrap grid system), or you can use the Figma constraints, which tell each element how it should respond when the design is resized to mimic various screen sizes.
Another area where Figma stands out is in its team collaboration opportunities. Because it’s a web-based app, multiple team members can log in and access the design file simultaneously, whether to tweak the design or add content. The most compelling feature is the ability for a team to carry on an entire conversation inside the design file, leaving sticky note-like comments that other teammates can then reply to or mark as complete.
When it comes time for your dev team to take over, developers can grab CSS code from inside the design file and export individual elements to use as needed.
Figma Price: Free for up to three projects; from $12/user/month (billed annually) for the Professional plan that includes unlimited projects.
Best wireframe tool for handing off design documentation to developers
UXPin (Web, macOS, Windows)
UXPin is a perennial favorite with interface designers, and typically one of the first tools recommended for anyone who’s learning how to wireframe. While its rich feature set can be a bit challenging for a new designer to pick up, the effort spent learning UXPin definitely pays off.
With UXPin, you’re able to start your wireframes with a built-in library of UI elements that you can drag and drop directly onto your canvas. The benefit of this slightly higher-fidelity wireframe is that you can do more fine-tuning of the flow and functionality without spending a ton of time redesigning the screen’s components. And, since UXPin can read Sketch and Photoshop files, you can always use those tools to turn your basic wireframes into high-fidelity prototypes, before importing the polished design back into UXPin to take advantage of the tool’s other features: adding interactions, presenting to a team, and handing off the design specs to a developer.
Despite the great wireframe and interface design features, it’s the live presentation and documentation abilities that make UXPin stand out in a crowded field of wireframe > prototype tools. While many apps allow you to snag CSS, HTML, or even JSON from your design, UXPin makes it easy for you to present a working prototype of your design, collect feedback, and include specs/documentation all at once through the Preview mode.
To use this feature, click the Preview button on the top toolbar, decide what kind of access you’d like to grant viewers (e.g., the ability to view comments, specs, documentation, etc.), then share the link provided. This all-in-one sharing option means that the final review, approvals, and design documentation hand-off can all be done in the same place, so no one is left in the dark when your design hits the home stretch.
UXPin Price: $23/user/month (billed annually) for the Prototyping plan that includes basic wireframing tools; from $39/month for the System plan that includes advanced collaboration features and documentation hand-off.
Best wireframe tool for team collaboration sketches on a whiteboard-like canvas
InVision Freehand (Web)
InVision Freehand is the most basic app on this list, but it’s worth a try, especially if you prefer creating or marking up your wireframes on a whiteboard where everyone can contribute and revise.
Invite your team to a wireframe collaboration, where you can add images and basic shapes or draw the wireframe with your mouse cursor. Since it’s a cloud app, multiple designers and stakeholders can be signed in and writing at the same time.
By itself, Freehand makes a good, albeit simplistic, wireframe tool that seems like any other whiteboard app. But since it offers real-time syncing with Sketch and Photoshop, your team can opt to draw and annotate directly on polished prototypes, making the iteration design stage much easier. And, since it’s a part of the InVision suite, your collaboration sketches are stored alongside working prototypes and mood boards for quick reference as you move through your design project.
Freehand will work well for designers who want to collaborate with team members on an initial wireframe sketch and/or comment on more refined wireframes/prototypes.
InVision Freehand Price: Free
Best wireframe tool for detailed pixel-based wireframes
Adobe Photoshop (macOS, Windows)
Photoshop is the industry heavyweight when you’re looking for advanced pixel-based design software. It can handle almost anything, from photo editing to digital painting, and is beloved by the majority of graphic design professionals for that reason alone. The advantage of using Photoshop for your wireframes (especially web-based design, where you will depend more on pixel graphics) is that you can easily create a high-fidelity mockup without switching design systems.
To create a wireframe, you can add any number of artboards that correspond with your screen size dimensions (and add a grid layout that corresponds with your responsive breakpoints, if you want). You can either design UI components yourself with Photoshop or download a kit from online for standard elements like iOS keyboards. And, while the vector design tools (Sketch, Illustrator, Designer, etc.) are great for a lot of design work, no tool beats Photoshop for its raster image editing capabilities, which is invaluable when you eventually turn your wireframes into mockups and start adding photos and other graphics.
Despite the array of features, there are a few downsides to using Photoshop for your wireframes. Not only is the learning curve fairly steep, but it can also be a little clunky to use if you need to wireframe multi-screen flows, site structure, etc. Fortunately, many prototyping tools (like Proto.io, InVision, or Adobe XD, for example) let you import Photoshop files directly, so you can move back and forth between tools to create a more polished design that can be used for prototyping, user testing, or simply passing to developers for implementation.
Photoshop Price: From $9.99/month for the Creative Cloud Photography Plan that also includes access to Lightroom.
If you find yourself in need of a powerful pixel-based design tool but shy away from the Adobe suite (whether because of subscription cost, software “bulk,” or some other reason), check out Affinity Design, which allows you to create both vector and pixel-based designs on your desktop.
Conclusion
Have you ever thought of creating an app without the help of a developer? Whether you have a full-fledged idea or just a skeletal idea of what your app could look like, you will surely want to create a prototype first before getting started. Prototypes are a dime a dozen. There is practically an app which can help you make prototypes out there.