Nowadays, Wireframe is an important aspect which plays an important rule in building web pages. If you want to build a professional website, it’s essential to use wireframe. However, most of the times it’s suitable to create wireframe by yourself. A lot of web designers hardly find that most of the wireframe tools are not free or they are limited in some way. If you are looking for the best online wireframing tool, check this post about “the best free wireframe online tools”!
Balsamiq Wireframes
A wireframing tool for creating quick designs, running user testing, and sharing mockups with a design team.
Price breakdown
- Free 30-day trial period
- Pro (single-user license): $89
Why should you use it for wireframing?
One of the many Balsamiq Studios products, Balsamiq Wireframes is a Flash-based wireframing software with an extensive library of UI elements and templates that make wireframing a breeze.
The complexity of the Balsamiq Wireframe library can be a source of great inspiration for designers when producing desktop and mobile wires. Not only does it have many diverse elements, but it’s also easy to learn and use. Most designers describe it as being as simple as dragging, dropping, and arranging elements from the menu onto your canvas until you have the interface you desire.
Balsamiq Wireframes also has built-in presentation tools that make presenting your designs to clients a seamless process.
Where Balsamiq Wireframes falls short
Balsamiq Wireframes is not the best for building larger prototypes and lacks animations or interactive features. Designers wishing to simulate the UX of their software must be able to program interactions themselves and export as an interactive PDF.
This wireframing software is unique in style as the design elements have a hand-drawn appearance to them. This gives your designs a bit of a cartoony feel that may not be desired. Also, it’s important to note that once your free 30-day trial is up, you’ll have to purchase a license to save any of your previous designs.
What other designers are saying
- “Probably the easiest wireframing tool to use. It’s focused feature set is aimed at creating wireframes in the least amount of time possible. Very quick to learn with some depth for power users.”
- “Wireframes can look child-like and unprofessional with some settings.”
For UX/UI designers, wireframing a new app or website is the foundation when starting a new project.
Wireframing tools allow designers to mockup professional-level, new product designs and workflows, without the need for high-investment prototypes. They help teams by finding problem areas and user experience issues within a new app before it’s launched, help explain and share with key stakeholders within an organization, and act as a repo for all feedback on a new product.
Wireframing tools have become crucial for those who work in fast-paced development teams and need to have rapid-product iteration.
However, many of the most-popular wireframing software products – think Axure RP, the Adobe Suite, Marvel, Lucidchart – are expensive and are focused on higher-detailed UX/UI features such as advanced prototyping.
Luckily there are many free wireframing tools available to UX/UI designers who are freelancing, own their own business, work for a startup, or have little budget available for their tech stack – and for non-designers mapping out workflows for things such as onboarding and training, email lifecycles, and organization charts.
The Best Free Wireframing Software in 2021
Here are the free wireframing software apps that give design and non-design professionals the tools to create free wireframes.
All the tools in this list have an offering that is free forever, meaning those tools offering free trials were left off the list – although we do mention those wireframing options after our ranking.
These tools are ranked according to user-review ratings on satisfaction from the software-review website G2.com:
1. Figma 
Clique favorite
User-review rating: 4.5/5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: Figma is an all-in-one design platform for UX/UI pros and offers a robust free offering for creating wireframes. It’s starter package is completely free and is one of the most robust free offerings on this list – 3 active projects, 30 day revision history, 2 editors at any time, and unlimited cloud storage.
The first paid tier (which is free for students with a valid school email address) is $12/mo per editor and includes an upgrade to unlimited active projects and version history, custom permissions, private boards, and team collaboration features.
2. InVision Clique favorite
User-review rating: 4.4.5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: InVision is an all-in-one wireframing, prototyping, and mockup tool for designers and is one of the most well-known brands in all of wireframing software.
Invision came out of applications, specifically Photoshop (at the time) not having screens that could interact with each other (also why many moved to Sketch). It filled the void of
It does require some sort of external application (we like Sketch) to create the screens to be bought into InVision.
InVision’s free wireframing plan gives individual UX/UI designers the tools create one active prototype or wireframe at anytime. It’s a basic plan designed mostly for freelancers and those not working collaboratively.
The next level of pricing for InVision is $15/mo per user and gives design teams the ability to create up to three projects that can remain active at any time – with full feature access to the InVision app.
3. Draw.io
User-review rating: 4.3/5
Type: Web-based, Open source
Overview: Draw.io is a completely free and open-source wireframing software that feels similar in UI to Google Docs. It’s a simple layout with powerful features. Simply put, it may be the most robust free offering of any of the free wireframing tools on this list.
Users can export designs to their Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, their desktop, or directly supported integrations including Gliffy, Lucidchart and more. An added benefit is it’s active open-source community that works to fix product bugs and issues, and add new features.
4. Pencil Project
User-review rating: 4.1/5
Type: On-premise, Open source
Overview: Project Pencil is a completely open-source and free wireframing and prototyping tool. It has an unlimited amount of designs for UX/UI pros to utilize and all of its features come completely free.
The open-source community is another perk, meaning developers are constantly keeping the tool updated with new features and security.
5. Miro Clique favorite
User-review rating: 4.7/5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: Miro, which previously operated under the name RealTimeBoard, is an online whiteboarding tool for distribution product and UX teams. A nimble tool for fast prototyping, Miro is extremely collaborative and akin to using an extremely light version of figma.
Miro isn’t as robust as other dedicated prototyping tools, which sounds like a negative, but actually serves as one of its strengths, since its limitations help facilitate faster prototyping, with an experience that feels like sketching on a whiteboard in a virtual room with the rest of your team.
Miro is free for your first three boards, at which point each board costs $3 per-day-logged-in, or you can build unlimited boards for $15 per month per user.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD has skyrocketed into popularity since its initial release date in 2016, and with good reason. This tool is fantastic for wireframing, prototyping, and collaboration. If you’re collaborating with others (especially remotely), this is a tool to check out. Get a beginner’s introduction to Adobe XD this event recording:https://www.youtube.com/embed/Iih4WC2U7Ck
Price breakdown
- 7-day free trial
- $9.99/month after the trial ends (or $99.99/year)
What’s great about Adobe XD?
As we said, this is an all-in-one when it comes to wireframing and prototyping (at any level of fidelity) and is excellent for collaboration.
Adobe XD includes tools for everything from a quick sketch to a high-fidelity wireframe, with options to create interactions so that you can more closely imitate the user flow! The tool has a auto animation feature, and it’s made things easier with it comes to layering images in 3D (great for showcasing all your hard work!). You can also work with your teammates in real time, and they’ve made it easier to iterate on content without having to practically re-design whole screens. This is helpful for teams seeking more collaboration between content and design.
Adobe products are widely appreciated across the industry, too, so being familiar with it can only help throughout your career.
What’s not so great about Adobe XD?
As many have said, the price point is certainly a factor. It’s only really free for a week, but that’s a week to test it out and see if this high-power tool is well suited for your team. If you’re working solo, it’s still worth considering simply for the high quality output and for it’s possibilities when it comes to collaborating with stakeholders or outside clients.
What other designers have to say about Adobe XD
- “Adobe XD is the best on the market, in my opinion, as far as UI/UX design is concerned. In a really simple way it is possible to create the design of websites or apps and then move on to the prototyping phase, creating the various links, interactive components, buttons, animations. The sharing phase is also excellent, which allows you to export the prototype to encourage the work of the developers, who will have the opportunity to take a look at the generated css code and can download the various assets.”
- “The pricing of this tool is quite high. It has also increased a lot of restrictions on the free plan, and this is not helpful for budding designers.”
Balsamiq Wireframes
A wireframing tool for creating quick designs, running user testing, and sharing mockups with a design team.
Price breakdown
- Free 30-day trial period
- Pro (single-user license): $89
Why should you use it for wireframing?
One of the many Balsamiq Studios products, Balsamiq Wireframes is a Flash-based wireframing software with an extensive library of UI elements and templates that make wireframing a breeze.
The complexity of the Balsamiq Wireframe library can be a source of great inspiration for designers when producing desktop and mobile wires. Not only does it have many diverse elements, but it’s also easy to learn and use. Most designers describe it as being as simple as dragging, dropping, and arranging elements from the menu onto your canvas until you have the interface you desire.
Balsamiq Wireframes also has built-in presentation tools that make presenting your designs to clients a seamless process.
Where Balsamiq Wireframes falls short
Balsamiq Wireframes is not the best for building larger prototypes and lacks animations or interactive features. Designers wishing to simulate the UX of their software must be able to program interactions themselves and export as an interactive PDF.
This wireframing software is unique in style as the design elements have a hand-drawn appearance to them. This gives your designs a bit of a cartoony feel that may not be desired. Also, it’s important to note that once your free 30-day trial is up, you’ll have to purchase a license to save any of your previous designs.
What other designers are saying
- “Probably the easiest wireframing tool to use. It’s focused feature set is aimed at creating wireframes in the least amount of time possible. Very quick to learn with some depth for power users.”
- “Wireframes can look child-like and unprofessional with some settings.”
Conclusions
Wireframe is a basic foundation on which the actual website is built. It describes the layout of different contents of the webpage in an easy to understand manner for both designer and developer. As a part of the design activity, this enhances the clarity of thought by relating with all parties involved in creating user interface.