ArtCraft: 13 Free Adobe Alternatives (2026 Guide)

Last updated: October 31, 2026

Short answer: ArtCraft is a suite of 13 free apps — the original 7 reimplement Adobe's most popular apps, while the 6 newer apps target other software from scratch, with no subscription and no cloud lock-in. The apps are licensed under permissive MIT/Apache-2.0 licences and run as native desktop apps on macOS, Windows, and Linux, although PhotoCraft remains early alpha, so you should not uninstall Photoshop just yet.

Thirteen free, open-source clones of the entire Adobe Creative Suite — no subscription, no cloud lock-in — exploded onto GitHub in the first week of October 2026 and reportedly gained tens of thousands of stars in days. The project is called ArtCraft, and whether you are a designer priced out of Creative Cloud or just curious about the best free Adobe alternatives in 2026, you need to know what it is, what it actually does today, and where the hype ends.

This is the complete, honest 2026 guide: the Update, What Is ArtCraft, and frequently asked questions, and a reality check drawn from the project's own test reports, covering the suite's main apps — the original 7 were the Adobe-mapping apps and 6 more apps have since been added (FigCraft, WordCraft, SoundCraft, DeckCraft, CADCraft, and GridCraft) — including why you should not uninstall Photoshop just yet.

Update: October 28, 2026 — ArtCraft's lineup has already grown: the official apps page now lists 13 apps, not 7, adding FigCraft, WordCraft, SoundCraft, DeckCraft, CADCraft, and GridCraft — several of which target non-Adobe software — and PhotoCraft alone had 74,189 GitHub stars when checked today. The core facts still hold: the apps are free and open source under MIT/Apache-2.0 licences, PhotoCraft remains early alpha, and its README confirms PSD round-trips of 307 of 309 test files. Two corrections: the README lists 15 missing tools, not around 20, and the Adobe settlement was a U.S. Justice Department court-entered order (entered April 10, 2026) — $75 million in civil penalties plus $75 million in free services — not a $150 million FTC payment. ArtCraft apps page

What Is ArtCraft?

ArtCraft (getartcraft.com/apps) is a suite of 13 free, open-source creative applications that reimplement Adobe's most popular apps from scratch. They are licensed under permissive open-source licences (MIT / Apache-2.0), run as native desktop apps on macOS, Windows, and Linux — not Electron wrappers, not web apps in disguise — and most also ship as browser versions compiled to WebAssembly.

The project caught fire in early October 2026: PhotoCraft alone had 74,189 GitHub stars when checked on October 28, 2026. (First-week star totals could not be re-verified from the project's current pages.) Open-source veteran Eric S. Raymond posted "Adobe just got nuked. And closed source is dead, dead, dead." in reaction to the project, a post widely reported at the time.

The timing is no accident. In March 2026, Adobe agreed to a court-entered order (entered April 10, 2026) — $75 million in civil penalties plus $75 million in free services — over allegations it hid early-termination fees and made cancelling hard, in the cancellation-fee saga that had users furious about how hard it is to leave Creative Cloud. ArtCraft launched straight into that frustration with a simple pitch: the apps you know, free forever, with no subscription to cancel.

What are the 6 newer ArtCraft apps? FigCraft, WordCraft, SoundCraft, DeckCraft, CADCraft, GridCraft.

Is PhotoCraft the whole suite? No — PhotoCraft is 1 of the 13 apps.