Drawpile vs InkForge
Drawpile
drawpile.net
InkForge
inkforge.ilans.netSide by side
| Figure | Drawpile | InkForge |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Digital Painting Software | 8.9 (#5) | 7.7 (#26) |
| Animation | Animation tools include a timeline and onion skins, and users can animate collaboratively on a shared canvas. | Its frame-by-frame timeline supports duplication, onion-skinning, adjustable FPS, and GIF or WebM export. |
| Brushes | Drawpile includes over 200 built-in brushes, multiple brush engines, a brush editor and a stroke stabilizer. | The brush engine has six procedural texture tips and maps pen pressure to size and opacity. |
| Layers | Layer groups, blend modes, alpha preservation, clipping groups, masks and alpha lock are supported. | The app supports unlimited layers, twelve blend modes, clipping masks, and non-destructive layer effects. |
| Platforms | Official downloads cover Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, while the browser client works across platforms including iPad and iPhone. | The official site lists Windows and macOS installers; the cross-platform repository describes Windows, macOS, and Linux support. |
| What it does | Drawpile lets multiple people draw, paint, sketch or animate together on one shared canvas in real time. | InkForge is a GPU-backed raster drawing app with a stamp-based brush engine, layers, selection tools, animation, and an AI panel. |
Plans
In their own words
Drawpile
Drawpile is a drawing, painting, sketching and animation app for people working together on one canvas, with offline use also available. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and the web; on iPhone and iPad, the browser version works, but there is no native iOS app. Its toolkit includes more than 200 built-in brushes, several brush engines, a brush editor and stroke stabilization. Layers and layer groups support blend modes, alpha preserve, clipping groups, masking and alpha lock. Animation tools include a timeline and onion skins. Canvases can be saved as OpenRaster or PSD, and images can be pasted from files or other programs. Users can join official community servers without arranging their own infrastructure, or operate a server themselves. External authentication can let users access potentially untrusted third-party servers without sharing their password with those servers. Drawpile says it does not transfer information to other networked systems unless a user or operator specifically requests it. The free plan costs nothing.
InkForge
InkForge is a GPU-backed raster drawing app with a stamp-based brush engine, layers, selection tools, animation and an AI panel. Its six procedural texture tips support pressure control of brush size and opacity. The app offers unlimited layers, twelve blend modes, clipping masks and non-destructive layer effects. Its frame-by-frame timeline supports duplication, onion-skinning and adjustable FPS, with GIF or WebM export. Native .inkforge projects preserve layers and frames; export formats include PNG, JPEG and TIFF. The AI panel lists fourteen modes, including style transfer, sketch-to-painting, inpainting and background removal. Generation can use Gemini or Replicate with the user's own key, or a local ComfyUI graph. The maker says keys are stored locally and the ComfyUI path stays on the machine. InkForge is free and open source under the MIT license. It lists Windows, macOS and Linux support, while download requirements specify Windows 10+ and macOS 13+. The maker describes cross-platform development as active and the native macOS build as the original Swift implementation.