Hexcalibur vs LibreSprite

Hexcalibur is a browser-based pixel-art editor for textures used in voxel games. Its toolset combines a 3D preview, pack workflow, animation timeline, tilemap tools, and export presets for games and engines. The preview shows a texture on a rotating cube or an L-shaped stack to inspect how it wraps across faces. Packs group textures, a palette, and references, with the palette shared as users switch assets. Animation tools include onion-skinning and named tags; exports include GIF, APNG, and sprite sheets. Export presets cover Minecraft Java and Bedrock, Tiled, and a TexturePacker JSON-Hash atlas for Phaser, Babylon, Godot, Three.js, and Unity, alongside raw per-face ZIP and custom export. Free-plan art stays in the browser; Pro adds cloud sync that can be disabled per device. A free Axidus account is required, but no payment card is needed. It runs in modern desktop browsers on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chromebook; phones are unsupported, and tablet and touch support are on the roadmap. Free allows one pack and up to eight assets. Monthly Pro costs $5 a month.

LibreSprite is a free, open-source program for creating and animating sprites. It provides real-time animation previews and onion skinning, with sprites arranged in layers and frames. Users can edit multiple sprites at once, draw in tiled mode, and use pixel-precise tools such as filled contour, polygon, and shading mode. The program includes ready-to-use palettes and supports creating custom ones. Listed export formats include PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP, PCX, TGA, ICO, FLI/FLC, WebP, and ASE; sprite-sheet export is also listed. Scripting methods cover loading palettes, cropping and resizing sprites, and saving them. LibreSprite is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. The project developed independently after originating as a fork of an Aseprite commit covered by GPL version 2. Version 1.0 is listed as supported, and the project security page reports no published advisories. The plan is free.