Hexcalibur vs Pixen
Hexcalibur
axidus.ioPixen
pixenapp.comSide by side
| Figure | Hexcalibur | Pixen |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $2.42/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Pixel Art Software | 8.7 (#5) | 8.0 (#23) |
| Animation | The animation timeline supports onion-skin and named tags; exports include animated GIF, APNG, and sprite sheets, with additional formats listed for Pro. | It can import animated GIFs, animated PNGs, and sprite sheets, and export animations as GIFs, PNGs, movies, image sequences, and sprite sheets. |
| Intended users | The maker describes Hexcalibur as built for pixel artists and voxel game developers, including creators of Minecraft textures and voxel games using the listed engine exports. | The maker describes Pixen as a tool for pixel artists working with low-resolution raster art and highlights its use for creating graphics for the Playdate console. |
| Privacy | The maker says it never sells or shares users’ art or uses it to train anything. | Apple's App Store listing says the iOS app may collect usage data and diagnostics that are not linked to the user. |
| Product | Hexcalibur is a browser-based pixel-art editor for voxel-game block textures, combining a pixel-art toolset with 3D preview, pack workflow, and engine-aware export. | Pixen is a native pixel art editor for creating low-resolution raster art such as 8-bit game sprites. |
| Support | The maker says bug reports go straight to a human and that new features land regularly. | The product pages direct support inquiries to [email protected]. |
Plans
In their own words
Hexcalibur
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.