Ask HN: Balsamiq vs. Invision vs. Justinmind vs. Axure vs. XD?

3 pointsrckoepke2 comments

I'm looking to learn a new frontend prototyping or wireframing product. Some on my "short list" are:

- balsamiq - axure - adobe xd - justinmind - invision - figma

What are your favorites for single-man or small-team projects? What should I know about each from your experience? I'm fairly certain I'll be using it for a React webpage and complementary React Native apps for iOS and Android.

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From that list, I’ve used balsamiq, XD and Figma. Balsamiq is good if you want to convey the big picture design layout without design details. I used it for a long time with significant success. XD lets you get detailed. XD is remarkably simple in terms of the primitives you work with but you can achieve arbitrary design fidelity. Figma is best for collaborative design. However, I for one haven’t had much success with multiple people tweaking a design. And I found the in browser interaction a bit flimsy.

These days I use XD exclusively. Sketch is a worthy alternative to XD that is probably cheaper if you don’t have a need for other tools in the Adobe suite.

# of job postings mentioning each brand on Indeed.com:

Justinmind - 6 Balsamiq - 327 Axure - 602 Figma - 635 XD - 686 Invision - 1717

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