14 best prototyping tools for UI/UX designers | Webflow Blog

A prototyping tool enables a designer to weave visuals, navigational elements, and interactions together to give a solid representation of how a design will behave and feel. It’s an essential tool in any UI/UX designer’s arsenal.

Prototypes are an opportunity to try things out and fine-tune the details. They’re an essential tool in communicating to stakeholders, and decision makers, how all of the elements of an idea will function together.

If you need to create a prototype website, find the right app prototyping tool, or explore UX/UI prototyping tool options, we’ve got you covered. 

14 prototyping tools for UI/UX designers

Here are 14 of the best prototyping tools to help you with your own design process:

1. Figma

Figma is an all-in-one tool that makes collaboration and accessibility easy for UX designers, developers, and anyone else on a team with a browser-based, cloud-hosted platform. If you’ve worked with Sketch before, you’ll find that Figma has a similar feel that makes it easy to get started with.

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Consistency is a priority in web design, and you can use Figma’s flexible styles to control the appearance of text, grids, and other elements across a project. And a variety of useful plugins, like Autoflow for illustrating user flows, Figmotion for creating animations, and many others, enhance Figma’s functionality.

2. InVision Studio

Released in 2011, InVision has a well-established reputation, and their dedication to rolling out new functionality and adding to their design platform makes them a favorite among many designers.

With a host of well-designed tools, InVision gives designers the power to put together functional prototypes quickly and to share them with others. It offers so many nice features, including a handy vector drawing tool, repeatable components that can be changed sitewide, and tools for creating animations and other dynamic visual effects.

Collaboration and communication are also strengths of InVision. Freehand lets team members draw, add notes, and offer feedback. Team members can stay organized with Invision Spaces, which creates a single source of truth for everyone working on the project. . InVision also has a handy developer handoff feature simplifies collaboration with the dev team members.

3. Adobe XD

Adobe XD offers a vector-based system for putting together prototypes, including tools for creating interactions, transitions, and other types of dynamic functionality. Because it’s vector based, scaling and resizing elements is no problem.

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Adobe XD works well alongside other Adobe family apps like Illustrator and Photoshop. It’s nice to be able to edit Adobe images, like a .psd file, right in the application.

From UI design to UX design, Adobe XD covers all the tools a designer needs from conceptualization through high-resolution prototypes. And they’re continually adding to this product with monthly updates that expand its functionality.

4. Webflow

Of course we’re biased on this one, but we know that you want a smoother and faster design process — so we’re here to help you out.

Webflow takes care of two jobs at once. While you’re designing and building a high-fidelity prototype, you’re creating a live website that’s complete with all of the HTML, CSS, and associated JavaScript. You don’t end up with just a mockup — you’ll have the real deal.

With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, a powerful CMS, and the capability to create advanced animations, transitions, and microinteractions, Webflow makes it possible to create any type of professional-level website.

If you want a speedy way to design and prototype, Webflow gives you what you need, all without knowing how to code, making it one of the best prototyping tools whatever your skill level. Designers and marketers can easily collaborate in Webflow as well.

You can also check out Webflow University for a wide range of tutorials on how to get started with prototyping in Webflow.

5. Axure RP

Axure RP puts the power of wireframing and prototyping all in one package, helping companies improve their digital product design process. It allows designers to create low to high resolution interactive prototypes of websites and apps, all without having to code.

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Along with what you need to build the visuals, interactivity, and organization, Axure RP also offers a comprehensive documentation tool, which makes keeping track of notes, tasks, and other important assets organized and accessible to those who need to see it.

Axure RP also facilitates a better handoff to developers by letting a prototype be published on their cloud, with all of the code, specifications, and other assets they would need to build it.

Built for professionals, with attention to all of the intricacies of building functional prototypes, Axure RP 9 is for those designers looking for the right prototyping tool for interactive design.

6. Origami Studio

Origami Studio was created for Facebook designers out of necessity, then Facebook shared the free prototyping tool with the rest of the design community. 

For designers who need a more advanced system, Origami Studio offers powerful prototyping tools for websites and mobile apps. Central to Origami Studio is a Patch Editor that lets you build logic, behaviors, animations, and interactions. Each patch is like a building block for your prototype that helps you iterate quickly. The library includes a lot of prebuilt options, but you’ll only need 15-20 to get started. 

Origami Studio does have a bit of a learning curve, but the payoff of knowing how to use their prototyping tools and pulling off sophisticated prototypes makes it worth learning. This power, along with its compatibility in working with Sketch and Figma, makes Origami Studio an important tool for designers who want to go above and beyond standard low-fidelity prototyping.

7. Justinmind

Justinmind has been gathering momentum as a popular website and app prototyping tool. There are quite a few reasons why, from drag-and-drop functionality, the capabilities to create the simplest to most sophisticated of apps and web prototypes, and plenty of support, like videos and blogs to help you learn how to use it. Plus, Justinmind offers unlimited projects and pricing options ranging from free to enterprise level.

Justinmind comes with UI libraries and templates, as well as many other practical features. It lets you create the logic for conditional navigation, allows for user testing, facilitates design team management, and more. There’s also a number of integrations that let you use Justinmind with Sketch, Adobe Suite, Azure DevOps Server, and Jira in your workflow.

Its simple interface makes it a great starting point for a beginner UX designer but also offers enough for more advanced designers.