Comparison

Adobe Illustrator vs ImageBuddy

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Adobe Illustrator

Create logos, illustrations, and graphics on your iPad with intuitive Apple Pencil support. Design vector art, manipulate type, and create patterns on the go, even offline. Seamlessly sync your work across devices and other Adobe apps.

Highlights
  • Vector drawing with Apple Pencil
  • Advanced typography tools
  • Pattern creation
  • Image vectorization
  • Cross-device syncing
  • Gradient and color tools
Read full description

Create logos, illustrations, graphics and more. Illustrator on the iPad works intuitively with your Apple Pencil so you can design on the go from anywhere, even offline - it’s never been easier to take your creativity to new places. Design with precision, as naturally as you would with pen and paper. Create vector lines, shapes, type, gradients, and effects. Merge or cut graphics with quick, intuitive Pencil gestures to remove unwanted areas. Make your graphics pop with effects, and access over 18,000 fonts, 20+ color palettes, up-to-the-minute live streams from famous creatives, and guided tutorials. Work on a project across Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fresco. Plus, your Illustrator work is automatically synced to the cloud, so you and your team can always access the latest version from your desktop or iPad. This app is part of Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s free for Creative Cloud members who have a plan that includes Illustrator. INTUITIVE AND PRECISE DRAWING WITH APPLE PENCIL • Natural ways to draw — Make lines and curves using the Pen, Pencil, and Brush tools • Art and Calligraphic Brushes — Create and apply brush strokes to add artistic elements to your artwork. • Pinpoint editing — Create perfect graphics without quality loss with Smart Delete, Simplify Path, and more • Point precision — Edit graphics down to the point, radius, or angle level NEW WAYS TO MAKE STUNNING PATTERNS AND SHAPES • Vectorize — Convert raster images or paper sketches into vector images. • Radial, grid, and mirror repeat — Turn graphics into sophisticated patterns • Polygon shape creation — Make objects out of circles, triangles, squares, and stars • Transform as Shape — Transform paths and curves without manual manipulation of anchor points. • Blend Tool — Smoothly blend one shape into another across a specified number of steps. THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE TYPE TOOLKIT FOR IPAD • 18,000+ fonts — Use one of the thousands of high-quality fonts included in the Adobe Fonts library • Fonts of your own — Upload and design with any of your own licensed fonts and use them on both desktop and iPad • Type on a path — Bend and flow text onto the surface of lines and shapes • Outlined text — Turn text into an editable format that can be modified without limits • Variable fonts — They’re infinitely customizable • Color fonts — Explore gorgeous color variations and gradients that are built into the font BRILLIANT COLORS AND GRADIENTS • Point gradients — Drag and drop colors to create dynamic blends of diffused colors • 20+ color books — Use industry-standard color swatches or incorporate your own SEAMLESS MOVEMENT BETWEEN DEVICES AND APPS • File syncing between Illustrator on the desktop and on the iPad — Projects are automatically synced and accessible across devices • Photoshop import — Easily place a Photoshop image into your Illustrator design • Standard file format export — Create, save, and open Illustrator (AI) files with no loss of quality, and export in the most common formats, including SVG, PDF, PNG, and PSD. KEEPING TABS ON THE LATEST CREATIVE TRENDS • Livestreaming — Watch and learn from top design-industry creatives daily, right within the app • Trends to discover — Explore projects by other creatives Terms & Conditions: Your use of this application is governed by the Adobe General Terms of Use http://www.adobe.com/go/terms_linkfree_en and the Adobe Privacy Policy http://www.adobe.com/go/privacy_policy_linkfree_en Do Not Sell My Personal Information: www.adobe.com/go/ca-rights-linkfree

About

ImageBuddy

Features
Read full description

ImageBuddy is a fast image-prep tool for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Bring an image in — drag it onto the Mac window, or pick from Photos or Files on iPhone and iPad — and it lands over a checkerboard preview, so any transparency you create is obvious at a glance. Camera RAW files (.CR3, .NEF, .ARW, .DNG and more) open too; edits save as a TIFF beside the untouched original. Work one image or a whole batch: they queue up, and saving one moves you straight to the next. On Mac, Edit ▸ Undo steps back through settings, exclusion marks, rotations and removed images. One app, three devices The same pipeline on Mac, iPhone and iPad — the same queue, the same stages, the same save formats — laid out for whichever one you're holding. Trim, straighten & crop Auto-detect the artwork's bounding box, and shave off the transparent or matching-color edge. Rotate and flip in 90° steps. Straighten levels any angle and corrects Vertical and Horizontal perspective: Auto levels by the image's straight vertical lines, or its horizon, and Draw lets you mark a line that should be vertical or horizontal (or one of each) and sets the angle and perspective to match. Drag any edge of a manual crop, with a loupe and arrow nudges for precision. Remove the background Simple mode figures out the real background color, whatever it is, and knocks it out to transparency — including matching-color pockets inside the artwork — while genuinely different interior details like eye whites and letter counters survive. Or switch to Photo mode, which lifts the subject off any background with an on-device cut-out. (Photo mode needs macOS 14.) If Simple mode keeps eating a detail you want, paint exclusion marks straight on the preview to protect it. Stylize Wrap the cut-out in an outline, give it a shadow, and round off the corners — three independent switches. The shadow is one click: Low, Medium, High, or Glow for a soft halo in any color (detailed controls live in Settings on Mac). The canvas grows to fit the shadow and crops tight to the result, so it looks the same with trim on or off. Backdrops Grow a transparent margin — uniform or per-side — then composite over a solid color, a two-stop gradient, or an image scaled to cover the frame. Or blur the backdrop for a portrait-style finish: behind the subject of an untouched photo, or behind a cut-out you've placed on a new picture. Titles, captions & watermarks Set a title above the image and a caption below, in bands of space added outside the artwork rather than printed over it — your choice of typeface, color and alignment. Stamp a text or image watermark over the finished result at any size, margin, and position. Resize & vectorize Resize Image and Adjust Canvas are independent steps: scale to an exact width × height with an aspect lock, reframe the canvas without scaling — pick an origin, an absolute or relative size, an optional fixed ratio like 16:10 — or do both. Trace the silhouette, or every flat color, into clean scalable paths with any background color discarded automatically, and export or copy an SVG. Split collages Drop a sheet of images and, when ImageBuddy spots the gaps between them, split it into separate files in one click. Save it your way Save over the original, or save as new in PNG, JPEG, TIFF or HEIC with a quality slider for the lossy ones — and a warning before a format that can't hold transparency flattens a cut-out. Presets Every stage you've dialled in — the cut-out, the outline, the backdrop, the type, the watermark — saves as a named preset you can drop onto any image. Native, fast, private Pure Swift. No account, no cloud, no telemetry. It only ever touches the files you hand it, and writes only where you tell it to. Localized into 10 languages English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português (Brasil), Русский, 简体中文.

Screenshots

ImageBuddy4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Adobe Illustrator at Free against ImageBuddy's $9.99. Adobe Illustrator also leads on iOS requirement (14.0 vs 17.0). ImageBuddy's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 months). On ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Adobe Illustrator is free to download; ImageBuddy costs $9.99 up front. Adobe Illustrator sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. ImageBuddy asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Adobe Illustrator ships an update every 2 months, ImageBuddy every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 7, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Adobe Illustrator versus ImageBuddy: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAdobe IllustratorImageBuddy
PriceFree — better$9.99
Rating4.5 (38K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews13.3% of reviews—
Number of ratings38K — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS14.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size856 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAdobe Inc.Benjamin Dansby

Bugs and requests

Adobe Illustrator

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Layers disappearing or not updating properly
  • Eraser tool behaving inconsistently
  • Pasting content causing unexpected issues
  • Frequent crashes when working on complex files

Requested features

5 requests
  • Ability to rotate canvas
  • More brush and stroke customization options
  • Implement Gaussian blur and other effects
  • Add support for keyboard shortcuts
  • Improve file management and cloud sync

ImageBuddy

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

4 purchases

Adobe Illustrator

Subscriptions4
  • Illustrator on iPad : Monthly1 Month trial$9.991 Month
  • Adobe Design Mobile: Monthly1 Month trial$14.991 Month
  • Illustrator on iPad : Yearly1 Month trial$79.991 Year
Show 1 more
  • Adobe Design Mobile: Yearly1 Month trial$149.991 Year
None

ImageBuddy

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Adobe Illustrator free?
Adobe Illustrator is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is ImageBuddy free?
ImageBuddy costs $9.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Adobe Illustrator or ImageBuddy have ads?
Neither Adobe Illustrator nor ImageBuddy shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Adobe Illustrator or ImageBuddy?
Adobe Illustrator ships an update every 2 months, and ImageBuddy every 2 days. Most recently, Adobe Illustrator was updated on November 7, 2026 and ImageBuddy on November 6, 2026.

Other comparisons