Awesome Design Tools: 36 categories, three markdown files, three owners
The best design tools and plugins for everything 👉
At a glance
- What is it?
- Awesome Design Tools is a hand-maintained directory of design software rather than software, built as markdown and rendered by a small Node script. Its real mechanics are its three contribution labels, its links that point at a fork, and the acquisition notice at the top of the README.
- Who is it for?
- Use Awesome Design Tools when you want a fast map of what exists in a corner of design tooling, such as contrast checkers or bookmarklet-based accessibility testing, and you are willing to verify each link yourself. Do not treat it as a comparison: an entry is one line of description with no version, no price and no last-checked date, and a tool that dies leaves a dead row.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes. MIT is a permissive licence: you can use, modify and sell software built on it, as long as you keep its copyright and licence notices.
- Is it still maintained?
- Probably not. The repository last received commits 26 months ago, on July 28, 2024.
- What is it written in?
- Mainly JavaScript, according to GitHub's language statistics.
Answers come from the project's GitHub data, last synced on October 1, 2026, and from our analysis. They are not legal advice.
Editorial analysis
A directory, not a tool: 36 headings and one line per entry
What lives here is a set of links. The table of contents names 36 categories, from Accessibility Tools and Animation Tools through Augmented Reality, Design Handoff Tools, Design Version Control, SMM Design Tools, Sound Design, Visual Debugging Tools and 3D Modeling Software. Each entry is a link plus a sentence. A11ygator is described as a web tool that analyzes websites against WCAG rules, also available as a Chrome extension and a Twitter bot. ANDI is a bookmarklet that detects accessibility issues and checks 508 compliance. Axe is called an accessibility engine that runs in modern browsers with whatever frameworks you already use.
That granularity is the value and the limit at once. The Accessibility section alone distinguishes a macOS contrast app, a free web-based contrast tool, a color blindness simulator and an Elm prototype for building accessible palettes, which is the kind of split you would otherwise have to invent yourself. What an entry never carries is a version, a price, a platform beyond the Mac only label, or a date anyone last opened the link.
Three files, one README, and a fork the links still point at
The list is not one file. The root holds README.md plus Awesome-Design-Plugins.md, Awesome-Design-Conferences.md and Awesome-Design-UI-Kits.md, and the README tells you which one to edit: design tools go in the main file, plugins in the plugins file. There is a Contribution_Guidelines.md, and the contribution flow is a pull request against those files.
The ownership story is messier than that. The repository is goabstract/Awesome-Design-Tools, but the three links at the top of the README, the ones for plugins, conferences and UI kits, all point at github.com/LisaDziuba/Awesome-Design-Tools, and package.json names berezovskycom in its repository, bugs and homepage fields. Follow the README's own links and you land in a different repository than the one you cloned. Same file, different history, and no note anywhere explaining which copy is canonical.
The site is rendered by index.js with a PRODUCTION flag
The primary language is JavaScript because there is a site generator, and it is small. The scripts are two lines:
"scripts": {
"dev": "PRODUCTION=false node index.js",
"production": "PRODUCTION=true node index.js"
}index.js is the entry point, and the dependency list explains what it does: markdown-it and showdown turn markdown into HTML, html-minifier minifies the result, jsdom handles the DOM, express serves it, tinycolor2 is there for colour work, and i is the interactive prompt library. There is no static site generator and no framework, just a Node script that reads the markdown and writes a page.
One detail in the README shows how the page and the repository are kept different. The Flawless App announcement is wrapped in a div with the class hidden-in-page, so GitHub shows it at the top of the README and the rendered site hides it. Same markdown, two audiences, one CSS class.
Flawless App was absorbed, and the team moved to the Abstract SDK
The README carries an acquisition notice. Flawless App, the company behind the list, joined Abstract, and the announcement says so directly: the team was five people, Flawless App was their first company, and since 2015 they had shipped Flawless App, Reduce and Flawless Feedback alongside community projects like this one. The stated next step is that the team is working on the Abstract SDK, and the README sends readers to a FAQ at flawlessapp.io/designtools/joinsabstract for the detail.
What that means for the directory is straightforward. The company that shipped the announcement has moved its people to a commercial product, and the list survives as a community repository. The README's own instruction for finding a tool is to use the table of contents or search for a keyword such as animation or prototyping, and its instruction for improving it is to send a pull request or ask Lisa on Twitter. Neither depends on staff time, which is also why the last commit is dated 2024-07-28.
Free, open source, Mac only: three labels do the filtering
Inclusion criteria are three labels and a pull request. The README says design tools are submitted in the main file, plugins in the plugins file, and to use the labels for free, open source and Mac only tools. That is the whole editorial policy visible in the repository: a contributor decides which of the three labels apply, and a maintainer merges.
The consequence is that filtering is manual and the categories are fixed at 36 headings. A tool that is both a design tool and a plugin has two homes and the README tells you to pick by file, not by judgement. A tool that is free but closed source takes the free label and nothing marks the difference, since there is no field for that. And because the Mac only label is a first-class category marker rather than a footnote, a Mac-exclusive tool sits visibly beside cross-platform ones without the list claiming to have compared them.
No releases, and a version field stuck at 1.0.0
The repository has no GitHub releases, and package.json carries the version 1.0.0, which has not moved. There is no changelog, so a reader has no way to tell which entries were added or removed, or when a link was last confirmed. For a directory whose value is that its links work, that is the structural gap.
The dependency list shows the same thing from the build side. The dev dependencies pin npm at ^6.13.4, jsdom at ^14.1.0, express at ^4.17.1, html-minifier at ^3.5.21, tinycolor2 at ^1.4.1 and i at ^0.3.6, and the runtime dependencies are markdown-it at ^8.4.2 and showdown at ^1.9.1. The repository metadata reports the licence as MIT while package.json declares ISC, another mismatch to settle before you fork and redistribute. Anyone rebuilding the site should expect to work through these pins and the npm 6 major before a clean install.
Editorial conclusion
Use Awesome Design Tools when you want a fast map of what exists in a corner of design tooling, such as contrast checkers or bookmarklet-based accessibility testing, and you are willing to verify each link yourself. Do not treat it as a comparison: an entry is one line of description with no version, no price and no last-checked date, and a tool that dies leaves a dead row. Before you rely on it, confirm the ownership question, since the README links point at LisaDziuba's fork while package.json points at berezovskycom, then check the label a tool carries, free, open source or Mac only, because that is the only filter the list applies.
Frequently asked questions
What is Awesome Design Tools used for?
It is a free, community-maintained directory of design software, split into 36 categories such as Accessibility Tools, Prototyping Tools, Design Handoff Tools and 3D Modeling Software. Each entry is a link with a one-line description, and the whole thing lives as markdown files in the repository with a rendered site built by index.js.
How do I add a design tool to Awesome Design Tools?
Send a pull request against the repository. Design tools go in README.md and plugins go in Awesome-Design-Plugins.md, with Awesome-Design-Conferences.md and Awesome-Design-UI-Kits.md as the other two lists, following the rules in Contribution_Guidelines.md. The README asks contributors to add the free, open source and Mac only labels as they see fit.
Who maintains Awesome Design Tools now?
It began at Flawless App, and the README carries an announcement that Flawless App joined Abstract, with the team turning to the Abstract SDK. The repository itself sits under the goabstract organisation, the README links point at LisaDziuba's fork, and package.json still names berezovskycom, so ownership is stated three different ways. The last commit is dated 2024-07-28 and there are no releases.
What licence is Awesome Design Tools under?
The repository metadata reports MIT. The package.json in the same repository declares ISC instead, and the version field is still 1.0.0. If you fork and redistribute the content, resolve the mismatch yourself rather than assuming the repository page is the only statement.
Does Awesome Design Tools compare the tools it lists?
No. An entry is a link and a single sentence, with no version, price, platform beyond the Mac only label, or last-verified date, and the list names no alternative or successor for any tool. Use it to find candidates, then check each one directly.