Best for
Best for illustrators, designers and technical writers who want a full vector editor built on open SVG, at no cost.
Graphics & Illustration Comparison
Inkscape vs. PaintTool SAI
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for illustrators who paint on a Windows PC with a pen tablet and want a light program they pay for once.
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Inkscape | PaintTool SAI |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free Free software; the complete binaries are covered by the GNU GPL v3 or later. The current stable release is 1.4.4, from May 2026. | ¥5,500 one-time Per software licence, including Japanese sales tax. PayPal converts the amount into your currency at its own rate. |
| Free trial | Not stated | 31-day trial with full functions; open and save stop when it ends |
| Output | Vector illustrations, logos, typography, diagrams and flowcharts, saved as SVG | Digital paintings and illustrations |
| API | No hosted API; extensions and a command line with actions for editing SVG files and controlling export | Not stated |
| Hosting | Installed locally on Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux | Installed app for Windows (32-bit Ver.1) |
| What it makes | Artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagrams and flowcharts, plus printable folding booklets from built-in templates | Digital paintings and illustrations drawn with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, with anti-aliased strokes |
| Raster, vector or both | Vector: SVG drawings that stay sharp at any size rather than being bound to a fixed number of pixels. Raster images can be imported, traced into paths, and split into clipped sections with the Shape Builder | Mostly raster painting on normal layers, plus linework layers whose strokes are edited through control points and can be rasterized; the Ver.2 technical preview adds shape layers and text layers |
| File formats and exchange | Native SVG, the W3C standard read by web browsers and many other applications. Imports EPS, PostScript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, Affinity Designer files, CGM and binary DXF | Native .sai format, .sai2 in the Ver.2 technical preview; it also opens PSD, PNG and JPEG files, and PSB in Ver.2 |
| Colour management and print | Limited: Inkscape 1.4 added support for colour palettes with CMYK colours and improved the conversion from CMYK to RGB, even without a proper ICC profile | Composites with 16-bit ARGB channels, 64 bits per pixel, which the developer chose for speed and quality. The Ver.2 technical preview adds simple colour management that applies sRGB or sGray ICC profiles and keeps the profile of a loaded image |
| Brand, styles and templates | A Swatches dialog that opens palette files in several formats, including CIELAB, Adobe Color Book and Adobe Swatch Exchange, document templates with custom categories, and a Filter Gallery with previews and search | Custom brushes, textures and swatches, which can be carried over between versions |
| Platforms | Windows, including Windows on Arm since 1.4.4, macOS on Intel and Apple Silicon, and Linux | Ver.1 runs on Windows XP to Windows 11 as a 32-bit app, on a physical PC and not a virtual machine, and does not support high-DPI monitors. The Ver.2 technical preview has 64-bit and 32-bit builds for Windows Vista to 11 |
| Licence and pricing model | Free and open source under the GNU GPL version 3 or later, with no paid edition | One-time licence of 5,500 yen including tax, sold by download only and paid by PayPal outside Japan. It covers all Ver.1.x.x updates and can be moved to a new PC with the same licence number, since the certificate is issued for each PC's System ID |
| Export and handoff | Exports PNG and several vector formats, including PDF with internal links and DXF, with single and batch export. Command-line actions strip editor-specific data and convert SVG for the web | Ver.1 exports PSD, PNG including transparent PNG, JPEG, BMP and TGA, keeping DPI information in JPEG and PNG. The Ver.2 technical preview also saves PSB and can change the image size when saving |
| AI features | No generative AI is built in. Neither the project's README nor the Inkscape 1.4 release notes name an image generation feature | Not stated |
| Deployment | On-premise | On-premise |
| Support | Not stated | Email helpdesk |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
Add a tool
Adds a column to the table, from the tools in this category.
Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Inkscape Free PaintTool SAI ¥5,500 one-time
- Hosting Inkscape Installed locally on Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux PaintTool SAI Installed app for Windows (32-bit Ver.1)
- Output Inkscape Vector illustrations, logos, typography, diagrams and flowcharts, saved as SVG PaintTool SAI Digital paintings and illustrations
- What it makes Inkscape Artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagrams and flowcharts, plus printable folding booklets from built-in templates PaintTool SAI Digital paintings and illustrations drawn with a pressure-sensitive pen tablet, with anti-aliased strokes
- Raster, vector or both Inkscape Vector: SVG drawings that stay sharp at any size rather than being bound to a fixed number of pixels. Raster images can be imported, traced into paths, and split into clipped sections with the Shape Builder PaintTool SAI Mostly raster painting on normal layers, plus linework layers whose strokes are edited through control points and can be rasterized; the Ver.2 technical preview adds shape layers and text layers
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Inkscape
Strengths
- Free and open source, with no licence fee
- Uses standard SVG as its native format
- Imports Affinity Designer files and the ISO-standard CGM format
- Command-line actions to strip editor-specific data and convert SVG for the web
Limitations
- No generative AI features
- Affinity Designer import is best-effort, since the format has no official documentation
- The project notes that background work for GTK4 can slow Inkscape down, most notably on Windows
PaintTool SAI
Strengths
- Pay once and every Ver.1 update is included
- Runs on modest hardware, from 256 MB of RAM on Windows XP
- The licence moves to a new PC with the same licence number
- A full-featured 31-day trial before buying
Limitations
- Runs on Windows only
- Ver.1 does not support high-DPI monitors
- Open and save stop the moment the trial ends, so unsaved work is lost
- Ver.2 is still a technical preview
Plans
Pricing
Inkscape
- Free $0 Free and open-source software; the complete binaries are covered by the GNU GPL v3 or later.
PaintTool SAI
- Software licence (Ver.1) ¥5,500 One-time, including Japanese sales tax. Covers all Ver.1.x.x updates and unlocks save and load in the Ver.2 technical preview.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Inkscape
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
PaintTool SAI
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Reviews are not published yet. The form on a tool's page works and reaches us, but nothing from it appears on this site, so no score here is based on a review. The rules below are the ones that will apply once reviews go live.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. We require a working email address and use it to come back to the author, so a review has a reachable sender rather than being anonymous. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on what they tell us, plus the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot have a review removed, cannot buy one, and cannot have one changed. Paid placement and a paid listing have no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Inkscape https://inkscape.org · checked against the official source on 2026-10-05
PaintTool SAI https://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/ · checked against the official source on 2026-10-20
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.