Best Animation Software Applications (Top 2D & 3D Programs)

The animation industry is steadily increasing in value, and so is the demand for quality animation software. Indeed, in 2022 the animation industry achieved an all-time high market value of $391.19 billion. 

To determine which is the best animation software on the market today, we came up with this list of the top 10 best animation software for 2022. 

This list covers both 2D and 3D animation software. So if you happen to be a budding animator, an industry veteran, or an enthusiast that just likes animating, by the end of the article, you should be able to decide which tool is the right one for you.

Best animation programs comparison chart (top 10 highest rated)

Here’s a quick comparison of our top 10 2D and 3D programs for animation:

^{*Prices start at}

What are the different types of animation software?

Before we take a look at what software is used for animation specifically, let's take a look at the different types of animation software that you might be interested in:

• 2D animation

• 3D animation

• Movie animation

• Stop motion animation

• Frame-by-frame animation

• Flash animation

• Hand-drawn animation

• Whiteboard animation

What is the best animation software? Here’s our top 10 list:

Choosing the best animation software can be quite a chore given the options. To narrow your focus, you might want to set a price ceiling and determine must-have features. Ease of use might also be a key factor.

With those thoughts in mind, here’s our top 10 best animation software that you could choose from:

1. Blender (best animation software overall)

Blender is a top-notch free and open-source animation software that is licensed under GPL-2.0 and has both 2D and 3D animation capabilities. 

Mostly renowned for its amazing 3D capabilities, Blender is widely used by industry professionals, hobbyists, and beginners for creating visual effects, 3D interactive apps, motion graphics, animated characters, video games, and 3D models.

With features like 3D modeling, texturing, keyframes, rigging, onion skinning, particle simulation, soft body simulation, rendering, compositing, and video editing amongst others, Blender is more than capable of handling almost every beginner-level and professional animation design you can think of. 

Blender’s unique Grease pencil feature also allows you to draw 2D animations in a 3D space.

Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, OpenBSD, DragonFly, and FreeBSD, Blender has ridiculous cross-platform availability. It’s also free, retains a wide range of functions that is useful to beginners and seasoned users, and has a very large community of online support. 

As a result it earns the top spot for best animation software overall.

Pros:

Blender has a great online community that keeps improving on it at a very fast pace. It is improved upon so quickly, that it constantly catches up to its rivals, and outclasses them with every new iteration. The software is very capable of what it does, and if you want to extend its functionalities even more; it supports plug-ins. 

Cons:

The user interface is not intuitive enough for beginners, and it has a rather steep learning curve. However, there are a lot of detailed explainer video tutorials online, and a great community of seasoned users that are ever ready to provide the necessary expertise to beginners

Pricing:

• Free

Blender

2. Autodesk Maya (great professional 3D animation software )

Autodesk Maya, or just Maya, is widely regarded as the best 3D animation software for professionals. 

Having gained popularity for being the 3D animation program that one of the biggest animation studios on the planet—Disney, uses, Maya has become the industry standard and a no-brainer for professionals that are willing to spend money to get the very best 3D animation software that they can.

Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, Maya has features like 3D rendering and shading, modeling, pipeline integration, special effects, rigging, and motion graphics. Maya is mostly used for creating Interactive 3D applications, advanced animations, animated videos, and video games. Although it doesn’t have an intuitive interface, like Blender, there are a  lot of explainer video tutorials online. And once you get used to it, the interface is fully customizable to fit any workflow 

Pros:

Autodesk Maya creates high-quality renders. It is the industry standard for 3D animation and is widely used by animation studios and teams.

Cons:

It’s expensive.

Pricing:

• There’s a limited 30-day free version

• $215 paid monthly or $1,700 paid annually (34% saved), or $4,845 paid triennially(37% saved)

Autodesk Maya

3. Toon Boom Harmony (best software for 2D animation)

If Autodesk Maya is the industry standard for 3D animations, Toon Boom Harmony is the standard for 2D. 

Developed by the Canadian software company, Toon Boom, Harmony is a great piece of 2D animation software, used by the likes of Disney. It has also been used in the creation of popular animations and animated videos like The Simpsons, Family Guy, Archer, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Harmony comes with a host of drawing tools that allow you to create frame animations, cut-out animations, and paperless frame-by-frame workflows.

 Some of its other features include morphing, deformation tools, particles, inverse kinematics, built-in compositor, and 2D-3D integration. Users can also draw animation directly into the software interface using a graphics tablet.

Available on Windows and macOS, Toon Boom Harmony is perfectly suited for professional 2D animators and hobbyists. While some of its basic features are intuitive and easy to use, the more advanced features would require in-depth tutorials.

Pros:

Harmony’s drawing tools simplify the process of creating a cartoon, and it makes storyboarding quite exciting.

Cons:

It is quite expensive, and unlike its counterparts, it doesn’t have enough video tutorials on some specific functions.

Pricing:

• There’s a limited 21-day free version

• Harmony Essentials is $25.50 per month, or $209 billed annually (32% saved)

• Harmony Advanced is $64.50 per month, or $500 billed annually (35% saved)

• Harmony Premium is $117.50 per month, or $954 billed annually (32% saved)

Toon Boom Harmony

4. Adobe Animate CC(Top Design Animation software )

Adobe Animate CC is among the top 2D animation software out there. It’s often compared to Toon Boom Harmony. 

The app is used to design high-quality vector graphics and infographics, as well as interactive web applications. For example, it’s a well-liked tool for making flash games, as well as kinetic typography, GIFs, and cartoons. 

Animate CC is also great as whiteboard animation software, if you’re looking for that.

Formerly referred to as Adobe Flash Professional, Animate CC offers support for raster graphics, rich text, audio-video embedding, and ActionScript 3.0 scripting. Its animations can also be published for HTML 5 and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

Available on Windows and macOS, Animate CC integrates perfectly with other Adobe apps like Photoshop, After effects, and Character Animator. It is relatively easy to use once you’ve put in the time to learn how to and is mostly used to make animations for web pages.

Pros:

Animations created using Animate CC are very interactive and responsive, it has a lot of explainer videos online, Adobe themselves has published a 500+ page How-to guide, and it requires minimal to zero programming skills.

Cons:

Like every other Adobe app, it has an initially steep learning curve, but it gets easier the more you use it.  It also lags and becomes choppy when designing overlapping animations.

Pricing:

• There’s a limited 7-day free version

• It comes with Adobe creative cloud subscription

• Individual plan starts at $20.99 per month, billed monthly

Adobe Animate CC

5. Adobe Character Animator (Best  Cartoon Animation Software for Beginners)

Adobe Character Animator is an Emmy award-winning animation software that’s widely regarded as the perfect beginner’s tool for 2D animations. 

As a support app to Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe Character animator can import designs and animate them with a combination of live motion-capture and a multi-track recording. It can also function as a powerful stand-alone app that creates very interactive humanoid animations.

Mostly used for creating animated characters, Adobe Character Animator does a good job of recognizing real-live facial expressions in real-time and then transferring the expressions to predesigned puppets. 

You can make a recording of your face, and using any of the multiple available templates, Character Animator would then animate it.

Available on Windows and macOS, Adobe Character Animator can export finished animations in PNG, WAV, MPEG-2, and WMV formats.

Pros:

Adobe Character Animator is beginner-friendly, and once you’re used to its interface you can have a fully-developed animated character of yourself in a few minutes. The auto lip-sync feature is also quite revolutionary.

Cons:

Although the software is beginner-friendly, the initial setup can be quite confusing. It is also only suited to creating humanoid animations or puppets and doesn’t do any other thing well enough.

Pricing:

• There’s a limited 7-day free version

• It comes with Adobe creative cloud subscription

• It has no stand-alone subscription.

Adobe Character Animator

6. Opentoonz (Top Open-source Animation software for experienced users)

Opentoonz or just Toonz is an open-source 2D animation software that’s tailored solely to the needs of professionals, studios, and veteran animators. 

It is incredibly powerful, and it allows you to draw each layer of your animation frame by frame if you want to. Opentoonz offers powerful 2D animation tools, Frame by frame 2D drawing, customizable fonts and templates, 2D imaging, video effects, and 3D video editing.

Like Toon Boom Harmony, Opentoonz has been used in the production of popular animated videos like the Japanese award-winning animation—Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Available on Windows and macOS, Opentoonz is too advanced for beginners, and it openly embraces this by having a very complex user interface, and a very steep learning curve to go with it. 

However, if you can put in the work to master this unique animation software by watching as many explainer videos and tutorials as you can, you’d have mastered not just any free animation software, but one of the most powerful 2D animation software around.

Pros:

Opentoonz is free and incredibly powerful! Its layer options and frame-by-frame drawing make it ideal for veterans that want complete control of their 2D animations.

Cons:

It has a very steep learning curve, and the user interface could do with a much-needed modern refresh.

Pricing:

• Free

Opentoonz

7. Pencil2D (Good 2D Animation Software for Beginners)

Pencil2D is a free and open-source 2D animation software that was created by Patrick Corrieri and Pascal Naidon in 2005. 

Licensed under GPL-2.0, Pencil2D supports both raster and vector graphics. It also excels at making cartoons and other colorful 2D designs using techniques like onion skinning and bitmap drawings.

Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, Pencil2D supports layer-by-layer creation techniques, and it stands out because of its ease of use. 

The software is very beginner-friendly, and its user interface is quite intuitive. The UI has simple drag and drop functionality, a customizable workflow, and allows for image tracing. 

Pencil2D is lightweight at about 30-50MB and can run on relatively low-end computers. 

At its core, Pencil2D is a design animation software with tool sets that are meant for beginners and hobbyists.

Pros:

Pencil2D is a great learning tool for beginners that want to get familiar with the intricacies of 2D animation design at zero cost. 

It also functions as a great software for creating free-hand animation when used in conjunction with a graphic tablet.

Cons:

After a while, having to draw each animation frame by frame can become tedious. This is the only kind of animation that Pencil2D supports.

Pricing:

• Free

Pencil2D

8.  Powtoon (Best Online Animation Software)

Powtoon, coined from a play on PowerPoint and cartoon,  is a quality online animation software that excels at making quality animated videos, and animated presentation. Developed by the British company, Powtoon Ltd, Powtoon allows users to create their animated videos using provided templates, sound effects, music, imported images of their own,  pre-designed objects, and user-created voiceovers.

Available on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and any OS that can access their unique webpage, Powtoon has gained a reputation for being used by a lot of Fortune 500 companies. Actually, their website gives an astronomical figure of 96% of all Fortune 500 companies.

Powtoon is aimed at professionals, and marketers that need a quick animated video, for demonstrations, and enthusiasts that just want to make fun animated videos of their own. 

With enough time, you could, in theory, create any kind of animated video that you want with the numerous pre-created templates. 

The animated presentations and videos created on Powtoon can be directly exported to social media networks like Youtube and Vimeo, downloaded as a Powerpoint file, GIF, or an MP4 file.

Pros:

Powtoon is easy to use and allows you to create animated videos with zero prior knowledge on how to do so. There are also tutorials online that are easily accessible and would teach you how to use its more advanced features. 

Also, because it's a web-based animation software, your animations and videos can be accessed from any device and anytime.

Cons:

Powtoon’s videos take time to render, and while there is a free limited version, only the paid version truly offers an ad-free and immersive experience.  

Pricing:

• There’s a free version 

• Powtoon Pro costs $228 billed annually

• Powtoon Pro+ costs $709 billed annually

• Powtoon Agency is $1200 billed annually

• Powtoon business plans start at $2,000 billed annually

Powtoon

9. Synfig Studio (Top Open-source Design Animation Software)

Synfig Studio is a vector-based free and open-source design animation software. Synfig uses vector tweening techniques, filters, layers, and a host of real-time and special effects to create high-quality animations, artworks, GIFs, and designs. 

The app is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Unlike Pencil2D, it offers an alternative to manual tweening so you don’t have to draw every animation frame by frame. It is also capable of simulating soft-shading so you do not have to draw shading into every single frame. 

It is ideal for beginners, and you could say it is a much simpler, and perhaps “lazy” version of Pencil2D.

The user interface is clean and the software has an active online community that is ever ready to help. The software is also constantly being improved with every iteration.

Pros:

Synfig is another great choice for beginners, its menus are quite easy to navigate, it feels snappier compared to other 2D animation software in its class.

Cons:

Like many animation software, it has a steep learning curve, and there aren’t a lot of explainer videos online.

Pricing:

• Free

Synfig Studio

10. Cinema4D (Top 3D Animation Software for Beginners)

Cinema4D is a great 3D animation software that was developed by Maxon—a German company. It’s highly recommended for beginners. The app integrates nicely with other Adobe software, and can even function as a video editing tool. 

Cinema4D produces very high-quality renders, and its modeling and texturing tools are easy and straightforward to work with.

Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and AmigaOS, Cinema4D comes with a packed library of special effects and templates that make it an ideal tool for users that want a quick 3D animated video. 

Some of its features and animation tools include UV mapping, placement tools, scene manager, and Redshift rendering. 

Pros:

The interface is clean, and the software itself is intuitive. Its renders are smooth and quality and its industry-leading Redshift plugin is a powerful and very handy animation tool.:

Cons:

The software can sometimes become unstable in very heavy and detailed scenes, and it regularly crashes on low-end computers. It also doesn’t come with fluid animation built-in.

Pricing

• There is a limited free version 

• Individual plan starts at $94 billed monthly, or $718.92 billed annually(36% Saved)

Cinema4D

What is animation software & what does it do?

Animation software is any software that allows you to create animations. It works by piecing together different frames into one singular piece that moves together, creating the illusion of motion. 

Much like a flicker book where stick figures are drawn on the edges of papers that appear to move when the pages are flipped. Each frame could be in the form of drawings, vectors, or images.

What is the best animation tool for me? Our final points

Long story short, it all depends on the trade-offs you’re willing to make. 

If you want a balance of value, and performance for 3D animation, then definitely try Blender. 

But maybe you’re a pro, and you’re willing to pay a premium to get the absolute best that 3D animation software has. You don’t mind spending hours learning how to use the software. In that case, Autodesk Maya would be a wise choice.

Toon Boom Harmony and Adobe Animate CC are equally comparable, and the final decision of which to pick would be down to personal preference. That said, the latter might be better as a piece of whiteboard animation software.

Adobe Character Animator would be perfect if you’re into cartoon puppets and you require an easy-to-learn software. 

Opentoonz, Pencil2D, and Synfig are all open-source animation software, and the decision could come down to the one that feels right for you and suits your needs. 

Powtoon is great if you want to use a web-based animation software, and Cinema4D could very well handle being your first 3D animation software.

One thing is certain, if you go over this list with a fine-toothed comb, you’re likely to find the animation software that’s meant for you.