For creative professionals and casual designers alike, Procreate offers a compelling blend of power and simplicity. Our review dives deep into its template library, collaboration features, and the AI tools that are reshaping the design workflow.
In today's crowded software landscape, choosing the right tool can make or break your productivity.
What is Procreate?
App of the Year winner Procreate Pocket is the most feature-packed and versatile art app ever designed for iPhone. Procreate Pocket has everything you need to create expressive sketches, rich paintings, gorgeous illustrations, and beautiful animations. Offering hundreds of handmade brushes, a suit...
Key Features
Here are the standout features that define the Procreate experience:
- Presentation mode with audience view, speaker notes, and remote control via mobile device
- Background remover powered by AI that cleanly isolates subjects from photos with minimal manual adjustment needed
- Content Planner for scheduling and publishing designs directly to social media platforms
- Offering hundreds of handmade brushes, a suite of intuitive artistic tools, an advanced layer system, and the powerful Valkyrie graphics engine
- Custom fonts upload and access to 3,000+ premium fonts through the built-in font library
- Magic Resize that instantly adapts a single design to 50+ format sizes — from Instagram Story to billboard — in one click
Pricing
Procreate offers a tiered pricing structure designed to accommodate different user needs and budgets:
Free
$0
250,000+ templates, 5GB storage, basic photo editing, limited background remover uses
Pro
$13/month or $120/year
All premium templates, Brand Kit, background remover, Magic Resize, 100GB storage, premium stock library
Teams / Enterprise
$15-30/month per person
Everything in Pro plus team collaboration, brand controls, SSO, 1TB storage, dedicated support
Privacy & Security
We reviewed the privacy practices of Procreate and found them standard for a cloud-based SaaS tool. Designs are not publicly accessible, but they are stored unencrypted on company infrastructure.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Template quality is genuinely professional — many outputs are indistinguishable from agency-produced work
- Mobile app provides nearly full functionality, enabling on-the-go design edits and approvals
- Enormous ecosystem of third-party apps and integrations within the platform
- Free tier is remarkably generous with access to thousands of templates, photos, and design elements
- Learning curve is almost non-existent — new users can produce quality designs within minutes of signing up
Cons
- Professional designers may find the template-driven approach limiting for truly custom work
- Version history is limited on the free plan — accidental changes can be difficult to undo without upgrading
- Export quality for complex gradients and effects can occasionally differ from the on-screen preview
Our Verdict
Procreate scores 7.6/10, reflecting its outstanding value proposition. For the price of a single stock photo on other platforms, you get a complete design suite with millions of assets included.
While not perfect, the combination of features, pricing, and user experience makes it a strong contender in its category.