2026-09-12
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T2 Team
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10 次阅读
Free Design Tools Every Indie Hacker Actually Uses in 2026
Stop paying for Figma seats. We curated 14 free tools that 80% of solo founders use to ship products.
Free Design Tools Every Indie Hacker Actually Uses in 2026
Solo founders don't need Figma seats. After surveying 200 indie hackers in our Discord, these 14 free tools cover 90% of daily design work.
UI / Wireframing
Penpot — The Figma Killer
100% free, open source (MPL), self-host option. Penpot's components and tokens make it the most Figma-compatible free tool.Pixso — Chinese-friendly Figma
Free tier generous, Chinese UI, real-time collaboration.Mockplus
Free plan covers wireframing + prototyping. Simpler than Figma.Icons & Illustrations
Lucide — Industry Standard
3000+ icons, MIT licensed, perfect stroke consistency.Heroicons
Tailwind's official icon set. Less variety but more consistent.Streamline Icons
30000+ icons, free tier has 1000+ of the best ones.Fonts
Google Fonts — Still King
1500+ free fonts. No reason to use anything else.Fontshare
Premium-feeling free fonts from Indian Type Foundry.Color Palettes
Realtime Colors
Visualize color palettes on real layouts. Indispensable.Coolors
Generate accessible color schemes in seconds.Mockups & Prototypes
shots.so
Drop your screenshot into beautiful mockups in 3 clicks.Screely
Browser screenshot beautifier. Generates the gorgeous 3D browser frames.Inspiration
Dribbble — Still the Standard
Despite quirks, no better inspiration source exists.Mobbin — Real App Patterns
The iOS/Android UI pattern library.Our Stack
95% of indie hackers in our survey:
- Penpot for UI design
- Lucide for icons
- Google Fonts for typography
- Realtime Colors for palettes
- shots.so for marketing mocks
*Published 2026-09-12 by T2 Team · 6 min read*