The Best Vector Drawing Apps for iPad 2023

So, you're looking for best vector drawing app for iPad? In this blog we'll go over the best iPad vector drawing apps. 

What is vector drawing?

Vector drawing allows you to scale whatever you have drawn to any size without loss of quality. Such a thing could be useful if you need to cover the side of a truck, or if you want to wrap your mother’s car in the NFT you created yourself in order to finally make her see how valuable this new technology actually is. 

What are the best vector drawing apps for iPad?

In this blog we’ll go over four iPad vector drawing apps. 

• Clip Studio Paint
• Assembly
• Affinity Designer
• Linearity (previously called Vectornator)

We’ll touch on the pros and cons of each of them so you can decide which one will work best for what you need. 

Clip Studio Paint

Clip Studio paint vector drawing is definitely one of the best vector apps for iPad. Clip Studio comes with presets for pens, brushes, watercolor brushes, etc. You can expand this library by buying brushes created by other artists. The app has many tools like the “fill-tool” which can be used to color inside the lines - very important according to that same mother with the now wrapped-in-NFT-car we mentioned earlier - and a ruler for those magnificently straight lines. 

This app is available in the App Store for free. To unlock all its features you can choose a monthly or yearly subscription. For a month you pay €3,99 and for a year you pay €23,49.

If you would also like to work on a desktop besides your iPad, you can pay extra to unlock the subscription for two devices. That’s one distinguishing feature of the app. You can use it on a desktop as well. So if you are looking for that kind of versatility, this app will be very interesting to 

All in all, Clip Studio Paint is a very complete and versatile vector drawing app for the iPad. 

Tip: to create seamless lines, take a look at PenTips or the Drawing Glove.

Assembly

Assembly is another greatvector app for iPad. This app comes with stickers and shapes pre-installed. It allows you to add these to your canvas and to reshape and color them until you have created something you like. This makes it different from the other apps. Drawing is not necessary in order to be able to create.

If working with shapes and stickers works better for you than creating all those things yourself, Assembly might be interesting for you. 

This app is available for free as well, but for access to the entire thing you will pay €4,49 per month or €29,99 per year. 

Affinity Designer

This app is not available for free, but it also does not have a subscription model. You pay €21,99 once, after which your bank account will never surprise you anymore by writing off the amount of money you needed to buy groceries which leaves you in the position of having to switch money between accounts in the store but then the internet reception in the store somehow is bad so now you are like “what do I do? Do I walk out to transfer the money? Will that look weird?” and those kinds of things. Not saying this ever happened to me. Not at all. 

Anyway… this is a  great vector drawing app for iPad. It allows you to switch between personas so you can work in both a vector or pixel workspace. The app has a clean interface and works very fast on the iPad, of course depending on which model you have. It will probably work slower on the ones that Steve Jobs presented himself, God bless his soul. Two interesting facts about Affinity designer is that the zoom function goes up to 1000000% and you can press the “undo” button 8000 times. So unless you have made 8001 mistakes, you will be fine. Although one might wonder if you are actually doing fine if you have made north of 7500 mistakes already. 

You'll spend hours creating in Affinity Designer without even realizing! Don't forget to take breaks to avoid hand pains, or try out Apple Pencil Grips.

If you are looking for an app that is very complete, and without a subscription model, Affinity Designer is an interesting choice for you.

Linearity (previously called Vectornator)

Judging by the name, you might have guessed it was a vector drawing app. Linearity is a free vector drawing app for iPad. If you want access to the full experience, it is STILL AVAILABLE FOR FREE (!). We like that. 

Even though the app is free, it is a very capable app. It has a very clean design and many of the capabilities of the apps you have to pay for, like customizable brushes. It also comes with social media templates so you get the right sizes for different platforms automatically. 

The app is also available on Mac, so if you like to work on a desktop you can do that too. 

All in all, if you want to spend no money but still have a very capable application, Linearity is a good app for you. 

Conclusion

There are some great apps out there for vector drawing on the iPad. In terms of pricing we have curated a list of apps available for all people with an iPad. In terms of features, you will have to decide what you need. 

Let us know which app you chose to wrap your mom’s car in your NFT, and please send us a picture of the result!