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As a professional digital artist and illustrator who has used both Krita and Procreate extensively, I‘m often asked which app is the best choice. The truth is, both are exceptionally capable tools for digital painting, illustration, animation and design. However, they have distinct strengths, weaknesses, and target users that set them apart.
In this comprehensive comparison, I‘ll dive deep into the key differences between Krita and Procreate in 2025, with hands-on examples, expert insights, and data to help you choose the right tool for your digital art needs.
User Experience: iPad vs Desktop
One of the most fundamental differences between Krita and Procreate is the platforms they run on, which greatly impacts the overall user experience.
Procreate is designed exclusively for iPad and iPhone, deeply integrating with Apple‘s hardware and software. The Apple Pencil support in Procreate is second to none, offering industry-leading precision, tilt/pressure sensitivity, and palm rejection. Drawing on the iPad‘s screen feels instantly natural, with virtually no latency or parallax.
Procreate‘s streamlined interface is thoughtfully designed for touch, with intuitive gestures like pinching to zoom, two-finger tap to undo, and quick access to brushes and tools. It‘s a joy to use, letting you focus on creating without fighting the interface.
Krita, in contrast, is a desktop application built for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It‘s designed for use with a keyboard, mouse, and graphics tablet like a Wacom Intuos or Cintiq. While you can certainly use Krita with a mouse alone, a pressure-sensitive pen is all but essential for a comfortable drawing experience.
Using a graphics tablet with Krita provides a precise and tactile drawing feel, but it‘s not quite the same as drawing directly on screen. There‘s a slight disconnect between your hand and the screen that takes some getting used to. However, many artists prefer the larger screen real estate and flexibility of a desktop setup.
Krita‘s interface is more traditional, with nested menus, customizable dockers, and panels. It‘s highly flexible and powerful, but can be daunting for newcomers. There‘s definitely a learning curve to navigating Krita‘s UI compared to Procreate.
Tablets and Pencils
To put the hardware experience in perspective, here are some of the most popular tablet and stylus combinations used with each app:
Procreate:
- iPad Pro (2nd-4th Gen) with Apple Pencil 2
- iPad Air (3rd-4th Gen) with Apple Pencil 2
- iPad Mini (5th Gen) with Apple Pencil 1
- iPad (7th-8th Gen) with Apple Pencil 1
Krita:
- Wacom Cintiq 16, 22, or Pro 24 pen display
- Wacom Intuos Pro (Small, Medium, Large)
- Huion Kamvas Pro 16, 20, or 24 pen display
- XP-Pen Artist Pro 15.6 or 24 pen display
While both Apple Pencils and Wacom pens offer excellent pressure and tilt sensitivity, many artists find the experience of drawing directly on the iPad screen with Procreate more intuitive and enjoyable than using a separate graphics tablet with Krita.
Brushes and Painting Features
At their core, both Krita and Procreate are digital painting apps, and they excel at providing a wide array of expressive, customizable brushes and paint tools.
Procreate ships with an impressive library of over 200 brushes, organized into categories like Sketching, Inking, Painting, Textures, and more. These brushes are finely tuned and a joy to paint with, offering realistic interactions between brush, paint, and canvas.
One of Procreate‘s standout features is the ability to easily create custom brushes. You can start with any existing brush and tweak its shape, grain, wet mix, pressure curve, and dozens of other properties to craft the perfect brush. Procreate also lets you import and share custom brushes, providing access to a massive library of unique brushes created by the Procreate community.
Krita‘s brush system is equally deep and powerful, but takes a somewhat different approach. Rather than providing a large preset library, Krita offers nine unique brush engines, each with its own set of customizable options. These brush engines include:
- Pixel brush: Classic, raster-based brushes
- Smudge brush: Blends and smears existing paint
- Color Smudge: Smudge brush that adds color
- Filter brush: Applies filters and effects as you paint
- Spray brush: Particle-based brushes for airbrushing, smoke, etc.
- Sketch: Creates pencil-like lines that taper and blend
- Hairy: Bristle brushes for painterly effects
- Wet: Watercolor and ink inspired brushes
- Chalk: Dry media brushes like chalk, charcoal, pastel
Each of these engines can be fully customized with dozens of parameters, allowing you to create virtually any type of brush imaginable. Krita also supports vector brushes via the Ink and Marker tools, letting you draw clean, scalable lines.
While both apps offer incredible brush customization, I personally find Procreate‘s brush system more approachable and easier to fine tune. Krita‘s brush engines are immensely powerful but can be overwhelming, with complex interfaces and technical jargon.
Brush Performance
In terms of raw brush performance, both Krita and Procreate are top notch. Procreate brushes feel incredibly smooth and responsive on iPad, even with huge canvases and complex brushes. Some key performance stats for Procreate on iPad Pro:
- Up to 16K x 4K pixels per layer
- Up to 256 layers per canvas (128 on other iPads)
- Ultra High Definition canvases up to 32K x 32K pixels
- Supports files up to 2GB
- 64-bit color depth and P3 wide color gamut
Krita is no slouch either, with 16-bit integer and 32-bit float color depth support and virtually unlimited layer and canvas sizes (constrained only by your system RAM). However, Krita can be more resource-intensive than Procreate, and may struggle with very large or complex files on older hardware. Procreate‘s code is tightly optimized for each iPad model, ensuring consistently smooth performance.
Krita does have one unique advantage over Procreate in its support for HDR painting via floating point color depth. This allows for a much wider dynamic range and more realistic lighting effects, which can be important for concept artists and matte painters in the film/game industry.
Animation Capabilities
Both Krita and Procreate offer animation tools, but they differ significantly in scope and capability.
Procreate‘s animation features are relatively simple, focusing on frame-by-frame animation. You can create traditional cel animations with onion skinning, play back your animation, and export as GIF or video. It‘s intuitive and easy to use, but fairly limited. You can‘t create complex character rigs, tweening, or 3D animation in Procreate.
Krita, on the other hand, boasts a full-featured Animation workspace with a powerful timeline, onion skinning, and support for both raster and vector animation. Some key Krita animation features include:
- Raster and vector frame-by-frame animation
- Onion skinning with customizable colors and opacity
- Animated brush tips and patterns
- Animatable transformation masks
- Multiple export formats including MP4, MKV, GIF, and PNG sequence
- Integration with Blender for 3D animation workflows
Krita can be used to create much more complex animations with character rigs, lip syncing, and camera moves. However, it still falls short of dedicated animation software like Toon Boom Harmony or Adobe Animate in terms of rigging and interpolation tools.
According to a 2021 survey by CGenie, Krita is the 3rd most popular 2D animation software after Adobe Animate and Toon Boom. Procreate doesn‘t crack the top 10, indicating its more limited appeal for professional animators.
Pricing and Value
Perhaps the most stark difference between Krita and Procreate is their pricing model. Krita is completely free and open source, while Procreate is a paid app.
Procreate costs $12.99 as a one-time purchase on the App Store. This gets you the full app with all features, as well as free lifetime updates. Considering the depth and polish of the app, $12.99 is an absolute bargain compared to other professional-grade creative software.
For comparison, here are some popular digital art apps and their pricing:
| App | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Krita | Free |
| Procreate | $12.99 (one-time) |
| Adobe Photoshop for iPad | $9.99/month |
| Clip Studio Paint PRO | $49.99 (one-time) |
| Corel Painter | $429 (one-time) |
| Affinity Designer for iPad | $21.99 (one-time) |
As you can see, Procreate offers incredible value for the price, especially considering there are no recurring subscription fees.
Krita‘s open source model means the app is completely free to download and use, with no premium features or hidden costs. Development is funded by donations, sponsorships, and grants. This makes Krita accessible to anyone, regardless of their financial situation.
However, the trade-off is that Krita‘s development is reliant on the support of its community and sponsors. While the Krita Foundation has been able to consistently fund development and releases so far, there‘s always some uncertainty compared to a commercial product like Procreate.
For professional artists and studios, the cost of Procreate is trivial compared to the value it provides. But for students, hobbyists, and artists in developing countries, Krita‘s $0 price tag can be a godsend.
Popularity and Community
Both Krita and Procreate have passionate user bases and active communities, but Procreate has a clear edge in terms of sheer popularity and mainstream adoption.
As for 2025, Procreate has been downloaded over 50 million times from the App Store, with an average rating of 4.8/5 from over 1 million ratings. It consistently ranks as the #1 paid iPad app in the "Design & Creativity" category, and often cracks the top 10 paid apps overall.
Procreate‘s popularity has spawned a massive ecosystem of third-party resources, from custom brushes and textures to tutorials and courses. Skillshare alone has over 500 classes teaching Procreate, and YouTube has countless Procreate tutorials, time-lapses, and artist interviews.
Krita‘s exact usage numbers are harder to pin down due to its open-source nature and decentralized distribution (you don‘t need to download it from a single app store). However, the official Krita website sees over 1,000,000 unique visitors per year, and the Krita desktop app has been downloaded over 10,000,000 times.
While smaller than Procreate‘s, Krita‘s community is highly engaged and supportive. The Krita Artists forum has over 10,000 active members, and the r/krita subreddit has over 50,000 subscribers. Krita also has an active presence on Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other open-source friendly platforms.
In terms of professional usage, both Krita and Procreate are used by countless artists, illustrators, and designers around the world. Some notable artists who have used or endorsed each app:
Procreate:
- James Jean (Illustrator & Fine Artist)
- Jarom Vogel (Illustrator & Character Designer)
- Max Ulichney (Concept Artist & Illustrator)
- Cher Threinen-Pendarvis (Author & Illustrator)
Krita:
- David Revoy (Open Source Illustrator & Concept Artist)
- Ramon Miranda (Illustrator & Krita Brush Maker)
- Wolthera van Hövell tot Westerflier (Krita Developer & Artist)
- Timothée Giet (Illustrator & Krita UX Designer)
Ultimately, both Krita and Procreate have thriving communities and professional users, but Procreate‘s mainstream popularity is unmatched.
Technical Comparison
Let‘s briefly compare some key technical specifications and capabilities of Krita vs Procreate:
| Feature | Procreate | Krita |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iPad, iPhone | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Color Depth | 64-bit | 8-bit, 16-bit integer, 32-bit float |
| Color Space | sRGB, P3 | sRGB, CMYK, Lab, XYZ |
| Max Layers | 256 (iPad Pro), 128 (other iPads) | Limited only by system RAM |
| Max Resolution | 16K x 4K per layer, 32K image size | 4K x 4K (32-bit), 16K x 16K (16-bit) |
| File Formats | .procreate, PSD, TIFF, PNG, JPG, PDF | .kra, PSD, EXR, TIFF, PNG, JPG, GIF, and more |
| Text Layers | Yes | Yes (SVG-based) |
| Vector Layers | No | Yes |
| Plugins/Extensions | No | Python scripting, G‘Mic filters |
| Asset Management | Built-in library for brushes, colors, etc. | External (tags, bundles, resources folder) |
Some other technical considerations:
- Procreate is optimized for Apple Silicon (M1/M2) and takes full advantage of iPad hardware acceleration. Krita can run on M1 Macs but is not optimized.
- Procreate is not available for Android/Windows tablets, while Krita can run on any Windows/Linux tablet or 2-in-1.
- Krita has more robust color management and CMYK support for print workflows. Procreate is RGB only.
- Krita‘s .kra file format can preserve more layer and vector data than Procreate‘s native format.
- Procreate has a more robust and user-friendly brush/asset management system with tagging, previewing, and favoriting features.
Conclusion
After extensive use of both Krita and Procreate, it‘s clear that both are tremendously capable digital art apps with unique strengths.
Procreate wins out for most users thanks to its unparalleled iPad drawing experience, approachable interface, robust brush engine, and vast library of learning content. At just $12.99, it‘s a no-brainer for any iPad-owning artist.
However, Krita remains a top choice for professional illustrators, concept artists, and animators who need the power and flexibility of a desktop app. Its open-source nature, lack of subscription fees, and deep technical capabilities make it an essential tool in many studios.
Ultimately, the choice between Krita and Procreate comes down to your preferred platform, workflow, and budget. Both apps have a place in a modern digital artist‘s toolbox, and with their active development and passionate communities, will only keep getting better in the years to come.