Design & creative AI

What is the best AI design tool for creative work? FLORA suits studios that chain many image and video models together, Hedra suits talking-avatar and ad videos, Spline suits interactive 3D for websites, and LottieFiles suits lightweight animation. BetterPic and Riverflow cover two narrower jobs: headshots and product photos for online shops.

FLORA is a node-based canvas that links more than 60 text, image, video, audio and 3D models into reusable workflows, and each paid seat includes its full price as model usage at published rates. It has very few independent reviews so far. Hedra is an AI video studio for talking avatars, ads and short films, with its own Character-3 model plus Veo, Kling, Seedance and ElevenLabs, and it bills video by the second. Its only review score is 1.8 on Trustpilot from 67 reviews, mostly about billing, support and refunds.

Spline is a browser-based 3D tool with desktop apps for Mac and Windows and short embed snippets for Webflow, Framer, React and Next.js. It scores 4.6 on Product Hunt from 31 reviews and 2.3 on Trustpilot from 6. LottieFiles combines a large animation library, the Lottie Creator web editor and plugins for Figma, After Effects, Canva, Webflow and Framer, and scores 4.85 on Product Hunt from 20 reviews, 4.8 on the UK App Store from 85 ratings and 3.2 on Trustpilot from 73.

Which AI tools make headshots and product photos? BetterPic turns selfies into 4K professional headshots for a one-off payment from £30, and Riverflow turns product photos into on-brand photoshoots, ads and videos for online shops from £82 a month plus VAT.

BetterPic shows pounds to UK visitors. Basic costs £30 for 20 headshots in one style, Pro £34 for 60 in three styles and Expert £69 for 120 in six, and team prices fall to £26 a person for 15 to 49 people. It scores 4.7 on Trustpilot from 1,025 reviews, though some reviewers say their results looked fake or unusable.

Riverflow prices in pounds excluding VAT and accepts VAT IDs. Growth costs £82 a month, or £65 billed yearly, for 6,000 credits, enough for up to 600 images, with three full seats and unlimited viewers; Scale costs £205, or £155 yearly. It scores 4.7 on Trustpilot from 41 reviews, with frequent praise for onboarding, and has no free plan or trial.

Which design tools have a free plan? FLORA, Hedra, Spline, LottieFiles and BetterPic all have free plans, each with a clear limit, while Riverflow has none.

What the free plans allow: - FLORA: 3 active projects, text and image models, and up to 17 generations - Hedra: a limited number of watermarked videos, with no card needed - Spline: limited personal files, unlimited viewers and web exports with a Spline watermark - LottieFiles: unlimited Lottie Creator files, 5 public animation downloads and 5 private uploads per workspace - BetterPic: up to 10 free 4K headshots with queue-based delivery and no card

Can you use AI-generated images and video commercially? Hedra includes commercial use on every paid plan, from $20 a month, and FLORA and BetterPic say you own the results; free and education plans carry limits.

Hedra's free videos are watermarked, so commercial work starts on Basic at $20 a month for 2,000 credits. FLORA states that uploads are never used for model training, and BetterPic gives a full commercial licence. LottieFiles' free Education Plan is for non-commercial use only, and Spline's free plan watermarks web exports until Hobby, at $15 a month or $12 billed yearly.

Spline vs LottieFiles: which is better for web animation? Spline is built for interactive 3D scenes, while LottieFiles is built for small, lightweight 2D animations in apps and sites.

Spline handles interactivity, physics and timeline animation without code, and Pro, at $30 a month or $25 billed yearly per seat, adds video export and Apple and Android exports. LottieFiles says its dotLottie files are up to 80% smaller and publishes open-source players for web, iOS and Android. Its Individual plan costs $19.99 a month billed annually, about $240 up front, with a library of more than 600,000 premium animations.

How do you pay less for design software? Education offers save the most: LottieFiles is free for UK students and educators through its Education Plan, and FLORA gives students three months of Pro free.

FLORA also gives educators three months of Max, and annual billing takes its Starter plan from $18 to $14.40 a seat a month. Riverflow's annual billing saves about 21% to 24%, and Spline invites students and educators to apply for an unpublished education discount. Credits are the cost to plan for: FLORA's monthly usage doesn't roll over, Spline's AI credits reset each cycle, and Hedra's monthly credits reset while its credit packs never expire.