Friction is a powerful and versatile motion graphics application that allows you to create vector and raster animations for web and video platforms with ease.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux
- Mac




The best Animation Maker alternative to Adobe After Effects is Friction, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Adobe After Effects and seven of them are Animation Makers so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Animation Maker alternatives to Adobe After Effects are OpenToonz, enve, Expressive Animator and Cavalry.
Friction is a powerful and versatile motion graphics application that allows you to create vector and raster animations for web and video platforms with ease.




OpenToonz is an animation program that is a free software version of Toonz, the animation software used by Studio Ghibli, amongst others.





Some users think OpenToonz is a great Adobe After Effects alternative, some don't.
Enve is a free and open-source 2D animation app. It can create both vector and raster animations and even use sound and video files. It has been created with flexibility and expandability in mind.

Free and open source, much easier on the memory; still a lot of bugs and features missing but it is an absolutely amazing piece of software that will hopefully one day do to Adobe what Blender did to Autodesk.

The premier editor for SVG animations. Create interactive SVG animations that run anywhere without plugins, players, or JavaScript code embedded.




Cavalry makes 2d animation smarter, easier and faster to produce. Design in real-time for advertising, mobile, data visualisation, web, broadcast, UI, generative art, experiential, games and more.




Wow! Cavalry is one of the closest free softwares I have seen with a similar interface and flow to After Effects. Although Cavalry doesn't contain all the bells and whistles of After Effects, it is a great and free software that allows you to create advanced compositions. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to composite within 2d and doesn't want to pay the expensive fee of After Effects.

Almost everyone thinks Cavalry is a great Adobe After Effects alternative.
Lottie-focused animation tool empowering teams with faster workflows than After Effects, seamless real-time collaboration, easy imports from various design tools, runtime property adjustments for dynamic needs, and ensures robust animations when shipped to apps and websites.




Linearity Move is a revolutionary animation tool that simplifies motion graphics creation on both Mac and iPad. Whether you want to bring static designs to life or start a project from scratch, you can do it all in just a few clicks.




while this has video creation functionality, it is intended for animation rather than video editing and compositing. an ae user would find it difficult to do their type of work in this program