# Adobe Illustrator

17 Hacker News commenters recommended Adobe Illustrator and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Industry-standard vector editor that people say has no close alternative and works well with other Adobe apps. Main caveats are Adobe's subscription cost and recurring bugs.

## Why people recommend it

- Industry standard with no close alternative (5 comments): "Adobe sucks but no alternative comes even close to Photoshop and Illustrator." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139222)) "Photohsop, Illustrator and After Effects are pretty much industry standards." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46602152)) "Still, After Effect, Illustrator, Indesign are very good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47825769))
- Works well with other Adobe apps (3 comments): "designs can be done in illustrator and imported as DXF" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46766093)) "At least Adobe file formats are well documented" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997219)) "it works great with Illustrator" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48036284))
- Strong professional tools for precise drawing (3 comments): "Adobe Illustrator with the $30 Silhouette plug in on a Silhouette 4 worked close to as well as the dedicated software and hardware I used professionally" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46091185)) "pro-level manual Photoshop or Illustrator editing for individual elements in an image" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48474922)) "its line drawing was pretty good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46595369))
- Better than Inkscape (2 comments): "the foundations seem to be much worse than Illustrator" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725273)) "Illustrator is still much better than Inkscape." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45974326))

## What people warn about

- Bugs and performance problems (4 comments): "Apple Silicon support was really bad for a couple of years (tons of GPU issues in Illustrator) but I will admit it's better now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892575)) "Lots of problems in Adobe Creative Cloud on Win 11 (primarily Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) in recent months too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921126)) "Adobe Illustrator and InDesign were major pain points on the Windows side" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48360376))
- Costly Adobe subscription (2 comments): "I may loathe Adobe and wish I didn't have to pay them another dime" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50027126)) "$264/year each for Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47826431))
- Missing features compared with Figma (3 comments): "Something Adobe Illustrator has failed to do (without bending over backwards) for thirtynine years!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50242157)) "IMO working with groups in Figma is much more powerful than illustrator" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46928551)) "It's unfortunate there's not a real Illustrator equivalent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997157))
- Dislike of Adobe as a company (2 comments): "Adobe sucks but no alternative comes even close to Photoshop and Illustrator." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139222)) "Illustrator users were much more frustrated with Adobe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967128))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Affinity Designer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/affinity-designer.md): 14 recommend
- [VectorNest](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vectornest.md): 8 recommend
- [VectorCraft](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vectorcraft.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Adobe Illustrator", https://hackerapproved.com/p/adobe-illustrator/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).