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As the title reads, I'm looking for open source alternatives to balsamiq mockup for prototyping. Anyone knows of an equally good alternative that's open source or basically freeware.

Rob W
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Lingo
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  • Are you looking for free of charge (freeware, though this word is not well defined), or software with freedom (open source / Free Software) ? – ctrl-alt-delor May 22 '16 at 16:01
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    This is a pretty valid and relevant question to software development and I don't agree with the decision to close it. Maybe we need up/down voting for these decisions to let the community determine if a particular topic is worthy of remaining open. We are about serving the community at stackoverflow aren't we? – d512 Jun 12 '16 at 20:50

4 Answers4

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The best available Open source mock up tool is Pencil. Its available as firefox plugin as well as stand alone.

Another solution, which I personally use is Inkscape, an open source SVG Editor. It is NOT a mock up designer, but we can use it for designing mock ups, using freely available stencil kit, like Yahoo Stencil Kit.

Gringo Suave
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hfactor
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    I'm using Pencil now - the standalone version. It's very comprehensive and solidly built. Just download, make sure you've got xulrunner, and run: xulrunner application.ini – Andy Triggs May 31 '12 at 11:44
  • Well done @hfactor for answering the *question*! :-) Pencil is the best Open Source (GPL) alternative to balsamiq. Maquetta looks promising, but Pencil is mature > http://pencil.evolus.vn/ – nelsonic Mar 26 '13 at 11:29
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    I'm using the standalone version of Pencil and it's terribly buggy (as of 2014). Certain elements are not saved, pdf export is terrible, png export is incomplete, gui elements are not configurable/flexible enough. –  Feb 07 '14 at 09:17
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    Yes, Pencil is buggy, export is cumbersome and I've lost some data, too. Would not use it again. – nerdoc Feb 27 '14 at 12:54
  • The most recent version (2.0.5) is still a bit buggy, but I find it to be the best open source app available before moving to QTCreator or other such heavy apps. – dotancohen Jul 19 '14 at 12:37
  • Does Pencil anyway support the Right to Left languages?! I mean shapes and tables, can we change their direction to be delt with from right to left? – Yazid Erman Dec 11 '14 at 11:00
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Mockingbird is free during beta

Firefox's pencil add-on is free forever

Steve Claridge
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    Actually, Mockingbird is open source: https://bitbucket.org/gomockingbird/mockingbird/src – niutech Aug 11 '12 at 22:18
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    Tried accessing Mockingbird source on BitBucket and got "Access denied". so not quite "open source". By contrast Pencil http://pencil.evolus.vn/ is GPL. – nelsonic Mar 26 '13 at 11:12
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    @niutech Mockingbird isn't open source anymore – Tobias Oberrauch Dec 11 '13 at 09:44
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    No one can remove an open source license, so if you can get hold of an open source version, you can fork the project. The newer versions (as a whole) may never have been open source. The copyright owner, can duel licence and remove a licence from newer version, but all the original code is still under the old licence. – ctrl-alt-delor May 22 '16 at 16:07
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    The site is listing an old version of Pencil... One of the comments there refers to a new link at github: https://github.com/prikhi/pencil/releases – patrick Jan 21 '17 at 01:07
  • where is the old code? – h4ck3rm1k3 Dec 20 '17 at 09:46
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Take a look at Maqetta. It runs as a html5 app in your browser, so you can deploy it on your server to easily share your work with others, or you can simply start it locally and point your browser to localhost on port 50000.

On their homepage, you can test maqetta online (after registering), or download a package that contains everything needed to run it locally.

Resources:

kapa
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ben
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WireframeSketcher is not open-source but it's free for open-source developers. WireframeSketcher helps you quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It comes both as a standalone version and as a plug-in for Eclipse IDEs. It has some distinctive features like storyboards, components, linking and vector PDF export. Among supported IDEs are are Aptana, Flash Builder, Zend Studio and Rational Application Developer.

Sample WireframeSketcher mockup
(source: wireframesketcher.com)

Glorfindel
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Peter Severin
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