Photopea vs GIMP: Which is the best Photoshop replacement?

As alternatives to Photoshop, Photopea and GIMP couldn’t be more different from one another, despite both making good replacement tools. These two are often found in most lists of Photoshop alternatives, and for good reason. They can offer you different creative tools based on your own needs for your creative projects. While both are free to use, they come from different funding backgrounds and platform availability, too. They could both replace your Photoshop workflow, but which one would be best at it?

About Photoshop

What are we comparing against?

Photoshop has been around for decades as a desktop software, whether you install it via disk or via Creative Cloud. Photoshop is also available as a browser-based web app and a tablet app. Since February 2025, Photoshop has also been available on iPhone, offering the same power, performance, and similar functions regardless of platform.

Its interface is recognizable by its sleek design, nestled or floating tools, and its typical layout of a left-hand vertical toolbar, overhead contextual taskbar, and layer palette on the right-hand side.

Known for its functional layers and blending modes, Photoshop is also famed for its many selection tools, filters, and text tools. While it’s good for photo editing, it’s best for image manipulation, but you can also create vectors and animations with Photoshop.

Famously, Photoshop is only available via subscription from Adobe. It’s part of many subscription plans offered at a range of prices, with both monthly or annual payment options. Typically, it costs around $20-60 per month, depending on your plan, with mobile options ranging from $8 per month.

Photopea vs. GIMP: Interface and platform availability

Form, function, and power

Photopea has a visual interface that is remarkably similar to Photoshop’s, with a parred-down view. If you’re looking for a smoother learning curve, switching to Photopea is preferable due to its visual similarities. It has the majority of the same tool names, shortcuts, and tool placements as Photoshop, so you don’t have to learn many new features.

Photopea is a browser-based tool that requires no installation. It is ad-based, making it cost-free for users with unobtrusive ads set out of the way. You can access Photopea from any device that uses a browser, meaning it’s accessible for most platforms, including mobile.

GIMP is a powerful image manipulation software. It features a vastly different interface from Photoshop and Photopea — this means you’ll have a bit more of a learning curve if transitioning from Photoshop. It’s a little more cluttered than Photoshop’s interface.

GIMP is available as a free, open-source installed software. GIMP 3.0 was released in March 2025, providing a better UI, non-destructive editing, and extra features which push it closer to being a Photoshop replacement.

GIMP isn’t available on mobile, with official platforms only being cited as Linux, Windows, and macOS. You may find some unofficial GIMP apps for mobile as forked versions by other developers, though.

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GIMP 3.0 finally feels like a real contender

What does this software do?

Photopea largely has features similar to Photoshop’s, but it does not have AI tools. You’ll find a full toolbox of selection tools, crop and perspective, healing and cloning, brushes, gradients and fill, pen tools, vector shape tools, blur and sharpen, dodge and burn, and more within the main vertical toolbar. You’ll also find image, layer, and filter tools in the top menu, as well as the layers palette and more on the right-hand side — this lines up exactly the same as with Photoshop.

Photopea has plugins, like Photoshop, too. Although it doesn’t have a native animation timeline tool, there is a way to create animations from Photopea layers. Since Photoshop’s animation tool isn’t a major animation feature, it’s not a huge loss to Photopea not to have an integration animation tool.

GIMP is an image manipulation program in name and nature. It has a complex library of tools and a bunch of GIMP plugins to improve your processes. You can manipulate images in subtle or more progressive ways in GIMP, with such tools as the transform tools for fixing perspective distortion, channel mixer for fixing colors, and non-destructive filter editing.

Photopea vs. GIMP: Compatible external software

Which works with other tools better?

Photoshop is famed for its integration with the Adobe Creative Cloud, forming a suite of tools with which you can easily share projects, such as InDesign or Illustrator. However, with free tools, there are fewer integration options.

Photopea was a standalone browser tool for a long time, but in 2024, the Photopea developer introduced Vectorpea — which is similar to Adobe Illustrator for vector-based design. While you can’t directly edit Photopea projects in Vectorpea, or vice versa, having a vector tool that follows a similar design structure to Photopea for familiarity is a nice option. This also hints at the idea of a suite of tools in the future.

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7 reasons why Vectorpea could be your next Illustrator replacement

Free, browser-based vector design

You’ll also find plugin options for Photopea, which isn’t quite the same as finding compatible software, but it helps evolve Photopea to offer more tools than its native ones.

There is no such suite or similar software from the developers of GIMP. But similarly to Photopea, you can also install plugins in GIMP to improve your creative workflow​​, such as Darktable integration or BIMP, which helps you complete batch processes.

Save time by batch processing images in GIMP — here’s how to do it

Speed up your workflow

GIMP developers suggest using Inkscape and Scribus together alongside GIMP for a full desktop publishing workflow. It can also be integrated with further tools using programming languages, such as Python, Scheme, or Perl.

Despite not having much compatible software to share your projects with, both Photopea and GIMP have support for many format types, including PSD and others, allowing you to benefit from formats native to other software like Photoshop without requiring the tool.

Photopea is most similar to Photoshop

But GIMP is a more powerful tool

On the question of which is the best replacement for Photoshop, the answer would be Photopea. Its interface is almost exactly the same as its tool names and shortcuts, and you can achieve almost anything Photoshop offers — except AI features — with its tools or through loopholes.

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8 ways GIMP isn’t just a Photoshop alternative

It’s a powerful tool with its own strengths

But if you want a powerful creative tool that isn’t Photoshop, and you’re not trying to replicate the Photoshop experience, then GIMP is the better choice. It’s open-source, meaning you’re guaranteed privacy that you won’t get from ad-funded and proprietary Photopea.

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Photoshop is expensive, but it’s extremely hard to replace

I’ve mentioned multiple times in the past that paying for software is somewhat difficult for me, and I understand how that’s a bad mindset to have. But even as frugal as I am, there is one piece of software I’ve come to absolutely depend on in recent years, and it’s Photoshop along with Lightroom.

Even as expensive as this bundle is ($20/month is no joke), I can’t imagine doing my job without them. It’s a lot of little tasks that make all the difference for me. Removing backgrounds from an image precisely? It’s so much easier with Photoshop’s cloud selection and easy refinement tools. And just fixing up the lighting in a photo is super easy with Lightroom’s auto adjustments, along with lens correction and the incredibly impressive AI Denoise feature.

This is the pair of tools I am okay paying for, even if I do so begrudgingly. Do you also have a tool that you pay for despite trying to avoid it? What is it?

You should replace Photoshop with GIMP

If I had to choose between Photopea and GIMP, it would depend on my purpose. If you already know how to use Photoshop but are not bothered about creating huge complex projects, I would use Photopea. If you’re looking to learn software in depth, most especially if you’re not coming directly from Photoshop, and you want to create large, complex, manipulated images, I would recommend using GIMP. Generally, GIMP would be the better replacement for Photoshop due to its complexity of features and its open-source privacy and community.