In this article
There is no single best Lottie editor, because these tools solve four different problems. Making motion from scratch. Editing a file somebody sent you. Building interactive animation. Converting formats. Pick the wrong category and even a great tool feels bad.
I build Lotiqlab, one of the tools below. Every competitor price here was checked against the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026, and where sources disagreed I say so instead of picking the number that suits me. Free tier terms in this category change often, so re-check before you commit money.
Work out which problem you have first
Most bad tool choices come from skipping this. A tool that is excellent at one of these is usually mediocre at another.
- Making it from scratch. You are designing motion and need a timeline, easing curves and a canvas. Heaviest requirement.
- Editing a file you were given. Somebody handed you a .json and it needs recolouring, retiming, resizing or a layer removed. You do not need a motion suite.
- Interactivity. The animation has to react to app state. Lottie is arguably the wrong format for this.
- Converting and cleanup. You have a Lottie and need a GIF, an MP4, or a smaller file. That is a converter.
What they cost, and who marks your exports
This is the chart I wanted when I started building in this space and could not find. Prices are annual billing where a discount exists, checked August 2026.
After Effects and Bodymovin
Still the most powerful way to make a Lottie, and still where the format came from. The JSON's field names are After Effects concepts. If you already know AE, nothing gives you the same control.
The costs are real. A subscription, a heavy desktop install, a long learning curve, and an export step that quietly drops features the runtimes do not support. That last one causes most of the "it looked right in AE" bug reports.
Right for professional motion designers already in Adobe. Wrong for one small edit to an existing file.
Lottielab
A browser motion design tool built specifically around Lottie, with a Figma-like canvas, real time collaboration, multiple pages per document and interactivity. Its own hero calls it the motion design tool for product teams and that is fair. LottieLab LTD raised a $4M seed led by Point Nine in April 2022, and for a team shipping motion every week it is a strong product.
The catch that sends people looking for alternatives: the free plan marks exports. Free gives you unlimited files, Figma import and export to Lottie, GIF and MP4, all watermarked. Watermark-free export sits in Pro, which is $12 per editor per month billed annually, $18 monthly.
Right for product teams shipping motion every week. Wrong for occasional use, where a per-seat subscription is out of proportion to the job.
LottieFiles
Mostly a library, a host and a hub rather than an editor. Its own platform page says design motion once, ship everywhere. The animation catalogue is the biggest anywhere and its plugins and player embeds are everywhere, which makes it the default first stop for people who need an animation rather than to make one. Design Barn Inc. has raised well over $45M, including a $37M Series B led by Square Peg in May 2022.
Individual is $19.99 per user per month on annual billing. I could not find evidence of a blanket watermark on free exports, so I am not claiming one. The real friction is per-asset licensing, which varies animation by animation, and the badge on the player embed, which is drawn by the player and not stored in your file.
Right for finding an animation you did not want to make. Wrong for making your own animations.
Rive
The most technically ambitious tool nearby. It is built around state machines, so your animation becomes a small program that responds to inputs from the app. For genuinely interactive UI motion there is nothing else like it.
It is also not a Lottie tool. Rive has its own format and its own runtimes, so choosing it means leaving Lottie behind. The editor is free, and shipping to web, iOS, Android, Unity and Unreal starts at $9 a month on the Cadet plan, $32 for Voyager.
Right for app interfaces where motion reacts to state. Wrong if your team is already set up to Lottie.
SVGator
SVG-first animation with a friendly editor and no code, plus Lottie export. If your target is the web and you like working in SVG, it is pleasant.
Its free tier has an interesting shape. Unlimited exports, and SVG comes out clean, but Lottie, video and image exports are watermarked. So SVGator is free right up until you need the format this article is about. Starter is $20 a month on annual billing and that is what unwatermarks Lottie. Pro is $24, Team is $27 a seat with a three seat minimum.
Right for web-only work made in SVG. Wrong when Lottie is the actual deliverable.
Jitter
Fast, Figma-like motion for marketing work, with templates and a low learning curve. The quickest route from a static design to something decent.
Free exports carry a mark. I am not quoting a price because I found four different numbers across four sources and none of them agreed, so check jitter.video directly.
Right for marketing motion in a hurry. Wrong for precise or long-form animation.
Glaxnimate
Free, open source, desktop, reads and writes Lottie. For people who want a real editor with no account and no subscription this is the honest answer and it deserves to be better known than it is.
The interface looks like open source desktop software, the learning curve is real, and there is no collaboration. But it is free forever and nobody is going to change its pricing on you.
Right for individuals who prefer local software. Wrong for teams, and for anyone who wants it to look modern.
Lotiqlab
The tool this site is, so weigh accordingly. It is a motion design tool that happens to run entirely in your browser: a Figma-style canvas, a real keyframe timeline with draggable easing, a layer stack, multi-page documents, and export to Lottie, dotLottie, GIF, MP4, WebM, PNG and SVG.
Two things make it different rather than just cheaper. Nothing is uploaded, because a Lottie is JSON and a browser parses JSON, so the whole thing runs on your machine with no queue and no upload ceiling. And AI mode writes real editable Lottie from a text prompt, so you can start from a sentence instead of a blank canvas and then take the result apart layer by layer.
Where it is weaker, plainly: it is new. There is no multiplayer editing, nothing close to Lottielab's collaboration maturity, and no stock library. It is one person's project, so there is no uptime guarantee and no support desk to escalate to. If a Lottie editor is load bearing in the work you ship, weigh that properly.
Right for anyone who wants a full motion tool without a subscription or an upload. Wrong for teams who need to work on the same animation at the same time.
So which one
If you make motion for a living and already know After Effects, stay there. If your team designs motion together every week, Lottielab is worth the seats. If your animation has to react to app state, use Rive and accept leaving Lottie behind. If you mostly need animations rather than to make them, start at LottieFiles. If you want free, local and open source, Glaxnimate.
And if you want the whole workflow in one browser tab with nothing uploaded and nothing to pay, from a prompt or a blank canvas through to a shipped dotLottie, that is the gap I built Lotiqlab for.