LottieFiles vs Rive Comparison 2026
Both cover motion graphics & animation and design & graphics. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Lottie animations, from library to production
Interactive animation that ships into an app
At a glance
- Rive starts cheaper, at $9.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
LottieFiles | Rive | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $19.99 | From $9 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | None |
| API | Yes | Yes |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
LottieFiles
Lottie animations, from library to production
LottieFiles is everything that grew around a file format: a library of ready animations, tools to edit and optimise them, and the players that put them into a site or an app. A Lottie is vector, so it scales and stays small, which is why it ended up in most modern interfaces rather than a GIF. Designers hand off to developers here without a video file in between. It is not where the animation gets made from scratch.
Our note
Most people need the free tier and a player, not a subscription, so start there and only pay when the editing or the private hosting becomes the blocker. The paid plans are aimed at teams producing animations rather than at people using them.
Rive
Interactive animation that ships into an app
Rive is the one to reach for when the animation has to respond to something rather than play. A state machine is built alongside the artwork, and runtimes drop the result into a real product. For a creator that mostly means website and app work rather than video, and the learning curve is closer to a design tool than to a filter.
Our note
Rive and Jitter get compared and should not be. Jitter makes a video; Rive makes a thing that reacts. If nobody is going to click it, Rive is the harder tool for no gain.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.