The Noun Project vs Sketch Comparison 2026
Both cover design & graphics. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Icons on a licence that never expires
Interface design with a one-time licence
At a glance
- The Noun Project starts cheaper, at $3.33.
- Only The Noun Project has a free tier.
Side by side
The Noun Project | Sketch | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $3.33 | From $12 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier (they differ) | Yes | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | 30 days |
| API | 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.
The Noun Project
Icons on a licence that never expires
The Noun Project sells icons and photos on a royalty-free worldwide licence that the page says never expires, which is the part that matters for work shipped once and left alone for years. Contributors are paid from subscriptions, and the library is moderated rather than open, so quality is more even than an open marketplace. Plugins for Figma, Adobe and Office plus a Mac application mean an icon can be dropped in without a download step. A single icon can be bought outright for those who need one thing and not a subscription.
Our note
This is the one to pick when the licence outlives the project, since the page commits to worldwide rights that never expire and most competitors sell a subscription you have to keep paying. Flaticon is the better volume deal if you are downloading constantly and the attribution rules are the only thing you care about.
Only on this side
- Covers stock footage & assets
Sketch
Interface design with a one-time licence
Sketch draws interfaces in a Mac application and puts the reviewing half in a browser, so somebody signing off a screen needs no licence to open it. Editors are counted and viewers are not, which keeps a project's cost tied to the people actually moving pixels. Two ways to pay sit side by side: a subscription per editor, or a single payment that keeps working after the year of updates it includes runs out. Anybody designing on Windows is ruled out, because the editor itself is Mac only.
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.