Glaxnimate

Glaxnimate is a free desktop editor for making Lottie animations, the lightweight vector animations that play in apps and on the web. LottieFiles is the usual on-ramp here, but it's a hosted platform that meters exports and nudges you toward paid plans. Glaxnimate runs on your own machine, exports the same Lottie JSON, and costs nothing. GPL licensed, now maintained under the KDE project.

There's no server and no account: you install it and open it like any other app on Windows, Linux, or macOS. It edits vector shapes on a timeline and exports to Lottie, SVG, animated PNG, GIF, or video. It won't feel as polished as a commercial tool, the interface is functional rather than slick, and serious motion-graphics work still belongs in After Effects with the Bodymovin exporter. For icons, loaders, and simple UI animation, it does the job without a subscription.

This is the right tool if you make the occasional Lottie animation and don't want a hosted platform metering your exports or watching over your shoulder. Solo developers and small teams: this covers you for free. Larger design teams already living in After Effects will keep using that plus Bodymovin, and reach for Glaxnimate when they want a quick standalone edit without firing up the Adobe stack.

The catch is reach. Glaxnimate's real home is GitLab under KDE, so its GitHub presence looks tiny and the project moves at the pace of a small volunteer team. It's stable and actively maintained, but don't expect the tutorial library, the marketplace, or the collaboration features a hosted platform sells you. You're trading the ecosystem for ownership and a price of zero.