# Crochet design software, compared

> A plain comparison of crochet design software: chart tools, pattern tools and reader apps are three different jobs wearing one name. Prices checked 13 August 2026.

**The category is three jobs, not one.** Searching for crochet design software returns three kinds of program under one name, and being sent to the wrong kind is why people conclude the category is useless. A **chart tool** says what colour each stitch is — graphgans, C2C, tapestry. A **pattern tool** says what each stitch does — shapes worked in the round. A **reader app** does not design anything; it keeps your place in a PDF you already own. The line that catches people is the first one: a grid has no cell for "work two stitches into this one", so no chart tool can tell you where to increase to turn a flat disc into a sphere.

## Chart tools — colourwork, graphs, C2C

| Tool | What it is | Price (checked 13 August 2026) | The catch |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Stitch Fiddle](https://www.stitchfiddle.com/en) | Colour a grid in the browser, upload a picture to convert, and export the chart. Covers crochet, knitting, cross stitch and more. | Free for 15 charts up to 300×300; Premium $2.75/month paid yearly ($33), or $5.50 for a single month, with no automatic renewal. | It charts colour, not construction. It cannot tell you where to increase to make a sphere, because that is not what a grid describes. |
| [WinStitch / MacStitch](https://www.ursasoftware.com/) | Desktop charting with decades of development behind it, and the one most often recommended for C2C and graphgans by people who make them for a living. | A one-off desktop licence. | Desktop software, and a working day to learn. Overkill unless charts are most of what you do. |
| [Stitchboard](https://stitchboard.com/) | Turns a photo into a crochet or knitting graph in a browser, with no account. | Free, with paid extras. | Photo-to-graph and little else. It is a converter rather than a design tool. |

## Pattern tools — shapes worked in the round

| Tool | What it is | Price (checked 13 August 2026) | The catch |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [CrochetPARADE](https://www.crochetparade.org/) | Writes patterns in its own notation and renders them in 2D and 3D, with physics, mesh export and a Blender pipeline. Open source, GPLv3, by a named author. | Free. | Built by and for someone comfortable learning a grammar. There is no path from it to a PDF you could hand a customer, and none is intended. |
| [Amigurumio](https://amigurum.io/crochet/) | Assembles an amigurumi from prefabricated parts and gives you the pattern as a PDF. The quickest route from nothing to a finished toy. | Free, with a paid premium PDF. | You choose from its pieces rather than writing your own rounds. It is a generator, not an editor. |
| [Amigurumake](https://amigurumake-studio.com/) | The closest thing to a direct competitor of ours: write a pattern, preview it in 3D, export a PDF, and run the selling side — pricing, translation, catalogue. | Free tier; $27/month Creator, $59/month Pro. | Priced for someone whose crochet is a business. If you are not selling patterns, most of what you are paying for is the shop. |
| [Crochet 3D — ours](https://crochet3d.com/editor) | Write the rounds in plain text; it checks every stitch count as you type and builds the piece in 3D. Free tier, paid plans for multi-piece projects, PDF export and a commercial licence. | Free tier with 3 saved patterns; paid plans from €6.99/month. | It is for pieces worked in the round. It draws no colour charts and has no garment shaping. If you want a graphgan, one of the chart tools above is the right answer and this is not. |

### Feature by feature

| Can it… | CrochetPARADE | Amigurumio | Amigurumake | Crochet 3D |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| You write the rounds yourself (Amigurumio assembles the toy from its own prefabricated parts instead.) | yes | no | yes | yes |
| The piece appears in 3D | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Stitch counts checked as you type (Neither CrochetPARADE nor Amigurumake says either way on its own site — read those two as unknown, not as no.) | not stated by the vendor | no | not stated by the vendor | yes |
| A PDF you can hand a customer (CrochetPARADE says outright that there is no path to one, and does not intend there to be.) | no | yes | yes | yes |
| A commercial licence for what you design | not stated by the vendor | not stated by the vendor | yes | yes |
| Free tier that does not expire | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Free and open source (CrochetPARADE is GPLv3, by a named author. The other three, ours included, are not.) | yes | no | no | no |
| Finished toy in ten minutes, nothing to learn (The trade is control: you are choosing from its pieces, not designing.) | no | yes | no | no |
| Colour charts — graphgan, C2C, tapestry (No pattern tool does this. It is what the chart tools above are for, and it is the single most common reason people decide this category is useless.) | no | no | no | no |
| What the paid plan costs | nothing | premium PDF | $27–59/mo | €6.99/mo |

We make one of the tools in the second table. It is not at the top of it, and its entry states what it cannot do in the same voice as everyone else's — a vendor's roundup that ranks the vendor first is the genre this comparison exists to be better than.

## Reader apps

Pattern Keeper and its equivalents open a PDF you already own, keep your place and tick off rows. They come up in the same searches and solve a different problem, so they are named rather than ranked here.

**The full page** — the three-jobs table, the "so which one" guide and six questions answered — is at [https://crochet3d.com/crochet-design-software](https://crochet3d.com/crochet-design-software).

Source: https://crochet3d.com/crochet-design-software