- You know After Effects, or want its timeline: EffectCraft, free in the browser, exports
.jsonand.lottie. - A handful of UI animations in a simpler editor: LottieFiles Creator, in the browser, free for five exports.
- An open-source desktop app made for vector animation: Glaxnimate.
- You already pay for After Effects: keep using it with an export plugin.
Updated October 14, 2026. Written for EffectCraft 0.9.2 (what changed since). Prices in USD.
| Tool | Runs | Price | Lottie in and out | How you animate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EffectCraft | Browser (also Windows, macOS, Linux) | Free, open source | Imports and exports .json and .lottie | Works like After Effects: comps, layers, keyframes, expressions |
| LottieFiles Creator | Browser | Free with 5 exports; Individual $19.99 per user a month, billed annually | Imports Lottie, dotLottie and SVG; exports Lottie | Its own editor, built for Lottie |
| Glaxnimate | Desktop: Linux, Windows, macOS | Free, open source (GPL-3.0+) | Lottie among its formats | Its own vector animation editor |
| After Effects + Bodymovin or the LottieFiles plugin | Desktop | After Effects subscription; Bodymovin is open source (MIT) | Exports Lottie | The original workflow |
EffectCraft: the After Effects way, in a browser tab
EffectCraft is an open-source compositor built to behave like After Effects, and Lottie export is built in rather than added by a plugin. File › Export › Lottie JSON… writes the active composition; name the file .lottie instead of .json and you get the zipped dotLottie package. File › Import › Lottie… opens an existing animation as a new composition, so you can fix a file someone else made.
A logo animation from start to finish:
- Open effectcraft.run/editor and start with File › New › New Project.
- Set the canvas. Composition › New Composition… at the size the developer asked for (a 512 x 512 icon, for example) and the frame rate of the app, often 30 or 60 fps.
- Bring in the artwork. Import an SVG with File › Import › File…, add it to the comp, then use Layer › Create › Create Shapes from Vector Layer so its paths become editable shape layers. Or draw shapes directly with the shape tools.
- Animate with keyframes on transform and shape properties: Trim Paths for line drawing, scale and rotation for pops, F9 for Easy Ease.
- Export with File › Export › Lottie JSON…. A message counts the warnings, one for each thing Lottie couldn't express.
- Test it in the target player. Load the file in the web, iOS or Android player the app uses before you hand it over.
That last step matters because Lottie is a smaller format than a compositor. What carries over from an EffectCraft comp:
| Part of the comp | In the Lottie file |
|---|---|
| Shape, solid, text, image, null and precomp layers | Exported as the matching Lottie layer types; precomps become assets, still images are embedded |
| Keyframes | Eased, linear and hold keys, spatial curves on motion paths |
| Masks, track mattes, parenting, time remapping | Exported; mask feather is written but not every player draws it |
| Blend modes | The 18 that Lottie defines; others fall back to Normal |
| Effects | Only Gaussian Blur, Tint, Tritone, Drop Shadow, Fill and the expression controls; the rest are dropped |
| Text animators | Position, scale, rotation, opacity, tracking, skew, fill and stroke; one range selector per animator |
| Not exported | Video footage, audio, cameras and lights, layer styles, adjustment layers, 3D models, and expressions when you export from the menu |
Two things catch people out. Text is exported as live Lottie text that names its font, so the player must have that font; for a word that doesn't need to change, Layer › Create › Create Shapes from Text turns it into outlines first. And expressions are left out of a menu export, so a wiggle() on a layer exports as its plain value. Select the property and run Animation › Keyframe Assistant › Convert Expression to Keyframes before exporting; the LottieFiles compatibility table gives the same advice for After Effects files.
EffectCraft costs nothing and needs no account, and the online editor runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS in a desktop browser. It is young: its developers call it alpha. Its viewer previews the composition, not the exported file, so the test in the target player is the real check. The browser build has three fonts (Inter, Noto Serif and JetBrains Mono); the desktop app uses your installed fonts.
LottieFiles Creator: simplest for UI motion
LottieFiles Creator is a browser editor made for Lottie, by the company behind the LottieFiles library and players. You drag in or paste an SVG, animate it and export it as Lottie. It is built around that one output format, which suits button states, loaders and onboarding illustrations, and it saves you from learning a full compositor for them.
The catch is the export count. The Creator FAQ says free users can create as many files as they like but export only five animations. After that, LottieFiles Individual is $19.99 per user a month billed annually ($239.88 a year), and Team is $24.99 per user a month. Those plans also bring hosting, optimization and collaboration, which matter more to teams than to a one-off project.
Glaxnimate: open source on the desktop
Glaxnimate is a free vector animation app under GPL-3.0 or later, now part of KDE, with version 0.6.0 released in March 2026. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS, and its supported formats include Lottie, animated SVG, animated WebP and Android vector drawables. It is a good fit if you want an offline tool designed around vector animation rather than compositing. It has its own interface, so After Effects habits don't transfer the way they do in EffectCraft.
After Effects with a plugin: still the reference
Lottie started as a player for After Effects animations exported with Bodymovin, an open-source plugin, and LottieFiles makes its own After Effects plugin as well. If you already have an After Effects plan for other work, there is no reason to switch for Lottie. Starting a subscription just for Lottie makes sense only if you also need After Effects plugins or must exchange .aep projects with a studio; none of the tools above can open those.
Choosing between the two browser tools
The real decision for most people is EffectCraft or Creator. For one to five small UI animations, Creator's free exports cover it, and its editor is quicker to pick up if you have never used a compositor. Once you are making many versions, need precomps, masks, track mattes or expression controls, or already think in After Effects terms, EffectCraft has no export limit and keeps the whole project as a readable .ecproj file you can version with the code.
Whichever you use, run this check before handing the file over:
- The file plays in the exact player the app uses (lottie-web, lottie-ios, lottie-android or dotLottie).
- Fonts are either outlined or shipped with the app.
- No expressions remain; they are baked to keyframes.
- The frame rate and size match what the developer asked for.
If the animation is mostly type, our guide to animating text online marks which text presets survive the Lottie export. For a wider look at free replacements for each Adobe app, see the open-source Adobe alternatives roundup.