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🔥 Design real websites right on the canvas.

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weheartit.com
A visual reference manager for creatives. Organize your reference library and build moodboards on an infinite canvas, all in one desktop app.

Which is more popular?
Based on our record, Framer seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 19 times since March 2021.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | framer.com | refern.app |
| Pricing | ||
| Platforms | — | |
| Company | Startup from The Netherlands · 50 - 99 employees · 2013 | Startup from Canada · 1 - 9 employees · 2026 |
| Listed in |
In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.


No description of Framer yet.
refern is a local-first desktop app for collecting, organizing, and working with visual references. The library side gives you folders, hierarchical tags, smart folders, ratings, color labels, color search by hex, image-to-image visual similarity, and more than 14 typed search operators, all...
What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


No analysis of Framer yet.
Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
Introducing Framer Playground
More videos
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How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


As answered by people managing Framer and refern..
refern.'s answer:
I'm an artist, and too often I was frustrated: I couldn't find the right pictures, I struggled to organize and keep track of my reference images, and I was juggling too many apps when all I wanted to do was draw. I wanted one tool that could do it all, with every component well integrated. So I made refern.
refern.'s answer:
The flow of collecting references for art usually goes like this:
find references and inspiration online -> save and organize those images -> use them on their own or in a moodboard -> reuse them for the next project or share them with others
Normally that means a different app for each step. refern does all of it in one place, with every part built to work together.
refern.'s answer:
Most tools solve only one part of the reference workflow, so artists end up juggling several. refern combines them in one app: Eagle-style organization and search, a PureRef-style infinite canvas, and an Obsidian-style graph of how your references connect. It never copies your files, so it doesn't double your disk usage. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, works fully offline, and is a $30 one-time purchase with no subscription. Built in Rust, it stays fast even on libraries with hundreds of thousands of images.
refern.'s answer:
Individual artists and creative professionals: illustrators, concept artists, digital painters, designers, and photographers. They collect and organize large libraries of visual references, build moodboards, and study from reference. refern is built for solo creators rather than teams, spanning hobbyists and students through working professionals.
refern.'s answer:
refern is a Tauri v2 desktop app with a Rust backend and a React 19 (with React Compiler) plus TypeScript frontend. Data is stored locally in SQLite (rusqlite) with FTS5 full-text search. The interface uses Tailwind CSS, Zustand, and TanStack Query, with motion/react for animation. The infinite canvas and graph view are built on react-three-fiber and three.js. Thumbnailing, perceptual hashing, and color and visual similarity run in Rust with rayon and SIMD.
Share your experience with using Framer and refern.. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.


Framer is known as the best Figma alternative for layout and design options available. Use the stop points in Framer to make sure your website functions properly on all devices. You can alter navigation bars, logos,...
Use Framer’s breakpoints to ensure your website works seamlessly on any device. Extensive no-code positioning options allow you to customize navigation bars, badges, sidebars, and other elements to create a website...
Framer is known for having a steep learning curve. Due to its feature-rich interface, it takes fundamental design knowledge to master the platform. However, prototypes created with Framer are almost similar to the...
We have no reviews of refern. yet. Be the first one to post
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


Framer Framer.com Prototyping tool with free tier for small projects. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Another thing to think about is taking advantage of a free Stripe account, and creating products, with a free payment links to start accepting payments for products without a website. You could build a free website with framer.com... Source: almost 3 years ago
Is this only on framer.com? If you load https://app.framerstatic.com/tinyTourCardDark-TORTZ2D4.png on its own what do you see? Source: almost 3 years ago
Tracking refern. since Mar 2024.
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