Adobe XD vs. Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe XD
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Adobe XD is a prototyping and UX/UI option for website and mobile application design, featuring a range of UI tools and and templates, a versatile artboard and contextual layer panels, and deep integration with Adobe's creative suite of products for fast import of objects from these applications.
$33.99
per month per license
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Pricing
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Editions & Modules
Individual
$9.99 ($119.88)
per month (annual, prepaid)
Students & Teachers - All Apps
$19.99 ($239.88)
per month, annual plan (for the year)
Business - Single App
$33.99
per month per license
Business - All Apps
$79.99
per month per license
Schools & Universities - Institution Wide
Contact Sales
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Considered Both Products
Adobe XD
Chose Adobe XD
I have tried Sketch to see how it compares to Adobe XD but that didn't last long and i will stick to XD.
Chose Adobe XD
XD can do everything we need and more. It's already part of our Creative Cloud subscription and integrates with our current tools. It was really easy to get to work and establish a workflow for almost all projects where we are designing, prototyping, and iterating. Feedback and …
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
VS Code and Atom are very similar, but VSC has clearly won out. The extension library is even bigger, and the community only continues to grow. VSC has some nice layout features, like the icons bar to get to common features and a really nice settings/customization editor. I …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code has the advantage of being free to use, open source, and very customizable and lightweight. Some of the other text editors/IDE's lack some of these key features that I consider to be of extreme importance, and Visual Studio Code can be tailored to …
Best Alternatives
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Small Businesses
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.5 out of 10
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.5 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.5 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
5.5
(34 ratings)
8.7
(91 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.7
(3 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
Usability
5.5
(3 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(16 ratings)
9.7
(23 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe XDMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
If its already part of your organization, and they have a license for Creative Cloud, its worth learning. It doesnt take long to get started, but compared to other software in the same field, its lacking in many ways, from quality of life features to just simply not having the option for Darkmode. Even for website design, UX/UI, and mocking up proof-of-concepts, there are much better tools like Figma.
Read full review
Microsoft
As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
Read full review
Pros
Adobe
  • Easy and simple animations.
  • Good tool for website mock-ups.
  • Easy user interface and tools that are like most Adobe products.
  • You can share a dev link and it displays all assets for developers to download or user like it's very own style guide.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Integrate with the git repository very well.
  • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
  • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
  • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • Doesn’t have image editing tools, so having to go back to Photoshop or Lightroom just to make a sight edit can be a pain.
  • Could add some text editing functionality. It feels silly that I have to draw a line under text when I should just be able to underline.
  • Would be nice to have some real-time collaboration functionality.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
  • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
  • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We utilize many of the applications in the Adobe CC suite and our usage of this application came about simply because it was the one that was already paid for. Bearing that in mind we will definitely be renewing the software upon the expiration of the licensing. I am not sure if this is the solution we would go with were it not already included, we would have to evaluate all other options
Read full review
Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
Adobe XD is basically on life-support now, there are much better software out there that do everything XD can do, and a few that you don't even have to pay a monthly subscription fee on. While Adobe XD is great as shortcuts that are used in other CC software works, and its integration with CC is great. But it still lacks compared to its closest competitor.
Read full review
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
Read full review
Performance
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
Read full review
Support Rating
Adobe
I have not had a need to connect with the Adobe XD support team as of yet, but from past experience when dealing with the other products, the support has been very very good, and I would have no reason to think that this product would be any different. There are a good number of training videos on the Adobe site for this product as well as on other social media sites so a quick search should let you find the answers in several different ways.
Read full review
Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Adobe
Implementation was a snap
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Before XD came to the company, screens were designed in Illustrator or Photoshop and a PDF presentation was generated, which was extremely time-consuming. XD saved us a lot of time (and money) by generating interactive prototypes, which are much more tangible for the client than a PDF. The "fight" with Figma is frequent. Both have features in which they are better than their competition. And, while I still choose Adobe XD, don't rule out moving to Figma with its multiple updates.
Read full review
Microsoft
Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
Read full review
Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Ease of use means we are up and running in no time.
  • Integrates and is a part of the Adobe CC platform (which we already subscribe to) so there was no additional cost.
  • Online proofing and developer handoff links are the icing on the cake. Keeps everything in one place.
  • Handles all our assets (mostly created in Illustrator) like a dream. Even imports native Photoshop docs, too, so that saves us so much time round tripping.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
  • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
  • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
  • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
Read full review
ScreenShots