A desktop figure editor built on thousands of openly licensed illustrations of cells, viruses, organs, molecules and lab equipment. Drag them onto a canvas, recolour them, label them, and export high-resolution PNG, or vector SVG and PDF ready for journals.
No account, no subscription, completely local. Windows, macOS and Linux.
Built for the figures scientists actually make: labelled schematics, multi-panel layouts and graphical abstracts, exported the way journals want them.
NIH BioArt ships inside the app. Add more from the built-in Art Store whenever you want them, each checked on download and labelled with its licence.
Change one colour and every shape using it follows, or double-click to edit a single piece. Try it:
Split a page into panels with automatic A, B, C labels and even spacing, the way journal figures are laid out.
PNG at 1×, 2× or 4× for slides and posters, and vector SVG and PDF that stay sharp at any size.
SVGs from R (ggplot2, svglite) and Python (matplotlib) arrive as recolourable artwork and stay vector.
Name a figure and it saves as you work. If something goes wrong, your unsaved changes are offered back.
Making a figure for a paper usually means paying for a subscription or fighting general vector software that knows nothing about biology. Morphly is a third option.
| Morphly | BioRender | GraphPad Prism | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open source (MIT) | Paid plans for publication use | Paid licence |
| Where it runs | Desktop, fully offline | In the browser, with an account | Desktop |
| Unpublished work | Never leaves your machine | Stored online | Stays local |
| Scientific illustrations | NIH BioArt built in, more as Art Packs | Proprietary library | Not its focus |
| Graphs and statistics | Coming in 0.5 | Basic charts | Its specialty |
Based on each product's public information in 2026. Plans and features change, so check their sites for current details.
Every illustration carries a badge in the library. Morphly writes the credits for you and warns you before exporting anything with strings attached.
Use it anywhere, for anything. Credit is appreciated but not required. Most of NIH BioArt is here.
Credit the artist. Tick "Append asset citations" on export and the correctly formatted credits are written into your figure.
Credit required, and your figure may have to carry the same open licence. Fine for open access, worth a thought otherwise.
The canvas editor, vector recolouring, several figures per file, the Art Store, and builds for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Glue points, curved and elbow connectors, smart guides, editing parts of a drawing, SVG import, panel layouts, autosave and crash recovery.
GraphPad-style datasets and graphs (bar charts with points and error bars, box plots, scatter and XY plots), common statistics checked against R, JPEG export, and a layout that is easier to pick up.
An MCP server, so assistants such as Claude Code and Codex can build figures on request. The result is an ordinary .morphly file you keep editing by hand, and it all runs locally.
Pick the installer for your computer.
SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.
Drag Morphly to Applications. The first time, right-click it and choose Open.
Drag Morphly to Applications. The first time, right-click it and choose Open.
Make it executable, then run it: chmod +x Morphly-0.4.0.AppImage
The installers are not code-signed, because Apple and Microsoft charge for certificates and Morphly is a free academic project. The one-time warning is expected. Every release, and every older version, is archived on Zenodo.
Illustrations should be credited to their own libraries, which Morphly does on export. For Morphly itself:
Saadat, A. (2026). Morphly: a free desktop editor for scientific figures (version 0.4.0) [Software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22761841