10 Popular Illustrator Plugins & Inkscape Equivalents Summary of Differences While Illustrator relies on paid third-party extensions for advanced, high-speed workflows, Inkscape (open-source) includes most of these capabilities natively or via free Python-based extensions. Inkscape users often rely on the Path Effects (LPE) menu for non-destructive, dynamic, and live editing, which provides functionality similar to many paid Illustrator plugins.