Sketch vs Polycam

Polycam is a capture pipeline. Four modes — Spatial, Object, Floorplan, Drone/Aerial — turn phone photos, LiDAR, 360 photospheres, and drone footage into 3D models, editable 2D/3D floor plans, and point clouds. The 2026 workflow additions are practical field guides: stairwell capture, stair dimensions (with the honest caveat that building codes still require a tape measure), and scanning muddy or dusty sites under silica rules. Floorplan output includes auto fixture and furniture detection, editable wall thickness, room labels, compass, and floor area calculation — the September note on using AI floor plans as scaled base models for interior design mood boards shows where that output actually gets reused. Measuring is ruler, pen, auto, and interior. Exports span mesh formats (GLTF, OBJ, FBX, DAE, STL, USDZ, ESX) and point clouds (PLY, LAS, Geo-LAS, PTS, XYZ, DXF), with integrations into SketchUp, Xactimate, Unity, Unreal, Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Rhino, Three.js, and Apple Vision Pro. Gaussian splatting and a free AI 3D model/texture generator round it out.

Sketch is a creation tool. The 2026.3 'Florence' release is a layout-engine update: stack layouts gained min/max sizes, relative (%) sizing, negative spacing, and z-index ordering, plus wider effects and shadow support. The editor carries boolean vector operations, nestable frames, Color Variables and tints, Oklab/Oklch perceptual gradients, shared component Libraries, Smart Animate prototyping with easing, overlays, hover/press/drag/swipe gestures, and multi-directional scroll areas. Prototypes test in any browser, on iPhone, or on iPad. Handoff is free for developers and clients, with real-time co-editing, Workspaces, and an MCP server connecting ChatGPT or Claude to designs. 2026.3.1 adds macOS 27 'Golden Gate' enhancements and four bug fixes. There is no overlap in capability with Polycam — different inputs, different outputs, different users.

Both are freemium, and that is the end of the similarity. Polycam's gate is capability, not seat count: the free tier is for trying capture, while the things professionals actually need — 2000-image photogrammetry, 30-minute video, point cloud exports, unlimited Gaussian splats — sit on Business and Enterprise. Enterprise is also where SSO, regional cloud storage, and dedicated support live, which means larger AEC organisations are effectively pushed to the top tier for procurement basics. The not_for list is refreshingly candid: hobbyists should not expect unlimited free scans, and teams needing SSO without stepping up will not get it. If you are pricing this per project rather than per seat, the scanner hardware you are replacing usually dwarfs the subscription.

Sketch's model is the opposite proposition: a published one-time $120 Mac license, aimed squarely at freelancers and small studios who dislike subscriptions. The real cost lever is handoff seats — unlimited free developer and client Viewer seats mean a 15-person agency does not pay for 15 licences to share work. There is no equivalent of Polycam's image-volume metering; the constraints are platform (macOS Sequoia 15.0.0 or newer, Sonoma dropped in 2026.3) and scope (Windows and Linux teams are out entirely). Compare Sketch to Figma on price and you have a real decision. Compare it to Polycam on price and the numbers describe two unrelated purchases.