LabFig
LabFig turns a prompt, sketch, PDF, or lab photo into an editable vector scientific figure draft with panels, labels, and arrows in place.
If your bottleneck is redrawing schematics, LabFig removes the worst of it: a sketch or a prompt becomes a journal-grade draft in minutes, and the Vector Canvas means you are not stuck with whatever the model produced. Pick it over generic AI image generators specifically for the editable vector output — the region inpainting and SVG/PDF export are why it survives a revision cycle. Skip it if you need full Bézier-level illustration control or programmatic figure generation. Budget the credits honestly: iteration is where they go, and Standard at $29.9/mo billed annually (or $39.9/mo monthly) is the realistic tier once you are running image-guided and PDF workflows.
Verified 5d ago · liveness 74/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/labfig
- Grad students and postdocs who need a reviewable figure draft before journal submission
- Labs standardizing figure style across papers using Reference to Figure
- Authors adapting old schematics for review articles without redrawing them
- Researchers without design training who need editable SVG or 300 dpi PNG output
- Labs that require on-premises or air-gapped deployment — LabFig is cloud-only
- Anyone needing full Bezier-level vector control for custom illustration
- Teams wanting programmatic figure generation through a documented API
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Skip LabFig if you need on-premises or air-gapped deployment, full Bezier-level illustration control, or a documented API for programmatic figure generation.
Credits differ in price by workflow, so the headline draft counts (600, 3,000, 9,000) assume simple text-to-figure runs — image-guided PDF and photo workflows consume more per figure.
LabFig prices below general-purpose design seats but above free academic drawing tools. Starter at $7.9/mo billed annually ($94.8/yr) or $9.9/mo monthly fits one occasional figure; Standard at $29.9/mo billed annually ($358.8/yr) or $39.9/mo monthly is the realistic single-researcher tier; Premium at $79.9/mo billed annually ($958.8/yr) or $99.9/mo monthly suits a lab running several papers. Annual billing saves roughly 20–25% versus monthly.
In short
LabFig — LabFig turns a prompt, sketch, PDF, or lab photo into an editable vector scientific figure draft with panels, labels, and arrows in place. Best for Grad students and postdocs who need a reviewable figure draft before journal submission, Labs standardizing figure style across papers using Reference to Figure, Authors adapting old schematics for review articles without redrawing them. Free to start; paid plans from $7.9/mo.
What's new in LabFig
Checked 5 days agoAcross the latest 1 update: 1 feature update.
What people actually say about LabFig — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
21 mentions across 2 sources (YouTube, Product Hunt) · researched Jul 26, 2026.
Average across the 2 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Handles rough sketches and photos and produces clean figures.
- +Vector-first editing keeps all elements editable.
- +Six visual styles match Nature, Cell, IEEE aesthetics.
- +Text-to-figure from natural language descriptions is intuitive.
- +Fast creation workflow – figures in seconds instead of hours.
- −No direct export to journal templates like Nature or IEEE.
- −Missing citation overlay feature for figure annotations.
- −Very limited community reviews – risk of undiscovered bugs.
- −Off-topic YouTube posts suggest weak real-world buzz.
- −Pricing not fully transparent beyond freemium tiers.
- • Premium features like batch generation and figure enhancer require paid plans
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is LabFig? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Text to Figure: generate a schematic from a natural language prompt
- Sketch to Figure: convert whiteboard or notebook photos into journal-grade figures
- PDF to Figure: extract and redraw schematics from research PDFs
- Photo to Figure: turn lab photos into publication figures
- Reference to Figure: replicate style and layout from an existing figure
- Photo to Figure and Reference to Figure support multi-image context
- Vector Canvas: edit every text, arrow, shape, and color after generation
- Region inpainting: select part of a figure and regenerate it with one prompt
- Full undo / redo in the Vector Canvas
- Figure Enhancer: clean up color and line weights on reused figures
- Six journal-grade styles: Scientific, Line, 3D, Editorial, Sketch, Watercolor
- Auto mode: style follows the tone of your prompt
- Export SVG, PDF, and PNG at 300 dpi
- AI Tools hub with a task-based selector comparing seven figure workflows
- Scientific figure templates across disciplines (protein-ligand binding, diffusion models, neural circuits, Li-ion battery, scRNA-seq workflow)
About LabFig
LabFig is an AI scientific figure generator for researchers and graduate students who need a reviewable schematic draft without a detour through Illustrator. The workbench accepts six inputs — a text description, a hand-drawn sketch, a reference figure, a research PDF, a lab photo, or an existing figure you want cleaned up — and converges them into one publication-ready draft with panels, labels, and arrows in place. Seven workbench paths cover the common cases: Text to Figure, Sketch to Figure, Reference to Figure, PDF to Figure, Photo to Figure, Figure Enhancer, and Vector Canvas. What separates it from one-shot AI image tools is the Vector Canvas, where every text, arrow, shape, and color stays editable after generation — relabel a panel, recolor it, or select a region and regenerate just that part with a single prompt. Six journal-grade styles (Scientific, Line, 3D, Editorial, Sketch, Watercolor) plus an Auto mode let you match the look of a Nature, Cell, or IEEE figure and keep it consistent across a paper. Export lands as SVG, PDF, or PNG at 300 dpi. Figure generation runs on credits rather than seats, and failed tasks restore their credits automatically. A v2.1.0 update added an AI Tools hub with a task-based selector, reworked Showcases with discipline tags, and organization-level authorship and last-reviewed dates on the Blog guides. LabFig says it is used by 100,000+ researchers at leading institutions, and the homepage plainly states that AI drafts require scientific review — labels, relationships, and source permissions must be verified before publication.
Behind the Verdict
LabFig's real selling point is not generation quality — it is that the output stays editable. Every text, arrow, shape, and color in a generated figure can be changed in the Vector Canvas, and a selected region can be regenerated with one prompt instead of re-rolling the whole figure. For a manuscript workflow that is the difference between a novelty and a tool: you generate, then you correct labels and relationships before submission. The six-input design is unusually broad. Text to Figure and Sketch to Figure cover the ideation end; PDF to Figure and Figure Enhancer cover the revise-and-resubmit end, where you need an old schematic redrawn at journal resolution. Photo to Figure and Reference to Figure support multi-image context, which matters when you want a lab-setup photo and a style reference considered together. The six styles plus Auto mode address a problem most AI image tools ignore: a paper's figures need to look like they were made by one team. The weaknesses are structural, not cosmetic. LabFig is cloud-only, so labs with air-gapped or on-prem requirements are out. There is no documented API, so programmatic or batch figure generation is not on the table. It is not a replacement for dedicated vector illustration software when you need custom hand-drawn art. And the credit meter is the thing to watch: every plan quotes credits valid for 365 days, with approximate draft counts of 600 (Starter), 3,000 (Standard), and 9,000 (Premium), and credit costs vary by workflow — so image-guided and PDF paths burn faster than a plain text prompt. The vendor itself tells you to verify labels, relationships, and source permissions before use, which is the honest framing: this generates a reviewable draft, not a finished figure. Where it fits: a grad student or postdoc who needs three or four publication figures a year and currently loses a day per schematic. A lab that wants a consistent style across papers and uses Reference to Figure to enforce it. An author adapting an old schematic for a review article. Where it does not: design-heavy journals wanting custom illustration, teams needing an API, and anyone unwilling to proofread an AI draft before a camera-ready submission.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas LabFig actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Describes a CRISPR-Cas9 mechanism in Text to Figure, picks the Scientific style, generates a draft, then opens Vector Canvas to correct gene labels and arrow direction before export.
Outcome: A 300 dpi SVG schematic that drops into the submission template without a separate Illustrator session.
Uploads the old figure from the submitted PDF into PDF to Figure, regenerates it as an editable vector, and runs the reused panel through Figure Enhancer to fix line weights and color.
Outcome: A redrawn, editable figure for the resubmission without manually tracing the original.
Feeds one approved lab figure into Reference to Figure so students generate new schematics in the same visual language, with the six-style system keeping typography and color consistent.
Outcome: Papers from the same lab stop looking like they were illustrated by six different people.
Use Cases
- Generate a CRISPR-Cas9 mechanism schematic from a text description in seconds
- Upload a whiteboard sketch of a lab setup and convert it into a clean vector diagram
- Extract a figure from a submitted PDF and edit its labels for a revision
- Create a publication-ready scRNA-seq multi-omics pipeline figure for a manuscript
- Use a reference figure from a competitor paper to generate a variant with your own data
- Enhance a low-resolution figure from an older paper to meet journal resolution standards
- Generate CONSORT diagrams or TRIPOD-AI flowcharts for clinical AI papers
- Create ML architecture diagrams or training pipelines for CVPR/NeurIPS submissions
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-29
Limitations
- LabFig runs on a credit system: credits are valid for 365 days and are restored automatically if a task fails, but credit costs vary by workflow, so iterative image-guided or PDF work drains faster than plain text prompts.
- Published tiers range from Starter (about 600 text-to-figure drafts per year) to Premium (about 9,000), and the workbench caps a text prompt at 2,000 characters.
- Export is SVG, PDF, or PNG at 300 dpi.
- The platform itself states that AI drafts require scientific review and that labels, relationships, and source permissions must be verified before publication — treat output as a draft, not a camera-ready figure.
- It is cloud-only, so air-gapped environments are out.
as of 2026-10-03
Verification history
We have re-verified LabFig 8 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 8 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published LabFig tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0
Ideal for
A researcher who wants to test whether LabFig's vector output survives their journal's figure standards before paying.
What this tier adds
Free signup credits, full access to all seven figure tools while credits last, and PNG download for completed figures.
Starter (Annual)
$7.9/mo billed annually ($94.8/yr)
Ideal for
A single author producing a handful of figures a year, such as one thesis chapter or one manuscript cycle.
What this tier adds
Starting paid tier: about 600 text-to-figure drafts per year at $7.9/mo billed annually ($94.8/yr), with credits valid 365 days and restored if a task fails.
Starter (Monthly)
$9.9/mo month-to-month
Ideal for
A researcher with a short, time-boxed need — a single revision — who does not want a year-long credit commitment.
What this tier adds
Same all-tools access at $9.9/mo month-to-month, roughly 20% more than the annual rate, with no annual commitment.
Standard (Annual)
$29.9/mo billed annually ($358.8/yr)
Ideal for
The working researcher or small group running image-guided and PDF workflows across a full paper.
What this tier adds
5x the credits of Starter — about 3,000 text-to-figure drafts per year — at $29.9/mo billed annually ($358.8/yr), with a lower cost per credit.
Standard (Monthly)
$39.9/mo month-to-month
Ideal for
A team that needs Standard's credit headroom for one project window and will drop back down afterward.
What this tier adds
Standard's 5x credit pool at $39.9/mo month-to-month, about 25% above the annual rate.
Premium (Annual)
$79.9/mo billed annually ($958.8/yr)
Ideal for
A lab running several papers and projects in parallel, or a core facility generating figures for multiple authors.
What this tier adds
3x the credits of Standard — about 9,000 text-to-figure drafts per year — at $79.9/mo billed annually ($958.8/yr), the lowest cost per credit.
Premium (Monthly)
$99.9/mo month-to-month
Ideal for
Labs with a burst of figure work — a grant deadline or a multi-paper submission window — that will not run year-round.
What this tier adds
Premium credit volume at $99.9/mo month-to-month, roughly 20% above the annual rate.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where LabFig's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
LabFig prices below general-purpose design seats but above free academic drawing tools. Starter at $7.9/mo billed annually ($94.8/yr) or $9.9/mo monthly fits one occasional figure; Standard at $29.9/mo billed annually ($358.8/yr) or $39.9/mo monthly is the realistic single-researcher tier; Premium at $79.9/mo billed annually ($958.8/yr) or $99.9/mo monthly suits a lab running several papers. Annual billing saves roughly 20–25% versus monthly.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of LabFig — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
First figure: a few minutes for a text prompt. Sketch to Figure adds one phone photo and returns a draft in seconds; PDF to Figure and Figure Enhancer depend on how much cleanup the source needs. Getting the whole lab onto a consistent Reference to Figure style takes one shared reference figure. No install — the workbench runs in the browser.
Switching to or from LabFig
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Illustrator: import your existing schematic into Reference to Figure to generate editable variants in the same style
- →From PowerPoint or Keynote: rebuild the diagram as a Text to Figure prompt, then adjust it in Vector Canvas
- →From BioRender: pull a sketch or exported figure into Reference to Figure to keep the icon style your field already recognizes
- ↗To Illustrator: export SVG or PDF at 300 dpi and continue editing strokes and paths in a full vector suite
- ↗To LaTeX or a manuscript template: export PDF and drop it straight into the submission build
- ↗To Inkscape (free): export SVG and open in Inkscape when you need Bezier-level control LabFig does not offer
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 2 videos for “LabFig”, and we withheld 2: 2 could not be judged, because “LabFig” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about LabFig.
Official links
Tools that pair well with LabFig
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside LabFig, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
SciDraw AI
AI scientific figure maker that turns text, sketches, or CSV data into publication-ready scientific illustrations and journal-style charts.
Vibe Design
Picsart's chat-based design assistant that turns plain-language prompts into editable graphics, video, and copy inside the Picsart Editor.
AI Design
CapCut's free AI Design Studio turns prompts and product photos into posters, ads, thumbnails and product scenes using Seedream 5.0.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Labfig vs Surge Ai
LabFig and Surge AI serve entirely different purposes—one generates scientific figures, the other aligns frontier AI with expert human feedback. Choose LabFig if you need fast, editable vector figures for papers; choose Surge AI if you're building or evaluating advanced models requiring domain-expert grading and RLHF. They are not competitors.
Labfig vs Praktika
LabFig and Praktika serve entirely different domains—scientific figure creation versus language learning—so choice depends on your need. For researchers crafting publication-ready figures, LabFig offers unmatched versatility with text/sketch/PDF inputs and vector editing. For language learners wanting conversational practice, Praktika delivers realistic AI tutor interactions with real-time pronunciation correction. There's no overlap; pick the tool aligned with your primary task.
Alternatives to LabFig
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SciDraw AI
AI scientific figure maker that turns text, sketches, or CSV data into publication-ready scientific illustrations and journal-style charts.
Vibe Design
Picsart's chat-based design assistant that turns plain-language prompts into editable graphics, video, and copy inside the Picsart Editor.
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