Placeit charges $14.95 a month, forever — about $179 a year — to drag your image onto a stock photo of a phone. Mockcraft is $19 once and runs entirely on your machine. Your mockups are not a subscription.
If you've searched for a Placeit alternative, Mockcraft is the pay-once option worth putting at the top of the list: Mockcraft is $19, one time, and covers the same core job Placeit charges $14.95/mo for.
What makes Mockcraft the pick for 2026
- 12 bundled templates — Devices (phone, laptop, tablet, browser), apparel (t-shirt, hoodie) and print (business card, framed poster, book cover, sticker).
- Real perspective placement — Angled scenes use a full homography transform with bilinear sampling, so your design sits on the surface like it was photographed there.
- Placement controls — Scale, X/Y offset, rotation and cover/contain/stretch fit modes, all live-previewed as you drag the sliders.
- Garment color variants — Eight swatches swap the shirt or hoodie color instantly, with the design multiply-shaded into the fabric so it looks printed.
- Batch mode — Check any set of templates and export your design across all of them in one pass into a folder you pick.
Mockcraft vs Placeit, at a glance
| Mockcraft | Placeit | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 once | $14.95/mo |
| Cost after 3 years | $19 | $538.20 |
| Your files live | On your machine | Their cloud |
| Works offline | Always | No |
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Export resolution | Full scene res, always | Gated by plan |
| Batch across templates | Yes, one pass | Manual, one at a time |
| Template pack license | MIT, extensible | Rented |
Mockcraft pays for itself in under two months of Placeit — and every month after that is pure savings.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Mockcraft is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/mockup-generator-mvp. The $19 buys the packaged Windows installer; building from source is free.
Does it ship stock photos of devices and models?
No — that's the licensed imagery Placeit rents you. Every scene is honestly generated from vector shape specs by Mockcraft's own raster engine, so the whole pack is MIT-licensed with your copy.
Does anything leave my computer?
No. Mockcraft makes no network calls at all — your designs never leave your disk and exports go exactly where you choose.
The bottom line
Mockcraft won't out-feature Placeit on every axis — no subscription tool with a bigger team and a bigger roadmap loses on everything. But for the core job, $19 once against $14.95/mo forever is a trade most people should at least look at. Mockcraft is part of OneTimeSuite, a catalog of pay-once apps that replace subscription SaaS.
Try Mockcraft — $19, once
Offline desktop mockups with true perspective warp, garment color variants and one-pass batch export — no cloud, no telemetry.