Spine

Spine is the standard tool for 2D skeletal animation in games: you rig sprites with bones and meshes, animate them, and play them back through official runtimes for Unity, Unreal, Godot and many other engines. Essential costs $69 and Professional $379 per user at the time of checking (list $99 and $449), as one-time purchases. Companies over $500K in annual revenue need an Enterprise licence.

Best for 2D developers who want smooth character animation without drawing every frame.

Written from the vendor's official site and docs, not a hands-on benchmark. How we review tools.