ZBrushCoreMini Is Gone: Free Alternatives in 2026

ZBrushCoreMini was the free way into ZBrush for five years, and it is gone. This post covers what happened, what the app actually did, and which free tools cover the same ground in November 2026. One of those tools, Re:Form, is ours, so read the comparison with that in mind.

Is ZBrushCoreMini still available?

No. Maxon stopped offering ZBrushCoreMini for download on May 30, 2025, when it and the paid ZBrushCore entered "Limited Maintenance Mode." ZBrushCore reached end of life on September 30, 2025. Existing installs keep running, but there are no updates, no support, and as of November 2026 no official download link anywhere on Maxon's site.

Maxon's end-of-life FAQ spells out the sequence. From May 30, 2025, ZBrushCore could no longer be purchased and ZBrushCoreMini could no longer be downloaded. Monthly ZBrushCore renewals ran until September 30, 2025, and support ended on the same date. Perpetual ZBrushCore owners can still re-download their software by contacting support, but nothing is being fixed or changed. ZBrushCore is also being removed from the Maxon App.

If a website is offering you a ZBrushCoreMini installer today, it is not coming from Maxon. Installers from third-party download sites are unofficial, unsupported, and a common way to pick up something you did not want. We cover the same problem with Sculptris in our Sculptris alternatives post, because Pixologic's old Sculptris page now redirects to the retired CoreMini site.

What ZBrushCoreMini actually was

Before measuring alternatives against it, it helps to be precise about what the app did. CoreMini launched in June 2020 as the free "mini" edition of ZBrushCore, pitched at people who had never sculpted. According to Maxon's own documentation, the feature set was:

• Eight brushes: Standard, Clay Buildup, Inflate, Pinch, Move, SnakeHook, Slash3 and hPolish, with Smooth on the Shift key. Four Chisel3D brushes were listed separately.
• Sculptris Pro, ZBrush's dynamic tessellation, which adds and removes polygons under the brush as you sculpt. It did not work with the Move brush.
• Two starting shapes: a sphere or a "digital block of stone."
• Export: a 3D Print button that reduced the polygon count and wrote an OBJ for slicer software, plus iMage3D GIF and PNG files that held the mesh inside an ordinary image, a flat preview image, and a turntable movie. ZPR project files could be saved and opened in ZBrushCore and ZBrush.
• No general import, no painting, no rendering options, no custom brushes. Maxon described it as a non-commercial edition.

That was the point. CoreMini was a doodling tool with a clear exit path: the decimated OBJ went to a 3D printer, and the ZPR file went to ZBrush when you were ready to pay. Any replacement needs to cover three things: brush sculpting on a simple primitive, dynamic topology or something equivalent so you never think about polygons, and an OBJ or STL export so the model can leave.

Why did Maxon discontinue ZBrushCoreMini?

Maxon has not given a reason. The end-of-life FAQ says only that ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini entered limited maintenance on May 30, 2025, and points to ZBrush for iPad, which launched in 2024 with a free tier covering a similar beginner audience. The same FAQ says a "Freemium version of ZBrush Desktop is on its way," with no release date, and as of November 2026 it has not shipped.

The timing fits a wider consolidation. Maxon also retired Forger, its iPad sculpting app, which reached end of sale on September 10, 2025, with users directed to ZBrush for iPad. The direction is one ZBrush, on desktop and iPad, under a single subscription. Where a free desktop tier fits is the part Maxon has promised but not delivered.

Is there a free version of ZBrush now?

Not on the desktop. As of November 2026, the only free ZBrush is the free tier of ZBrush for iPad: 28 brushes, DynaMesh capped at a resolution of 1024, limited ZRemesher options, and no 3D model export at all. The desktop app is subscription only, with a 14-day trial. The promised freemium desktop edition has no release date.

The iPad free tier is a real sculpting tool, and if you own a recent iPad it is worth trying. Its limits matter for anyone replacing CoreMini, though. Maxon's own plan comparison lists every 3D export option as unsupported on the free plan, so a sculpt made there can leave only as a PNG, JPG, PSD or TIFF image. CoreMini could at least write an OBJ for printing. The iPad subscription removes those limits and adds 210 or more brushes, and a full ZBrush subscription includes the iPad app with its premium features.

The full desktop ZBrush is subscription only, after Maxon discontinued perpetual licenses in December 2023. The price has been $49 a month or $399 a year since Maxon's September 2024 increase, which is the figure our ZBrush pricing breakdown found again in October 2026; Maxon's site is the place to confirm today's number.

The alternatives, measured against CoreMini

Every tool below is free to start and covers the three CoreMini jobs: sculpt on a primitive, forget about polygon counts, and get an OBJ or STL out. Prices and versions were checked in November 2026.

The table hides one real difference: three of these are maintained and one is not. SculptGL still loads and still works, but it has not been developed in years. Blender, Re:Form and Nomad all shipped updates in 2026.

Blender: the most complete free replacement

Blender is the safe answer. It is free, open source, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the current release as of November 2026 is Blender 5.2.3 LTS, supported until July 2028. Its sculpt mode has a large brush set, Dyntopo for dynamic topology, the Voxel Remesher, masking, face sets, multiresolution sculpting and sculpt layers via shape keys, and it exports to every format a slicer or game engine wants. There are no limits and no license to think about, including for commercial work.

The cost is weight. The Windows installer is about 349 MB, the interface is built for the whole 3D pipeline rather than for sculpting alone, and a person who opened CoreMini because it was simple will find Blender's sculpt mode is one tab inside a very large program. It also runs best on a machine with a dedicated graphics card; Dyntopo and the Voxel Remesher on a laptop with integrated graphics can be slow at the densities a detailed sculpt reaches. That makes Blender a bigger commitment than CoreMini was, and in return it offers far more. Our Re:Form vs Blender comparison goes into where each one fits.

Re:Form: closest to the CoreMini experience, in a browser

Re:Form is our tool, and it is currently v0.9.0 Alpha. It runs in a desktop browser on WebGPU, which today means current Chrome, Edge and Firefox, plus Safari 26 on macOS Tahoe. There is nothing to download or install; you sign in with a free account, and you are looking at a sphere with a brush. That is the part of CoreMini it reproduces most directly: open it, push clay, no setup.

The free plan is the full toolset rather than a trimmed one. Every brush, sculpt layers, masking, symmetry, remeshing and undo are included, along with Live Topology, Re:Form's dynamic tessellation, which does the job Sculptris Pro did in CoreMini. The free triangle budget is 12.5 million, which is more than a CoreMini-style sculpt will approach. Import and export are OBJ and STL in both directions, so a sculpt can go straight to a slicer, and Tools ▸ Print check finds open borders, flipped faces and thin walls before you print. Projects autosave in the browser, five can be saved with your account, and File ▸ Save local writes a .clay file to your own computer on any plan. Your exported models are never watermarked; free renders carry a small Re:Form mark. No card is needed.

Pro is $9.99 a month or $99 a year, which works out to about two months free on the yearly plan. It raises the budget to the full 80-million-triangle engine (six times Free), adds GLB and FBX import and export, 50 saved projects, 4096 px and 8K renders without the mark, and a commercial license. Billing runs through Stripe and you can cancel at any time from inside the app. The pricing page has the full breakdown.

Two limits are worth saying plainly. Re:Form is in alpha, which means things change between releases and it has none of ZBrush's 25-year track record. And it needs a desktop browser with WebGPU; a tablet with WebGPU can run it, but a phone cannot, and there is no offline mode. If either of those is a dealbreaker, Blender is the better choice. If you want the CoreMini feeling of sculpting within thirty seconds, open the app and see whether it fits.

Nomad Sculpt: the cheap paid option, with a free demo

Nomad Sculpt is not free, but it is the closest thing to a modern CoreMini on a tablet, and it costs less than two months of ZBrush. As of November 2026 it is $19.99 on the US App Store (iOS and iPadOS 16 or later), with a $15.99 in-app purchase for Quad Remesher; it is also on Google Play, and the Windows and macOS desktop build is listed at about $35 for one license covering two computers. The latest version, 2.13, shipped in October 2026. A Steam release is listed as "working on it."

There is also a free web demo at nomadsculpt.com, which the site labels as having no official support. It is good for finding out whether you like Nomad's brushes and interface before paying. It is a demo, not a free tier, so treat it as a test drive rather than a workstation. If you are on Windows and wondering about the browser route, see Nomad Sculpt on PC in the browser.

For an iPad owner who misses CoreMini, the real choice is between Nomad's one-time $19.99 and ZBrush for iPad's free tier with no 3D export. If you ever want to print or move a model, Nomad wins that one on price.

SculptGL: still online, still free

SculptGL, the open-source browser sculptor by Stéphane Ginier, is still live at stephaneginier.com/sculptgl as of November 2026, and it still does what it always did: load a sphere, sculpt it with a small brush set, dynamic topology on, and export OBJ, STL or PLY. It needs no account and no install.

The limit is that SculptGL is no longer developed. It runs on WebGL, it has no layers or real masking workflow, and dense meshes slow it down. For ten minutes of doodling it is still a fine answer. For anything you intend to finish, pick one of the maintained tools. Our 2026 look at SculptGL has the details.

What about your old CoreMini files?

Your CoreMini work is not lost. Maxon's FAQ says ZPR projects and other ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini files load into the current full version of ZBrush, so a subscription or the 14-day trial will open them. Any OBJ you exported with the 3D Print button is a plain mesh file that opens in Blender, Re:Form, Nomad, SculptGL or any slicer. iMage3D GIF and PNG files are the problem format.

Here is a practical migration path:

1. If you still have CoreMini installed, keep it until you have exported what you want. Open each ZPR and use the 3D Print button to write an OBJ. The export decimates the mesh, so detail is reduced, but it is a real model.
2. If you only have ZPR files and no install, the ZBrush 14-day trial will open them and export OBJ, STL or FBX. Do it within the trial window.
3. iMage3D files only reconstruct inside ZBrushCoreMini or ZBrushCore. If you cannot open them, the mesh inside is not recoverable with another tool; the image itself is still a picture of your sculpt.
4. Once you have OBJ files, import them anywhere. Re:Form imports OBJ or STL on the free plan, and a remesh gives a decimated print export a clean, even surface to keep sculpting on.

Do not install CoreMini from a download mirror to get at old files; an unsigned installer from an unknown site is a worse risk than losing a doodle.

Which one should you pick?

If you want no limits and do not mind a large download, Blender is the best free ZBrushCoreMini replacement in 2026. If you want CoreMini's open-it-and-sculpt simplicity, Re:Form gives you the full toolset free in a desktop browser, with the caveat that it is in alpha. On an iPad, Nomad Sculpt at $19.99 beats ZBrush's free tier because it exports.

A few more specific cases:

• A student on a school or lab machine cannot install anything, which rules out Blender and Nomad. A browser tool is the only option, and Re:Form's full free toolset makes it the stronger one of the two browser choices. Our free ZBrush alternatives roundup covers the wider field.
• A hobbyist printing miniatures needs STL out and a mesh checker. Blender does both. Re:Form exports STL on the free plan and has Print check and Hollow built in.
• Someone who wants to sell what they make should note the licenses. Blender has no restriction. Re:Form's free plan is personal and non-commercial; Pro at $9.99 a month adds the commercial license. CoreMini never allowed commercial use either, so this is not a step backward.

CoreMini mattered because it removed every excuse not to try sculpting. That job is still being done, just not by Maxon on the desktop right now. Pick whichever of these gets you pushing clay today.

FAQ

Can I still download ZBrushCoreMini from Maxon?

No. Maxon stopped offering ZBrushCoreMini for download on May 30, 2025, and its end-of-life FAQ confirms there is no official source. ZBrushCore perpetual owners can request a download through Maxon support, but CoreMini had no paid license to restore. Any installer offered elsewhere is unofficial, and a free tool that is still maintained is a safer choice.

Will Maxon release a free desktop ZBrush?

Maxon said a "Freemium version of ZBrush Desktop is on its way" when it retired ZBrushCore and ZBrushCoreMini in May 2025, but gave no date. As of November 2026 it has not shipped and Maxon's plans show no free desktop tier. The free tier of ZBrush for iPad is the only free ZBrush today, and it cannot export 3D models.

Does Re:Form have Sculptris Pro?

Re:Form has Live Topology, its own dynamic tessellation, which adds and removes triangles under the brush the way Sculptris Pro did in ZBrushCoreMini. It is on the free plan, uses a single Detail slider, and needs a closed mesh on one subdivision level. Re:Form is in alpha, so expect it to keep changing. Our dynamic topology explainer compares it with Dyntopo and Sculptris Pro.