FrameRef or Maki: two $19 reference boards
FrameRef is a standalone reference board from Polygonflow, the studio behind the Dash plugin for Unreal Engine. It launched in February 2026 at $19 for a perpetual licence, the same price as Maki. So the choice comes down to what each one is good at.
In short: pick FrameRef if video is a big part of your references. Pick Maki if you want to search across all your boards, collect from Pinterest and the browser, or you work on a Mac.
FrameRef and Maki side by side
| FrameRef | Maki | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A standalone reference board, built from the board inside Polygonflow's Dash plugin | A board plus a searchable library of every board |
| Video | Paste URLs from YouTube, X and Twitch, trim clips and capture frames on the board | Images, PSDs and PDFs; no video URL pasting |
| Always on top | Yes | Yes, reference mode |
| Notes and arrows | Groups, notes and arrows | Sticky notes, rich text, tables, arrows, frames, mind maps |
| Finding an image later | Not covered in the launch coverage we read | Search file names, notes, colors and the words inside images, offline |
| Pinterest and the browser | Drag from the browser or paste | Save to Maki extension, whole Pinterest boards, article to board |
| Platforms | Windows at 1.0; Linux and macOS were planned | Windows and Mac |
| Price | $19, perpetual licence | 30 days free, then $19 once ($29 after launch) |
When FrameRef is the better pick
Choose FrameRef if your references are often moving: a stunt, a cloth sim, a camera move you want to scrub through and grab frames from. It is also the natural fit if you already live in Unreal Engine and use Dash.
When Maki is the better pick
Choose Maki if your references are mostly still images and you collect a lot of them. Maki finds a picture by typing a word that appears in it, by color, or by similarity to another image, across every board at once. It also has a Mac version and a browser extension for Pinterest. You can drag existing image folders onto a Maki board; Maki doesn't import other apps' board files.
What Maki is
Maki is a desktop reference board for Windows and Mac. You drop in paintings, pose refs, screenshots, Pinterest pins and whole folders, arrange them on an endless board, and find any of them later by typing a word. There is no account, and your boards stay in a folder on your disk. See what it does or read the guide.
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