Is Krita safe? Yes: it's open-source, collects no user data, and is malware-free from krita.org. See the 2021 phishing scam artists should watch for.
By VPN Super Team · Updated August 25, 2026
Krita is safe. It's free, open-source painting software, it collects no personal data, and there's no confirmed case of malware inside the app itself.
The one real danger is downloading it from the wrong place. A 2021 phishing scam used fake Krita domains to push ransomware onto artists, and copies of that scam still turn up, so get Krita only from krita.org, Steam, the Microsoft Store, or the Epic Games Store.
The GPL, in plain terms: Krita runs on the GNU General Public License (GPL). That's not marketing language, it's the legal grounding for why the "is it legit" question has a real answer: anyone can read Krita's source code, anyone can compile it themselves, and a global community of developers reviews changes before they ship. That transparency is why large-scale spyware or hidden data harvesting would be hard to hide for long. Nobody has found any.
Krita's open-source status doesn't guarantee every fork or third-party build is equally safe (more on that below). It means the official Krita codebase itself has nowhere to hide anything.
No. Krita's own privacy statement says it plainly:
"Krita does not access, collect, use, share or transmit any personal information or user data whatsoever."
The app does make a couple of network calls, and it's worth knowing what they actually are instead of taking that on faith. The in-app newsfeed and the G'Mic plugin both reach out over HTTPS, and both are opt-in; you can turn either off in preferences without losing any drawing functionality. Nothing about your files, your account, or your usage gets sent anywhere else.
Krita the software, no. Krita's brand, once, yes.
The 2021 phishing scam: In September 2021, Malwarebytes and reporting from The Register documented a phishing campaign that targeted Krita artists directly. Scammers registered look-alike domains, krita.io and krita.app (the real site is krita.org), and emailed artists fake sponsorship offers, some quoting figures between $350 and $1,700 for a "YouTube collaboration." The email pointed to a download that looked like Krita's media pack. It was ransomware.
The 2021 scam is a few years old now, but krita-artists.org moderators have noted the domain-spoofing pattern hasn't fully disappeared since. The fix hasn't changed either: krita.org is the only official site. krita.io and krita.app aren't affiliated with the project, and no legitimate Krita download, sponsorship offer, or update notice will ever come from either one.
If Windows Defender ever quarantines a Krita file under the detection name Wacatac.B!ml, that's a known false positive, not evidence of an actual virus. Artists on the krita-artists.org forum have documented this happening with .kra files (Krita's native format) for a while now; Defender's heuristics sometimes mistake how compressed layer data is packed inside a .kra file for suspicious behavior.
There's no published figure for how often this happens. The forum thread is the documentation that exists, so treat it as a known quirk rather than a statistic. If it happens to you, submit the file to Microsoft as a false positive and restore it from quarantine. Don't assume you've been infected.
Four channels carry the real thing:
Any of these is fine. What's not fine is a random search result, a "free download" aggregator site, or an email link promising a bonus pack. If a download source isn't one of the four above, don't run the installer.
Krita's own site also publishes virus-scan results for every release, a page most "is this software safe" articles skip past entirely. It's worth checking before you install if you want the receipts instead of taking the open-source argument on faith.
Generic security advice, "use a strong password," "turn on two-factor authentication," doesn't really apply here, because Krita has no user accounts to secure. What actually matters for this specific app:
Yes, with the same download discipline as any other install. Krita has no in-app purchases, no ads, no chat or social features, and no account requirement, which makes it lower-risk than a lot of "free" creative software a school might otherwise consider. The one thing a teacher or parent needs to manage is making sure the install comes from krita.org, Steam, or one of the other official channels, not a random download site that shows up in search results.
Yes. Krita's GPL license permits commercial use of the artwork you create in it, and plenty of working illustrators, comic artists, and concept artists use it for paid client work. The license covers the software itself, not your art, so there's no licensing catch limiting what you can do with what you draw.
Krita's development team has spoken out against passing AI-generated art off as human work, and the project has discussed detection and provenance features for that reason. Speaking out against passing off AI art is a stance on AI-generated content, not a technical restriction: Krita doesn't scan your files or block any tools you use alongside it. If this matters to your workflow, check Krita's own blog and release notes for where that work currently stands, since it's an area the project keeps developing.
Being trustworthy on privacy doesn't make Krita flaw-free. Its brush engine and layer system take longer to learn than something like Procreate if you're coming from a phone-first workflow. Its plugin ecosystem is smaller than Photoshop's or Clip Studio's, so some niche automation tools simply don't exist for it yet. And because it's community-maintained rather than backed by a company with a dedicated support line, fixes for edge-case bugs can take longer to land than they would in paid software. None of these tradeoffs are safety problems, but they're worth knowing before you sink hours into learning Krita.
None of Krita's safety comes from a VPN, and no VPN changes anything about the software itself. Where a VPN actually helps is the situation around the download, not the app. Grabbing the installer on airport or café Wi-Fi means anyone else on that network can potentially see or tamper with the traffic; downloading VPN Super first encrypts the connection so that download travels privately. It's also a reasonable habit if your internet provider throttles large file transfers, since an encrypted connection is harder to selectively slow down. VPN Super's server network spans dozens of countries, so that protection holds wherever you happen to be working from, not just at home.
VPN Super's own numbers, for context: 250,000+ ratings on the iOS App Store and 500,000+ on Google Play. None of these VPN Super numbers have anything to do with whether Krita is safe. It's just the disclosure a page like this should make when it recommends a product.
Yes. Krita is open-source under the GPL, so its full source code is public and reviewed by outside developers, and its own privacy statement confirms it collects no personal user data. Community threads on Reddit and krita-artists.org consistently land on the same answer: trust the software, just get it from an official source.
The learning curve is steeper than phone-first apps like Procreate, the plugin ecosystem is smaller than Photoshop's, and as community-maintained software, some bug fixes take longer than they would with a paid support team behind them. None of these are safety concerns.
Use krita.org, Steam, the Microsoft Store, or the Epic Games Store. Avoid krita.io and krita.app, which aren't affiliated with the project and were used in a 2021 phishing scam, and skip third-party download aggregators entirely.
Krita's team has spoken out against passing AI-generated art off as human-made work and has discussed provenance and detection features, but the app itself doesn't scan your files or block any tools. Check Krita's blog for the current state of that work if it affects your workflow.
Generally, yes. A .kra file can't execute code on its own. The one quirk worth knowing is that Windows Defender occasionally flags .kra files with a false-positive detection (Wacatac.B!ml) because of how layer data is compressed inside the file, not because of an actual infection.
Yes. There are no ads, no in-app purchases, no chat features, and no account requirement. The only precaution is making sure the install comes from an official source rather than a third-party download site.
Yes. Krita's GPL license covers the software, not the art you make with it, so there's no restriction on selling or licensing work created in Krita.
Encrypt your connection with VPN Super before downloading Krita or anything else on public Wi-Fi.
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