As I see it, these are the 3 main brands competing with Cricut: Silhouette (biggest one) Sizzix Pazzles The Silhouette Portrait 2 is an alright machine as an alternative to the Cricut Joy - it's cheap, can make stickers and cards, and is of decent build quality. I still believe the Cricut Joy is a bit better though due to its ease-of-use and larger cutting area. If you want the next best Silhouette cutting machine, you can try the Silhouette Cameo 4 which is a worthy competitor to the Cricut Explore Air 2 and significantly better than the Silhouette Portrait 2 (so that's the machine you should get if you're going with a Silhouette product). Sizzix has its Big Shot Machine, a simple, budget machine similar to the Silhouette Portrait 2 and the Cricut Joy. It's a worthy competitor in the budget cutting machine space. Pazzles, meanwhile, offers the Inspiration Vue at $399. This is a relatively unknown product as of the time of writing and I haven't tested it personally.