Canva made Affinity free on 30 October 2025, and in September 2026 shipped Affinity 3.3 with more than 60 new capabilities. For design teams paying monthly for Creative Cloud, that raises an obvious question — and it deserves a more careful answer than either side of the argument usually gives.

What "free" actually means here

The all-new Affinity combines vector design, photo editing and page layout in one application rather than the three separate apps people knew before. Canva's position is that the professional experience is free with no stripped-back version. It runs on Mac and Windows, with iPad support announced as coming.

The paid element sits alongside rather than inside: Canva Premium accounts unlock Canva's AI features within Affinity — generative fill, expand and edit, remove background. CG Channel's coverage of 3.3 puts those subscriptions at $144 a year for Pro and $250 for Business. So the drawing, editing and layout tools are free; the generative extras are the upsell.

Affinity opens PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, TIFF and IDML files, which is what makes an evaluation practical rather than theoretical — you can point it at real work and see what survives the trip.

What you gain

  • No per-seat monthly cost for the core tools, which changes the maths for small studios, freelancers, charities and education.
  • One application instead of three, so no hopping between apps to finish a single piece.
  • Scripting. Version 3.3 added a Scripting Studio for JavaScript automation of repetitive tasks — genuinely useful for production work, though Canva notes it can't add new tools or change existing behaviour.
  • Newer tooling in the update: a Mask Tool that builds masks automatically, a Deform Tool, and a Blend Tool for transitions between vector shapes.

What you give up

This is where honest advice matters more than enthusiasm.

  • Ecosystem. Creative Cloud is not just applications: it is fonts, libraries, Frame.io review, and — since mid-2026 — Adobe's AI Assistant driving multi-step work inside the apps. Leaving Adobe means leaving that too.
  • Handover. If clients, printers or partners expect INDD or layered PSD with full fidelity, "opens the file" and "round-trips the file perfectly" are not the same claim. Test your actual handover chain before committing.
  • Plugins and pipelines. Third-party plugin support is thinner, and anything built around Adobe scripting will need rework.
  • Team familiarity. The habits your team has built over a decade have a cost to relearn. That cost is real, and it is usually underestimated — the same trap as upgrading software for its own sake.

Who should move, and who shouldn't

Situation Sensible call
Freelance, or a studio of 2–5 Worth a serious trial. The saving is material and the work is usually self-contained.
In-house team with print partners Pilot on internal collateral first; check IDML and PDF handover with your printer before anything else.
Agency in an Adobe-native client chain Stay, but train people on Affinity anyway — clients increasingly turn up with Affinity files.
Education and charities Strongest case of all: professional tooling at no licence cost.
Teams deep in Adobe AI workflows Stay for now. The generative gap is the widest it has been.

How to run a fair trial

Give it four weeks and a real job, not a doodle. Pick one live project, do it in Affinity end to end, and keep a note of every point where you had to stop and look something up. Export at the end exactly as you would for the client — the same PDF preset, the same colour setup, the same handover files. Then decide with evidence rather than vibes.

Two areas trip teams up most often: colour management, because print output is unforgiving of assumptions, and type. Affinity's typographic controls are strong, but the craft is the same craft — kerning, spacing and hierarchy don't change because the tool does. The same goes for Bézier work: the pen tool has the same logic in every application that has one.

FAQ

Is Affinity really free, or is it free for now? Canva announced it as free, permanently, on 30 October 2025, and has published a follow-up explaining how it intends to keep it that way. Paid Canva subscriptions unlock AI features inside Affinity, not the core tools.

Will it open my Adobe files? It supports PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, TIFF and IDML among others. Opening is not the same as perfect round-tripping, so test with your own files before you rely on it.

Is it a full replacement for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign? For a lot of day-to-day design work, yes. For teams tied to Adobe's ecosystem — shared libraries, Frame.io review, the new AI Assistant — it isn't a like-for-like swap.

What about training? The concepts transfer; the muscle memory doesn't. Budget a day or two per designer for the switch, and train on the tool your team will actually use.

Does Affinity include Pantone? Designers have highlighted Affinity's Pantone access as an advantage over Adobe's arrangement. Check the current position on Affinity's own site before making it a deciding factor.

Where to start

We run Affinity training for teams moving across, and Adobe design courses for those staying put — both classroom and live online, UK-wide. If you're weighing the two, a short conversation about your handover chain usually settles it faster than a spreadsheet.