Canva has retooled the pricing of its Affinity image-editing and publishing apps to better compete with Adobe. The company announced a new offering that bundles Affinity’s Photo, Publisher and Designer apps into a software package called “Affinity by Canva” that is free for users with a Canva account but requires a paid subscription to access generative AI features. Canva’s paid subscription plans start at $120 a year for individuals. Previously, Affinity software was available by perpetual license, a pricing option that Canva — which purchased Affinity late last year — is retiring. Canva also had to reconcile its acquisition’s anti-AI stance, something it seems to have accomplished.

“This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity’s anti-AI stance: All three apps’ core features are free to use, and the stuff you’re being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don’t want anyway,” reports Ars Technica.

“But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between ‘free’ and ‘premium’ features down the line,” Ars Technica adds.

The fact that Canva includes the phrase “free forever” at the top of its newsroom post announcing the new Affinity product offers some reassurance. The free version conveniently aims to serve photographers, designers and illustrators with a single creative app that unifies what Canva says are “professional vector, photo and layout tools” that offer both pixel- and raster-based editing: “everything you need to design, edit and publish without switching apps or breaking flow.”

“No matter what people are creating in Affinity, there is a single, nondestructive file type that covers it all,” writes PetaPixel, calling that “an unprecedented move in the creative software space.” The app also provides support for the TIFF, PSD, PDF, AI, SVG and IDML file types, in addition to others.

The new Affinity by Canva app, internally referred to as Version 3, will run natively on pretty much every newer computer — and a wide variety of older ones, too — as detailed in Ars Technica, which says an iPad version of the software is “coming soon.” As far as the older software versions go, Canva will no longer support or update them.

Related:
Affinity Going the DaVinci Resolve Route Is Brilliant and a Proven Success, PetaPixel, 10/30/25
Canva Is Making Affinity Free and Launching a ‘Creative Operating System’, Lifehacker, 10/30/25
Canva’s New Free Affinity App Wants to Sink the Adobe Flagships, Fast Company, 10/30/25