Best Free Canva Alternatives for Phone and Web

Adobe Express is the closest match to Canva's layout and workflow. You pick a template, swap text and photos, then resize for other platforms. The free plan gives you 100,000+ static and video templates, 4,000+ Adobe Fonts, over 1 million free photos, videos, music tracks and design elements, and 5GB of storage. You can also schedule posts to one account per social network.

You need a free Adobe account. Free AI use is limited: Adobe lists free daily generations for images, text effects and templates, but only a few lifetime uses for AI presentations and short AI videos. Premium is US$9.99 a month or US$99.99 a year on the US App Store and adds 250 generative credits a month.

What you lose vs Canva: a smaller free template library, and no desktop app.

Microsoft Designer starts from a prompt instead of a template. Describe a social post, invitation, sticker or greeting card and it builds a few options. It also handles quick photo edits: background blur or removal, erasing objects, cropping, adding text and resizing.

The catch is credits. AI creation and editing use them, and free accounts get a fresh set at the start of each month. Microsoft does not print the free number on its page. Microsoft 365 Personal, Family or Premium owners get up to 4 times more, and the US App Store lists Microsoft 365 Personal at US$9.99 a month or US$99.99 a year. The iPhone app runs on iPhone only, not iPad.

What you lose vs Canva: a browsable template library, brand kits and fine layout control. Once your free credits run out, the AI part stops until next month.

Affinity is the surprise on this list, because Canva makes it. After Canva bought Serif, it merged Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher into one free app for Windows and Mac. You get pixel editing, vector drawing and page layout. You sign in with a free Canva account to download and activate it, and after that it can run offline for long periods. Only the Canva AI tools inside it, like Generative Fill and Generate Image, need a paid Canva plan.

It is a professional tool, so there is a learning curve. Affinity says the iPad version is coming, with no release date yet. We also cover Affinity in our buy once software guide.

What you lose vs Canva: ready-made social templates, one-click resize and mobile apps. You are designing from scratch.

Figma is best known for app and website design, but its product family now includes Figma Slides for presentations, Figma Buzz for social and marketing assets, and FigJam whiteboards. The free Starter plan gives limited access to these products, with unlimited personal drafts, UI kits and templates, and 150 AI credits a day up to 500 a month.

The shared team space is where Starter gets tight: Figma's help centre says it is a single team with one folder and 3 files. Professional starts at US$16 a month per full seat. The mobile app is for viewing, commenting and mirroring designs, not full editing.

What you lose vs Canva: Canva's huge stock library and beginner-friendly templates. Figma assumes you know some design basics.

Penpot is an open-source design tool that runs in the browser. Penpot calls its free cloud plan "free and fully featured", with no file limits, up to 8 team members, unlimited viewers and 10GB of storage. The paid Unlimited plan is US$7 per editor a month, capped at US$175 a month for any team size. If you want full control, you can host it yourself.

It is closer to Figma than Canva. It works well for social graphics, banners and simple slides if you are happy to build layouts yourself.

What you lose vs Canva: a template and stock library, AI tools and mobile apps.

Kittl shines at typography, text effects, logos and merch designs. Templates are made by independent designers, and the editor has vector tools plus AI image and vector generation.

The free plan is best treated as a trial. Kittl says it gives you curated templates and tools, and a light preview of most Pro features. Designs made on the free plan are for personal use only. High-resolution and vector exports, the full premium library, more AI tokens, bigger project limits and a commercial licence (up to 500,000 copies) need Pro, which is US$15 a month or US$144 a year.

What you lose vs Canva: commercial use, high-resolution export, mobile apps and a big free template set.

Visme focuses on presentations, reports, infographics and charts. It has more data widgets than Canva, which helps with business decks and school projects.

The free Basic plan gives unlimited projects, 500MB of storage, up to 50 slides per project, 10 AI credits a month and limited templates and assets. "No Visme logo on projects" is listed only on paid plans, and JPG, PNG and PDF downloads are listed as part of Starter (US$147 a year). The next plan up is now called Business, at US$297 a year.

What you lose vs Canva: clean, logo-free free exports, and most of the template library.

Pixlr is a browser photo editor with layers, filters, templates and AI tools, plus phone apps. It is quick for thumbnails, cutouts and one-off social images.

The free plan shows ads, and unlimited saves are a paid feature. Pixlr Plus is one of the cheapest paid plans here at US$1.99 a month billed yearly (US$2.49 month to month). It removes ads, lifts the save limit and adds 80 AI credits a month. Premium is US$7.99 a month billed yearly with 1,000 AI credits a month.

What you lose vs Canva: unlimited saves on the free plan, team features and a large template library.

Photopea looks and works like Photoshop, right in your browser. It opens and saves Photoshop PSD files, plus dozens of other formats, and there is nothing to install. You can start editing without an account. Photopea says it runs on your device's CPU and GPU, and your files never leave your device.

Everything is free, paid for by ads. A Premium account lets you use Photopea without ads. Photopea shows the current price inside its Account window.

What you lose vs Canva: templates, stock assets, one-click resize and an easy start for beginners.

VistaCreate (formerly Crello) is a template-based editor from Vista. The free Starter plan is for one person and includes 100,000 design templates, 1 million photos, videos and vectors, one brand kit and 10GB of project storage.

Pro costs US$10 a month billed yearly (US$120 a year) for up to 10 seats. It adds 200,000+ templates, 170 million+ photos, videos and vectors, a one-click resizer, social media scheduling and AI tools such as a background remover. In the iPhone app, Pro is listed at US$12.99 a month or US$119.99 a year.

What you lose vs Canva: the background remover, resize and AI tools on the free plan, and a smaller asset library.