Affinity Pricing
- Design pricing
- No published price
- Free plan
Affinity pricing is recorded here from the vendor's own published plans. There is a free plan. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 19 August 2026.
Affinity publishes no standalone pricing page, so this opens the product site. Figures here were read on 19 August 2026.
Affinity ranking and coverage
- In Design
- #4 of 11
- Overall
- #25 of 122
- Terms score
- 7 /10
- Referenced here
- 4 pages
Cost position 10 · Portability 4 · Subscription flexibility 7 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
Affinity pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Free for individuals |
|---|---|
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | No trial offered |
| How it charges | freemium |
| Priced plans published | 3 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 19 August 2026 |
Every Affinity plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 19 August 2026. Charged as freemium. No free trial is offered.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affinity | $0 | per month | Every tool in the Pixel, Vector and Layout studios, all customisation and all export features, with no restrictions or payment. A Canva account is required to download |
| Canva premium, for AI inside Affinity Add-on | From $180 | per year | Canva Pro at $180 a year for one person is the cheapest premium plan that switches on Canva AI tools - Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Image and Generate Vector - inside Affinity |
| Enterprise deployment Add-on | Custom | Negotiated | Team rollout with single sign-on runs through a Canva Enterprise or Canva Districts account, by arrangement with Canva sales |
What Affinity actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.
| Plan | Quoted | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canva premium, for AI inside Affinity add-on | per year | $15 | $180 |
Affinity pricing against its competitors
Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.
| Product | Cheapest paid entry | Free plan | Against Affinity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canva | $15 a month | Yes | – |
| Adobe Creative Cloud | $19.99 a month | No | – |
| Affinity | Not published | Yes | This product |
Which Affinity plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You do photo, vector or layout work on a desktop | Affinity, free | The whole application costs nothing. There is no cheaper credible route to professional print and image work in 2026. |
| You want generative fill and image or vector generation inside Affinity | Affinity plus a Canva premium plan | Canva Pro at $180 a year for one person is the cheapest premium plan that switches on the Canva AI tools inside Affinity. |
| You are rolling it out to a team with single sign-on | Canva Enterprise or Canva Districts | Team deployment and SSO run through Canva rather than Affinity, and are arranged with sales. |
| You design interfaces and need components and prototypes | Do not buy this for that | Affinity has no design-system tooling. Figma or Penpot are the tools for that job. |
| You work mainly on an iPad | Wait, or use Procreate | Affinity is Windows and macOS today, with iPadOS listed as coming soon. Procreate is $12.99 once and built for the iPad. |
Verdict by who you are
Freelance designer paying for Adobe todayYes
The direct equivalents of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign now cost nothing, which changes the Adobe conversation from "is it worth it" to "what specifically do I still need it for".
Print and layout professionalYes
The Layout studio handles professional print output, and the price is zero.
Product or interface designerNo
No components, variables or design systems, and no real-time collaboration.
Team that shares files constantlyCompare first
Fine as a per-person tool, but there is no shared canvas, so co-editing happens by exchanging files.
Organisation that cannot use consumer cloud accountsCompare first
A Canva account is mandatory, which is a procurement question rather than a feature question.
Should you buy Affinity?
Buy Affinity if…
- Designers who want Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign equivalents without a subscription
- Print and layout work on Windows or macOS
- Anyone leaving Adobe who needs to keep working the same way
Do not buy Affinity if…
- Interface and product design with components and design systems
- Real-time collaboration on a shared file
- Teams who need it on iPad today, or who cannot create a Canva account
Best Affinity alternative for each job
Chosen by what you are trying to do rather than by which product is closest overall, because the right replacement depends on the job.
| If you mainly need to… | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Professional print and layout | Adobe Creative Cloud | InDesign remains the standard where a printer expects native files, at $839.88 a year. |
| Fast marketing collateral with templates | Canva | Same owner, and much faster for social and collateral work. |
| Interface and product design | Figma | Components, variables and prototyping, none of which Affinity attempts. |
| Drawing and illustration on a tablet | Procreate | $12.99 once, and built for the iPad that Affinity does not yet support. |
What leaving Affinity would cost
moderate lock-in
Affinity scores on documented export. Portability 4/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
Free means free, and the page says so plainly
Affinity’s own FAQ answers the obvious question directly: yes, it is really free, and no, it is not a watered-down version. Every tool in the Pixel, Vector and Layout studios, all the customisation, all the export features, no restrictions, no payment, and free feature updates.
For a category where the reference product costs $839.88 a year on a twelve-month commitment, that is the single biggest change in design software pricing this year, and it deserves to be checked rather than assumed. We read it on 19 August 2026 and it is on the record above.
What the price actually costs you
Two conditions, both worth knowing before you download:
- A Canva account is mandatory. Affinity is downloaded by signing in with Canva, and the FAQ confirms the account is how you get access. A free Canva account is enough. For an organisation that restricts consumer cloud sign-ins, this is a procurement conversation rather than a feature.
- The AI is not included. Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Image and Generate Vector appear inside Affinity only if you are on a premium Canva plan - Pro, Business, Enterprise or Education. Canva Pro is $180 a year for one person, so “Affinity with AI” is a $180 product and “Affinity” is a free one.
Where it does not reach
Two limits decide most of the shortlists it appears on:
- Platforms. Windows and macOS today. The FAQ lists iPadOS as coming soon, which means an iPad-first illustrator is better served by Procreate at $12.99 once.
- Collaboration. There is no shared canvas and no real-time co-editing. If two people need to be in the same file at the same time, this is the wrong shape of tool and Figma or Penpot is the right one.
It also has no components, variables or design-system tooling, so it is not an interface design tool. That is not a gap; it is a different job, and the two are priced differently across the design tools we track.
The Adobe comparison, honestly
Affinity covers what most people use Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign for, at zero. What it does not replace is the rest of the suite - Premiere, After Effects, Lightroom’s catalogue - or native file exchange when a client sends you an INDD and expects it back.
So the question changes shape. It is no longer “can I afford to leave Adobe” but “which specific Adobe applications am I still paying for, and could a single app subscription at $22.99 a month cover them”. That is a much cheaper question to answer.
Affinity questions, answered
- Is Affinity worth it?
- The standard advice for a decade was that Affinity was the Adobe alternative you buy once instead of renting.
- How much does Affinity cost?
- Free for individuals. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Affinity have a free plan or free trial?
- Affinity has a free plan. No free trial is offered.
- What is the best Affinity alternative?
- It depends on the job. Adobe Creative Cloud: Deeper, still the print and video standard, and $839.88 a year on a twelve-month commitment. Canva: The same owner, aimed at speed and templates rather than professional control. GIMP and Inkscape: Also free and open source, with rougher interfaces and no unified suite.
- Can I self-host Affinity?
- No. Affinity is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Affinity publishes no standalone pricing page, so this opens the product site. Figures here were read on 19 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about Affinity. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from Affinity's own pricing page on 19 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
3 rows, each with its billing period
-
Original screenshots : yes
1 captured by us: pricing page
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
3 primary sources, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
-
Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Desk research from Affinity's own product and download pages, read on 19 August 2026 through a United States egress. Nobody here has used Affinity, and neither its output quality nor its file compatibility with Adobe formats was tested.
Where Affinity appears on this site
4 other pages here reference Affinity. Every one is listed below, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.
- Another profile Blender picks it for print, photo and vector work
- Another profile DaVinci Resolve picks it for design the graphics that go in the video
- Another profile Procreate names it as a competitor
- Another profile Recraft picks it for edit and finish the generated asset
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features ·
- Platforms ·
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
Individually sourced claims
-
Affinity is free with every tool unrestricted, and requires a Canva account to download
Affinity, Get Affinity ↗ · checked
-
Canva AI tools inside Affinity require a premium Canva plan
Affinity, Get Affinity FAQ ↗ · checked
-
Affinity runs on Windows and macOS, with iPadOS described as coming soon
Affinity, Get Affinity FAQ ↗ · checked
-
Canva reported more than one million Affinity sign-ups in the four days after announcing it was completely free
What has changed
-
August 2026
- First published, recording Affinity as free for individuals under Canva
- Recorded the two conditions on that price - a Canva account, and AI behind a Canva premium plan
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Affinity - checked 19 August 2026
- Affinity, Get Affinity - checked 19 August 2026
- Canva newsroom, why we made Affinity free - checked 19 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
