Canva’s Affinity v3 makes design tools free but charges for AI features

Canva has released a unified “Affinity by Canva” app that merges the Photo, Designer, and Publisher tools into a single free application, marking a significant shift from Affinity’s previous perpetually licensed model. The move resolves longstanding questions about how Canva would integrate Affinity’s anti-AI stance with its own AI-driven features, essentially creating a freemium model that gates generative AI capabilities behind Canva’s $120 annual subscription.

What you should know: The new Affinity v3 app maintains all core editing features for free while positioning AI tools as premium add-ons.

• Users can access the full functionality of Photo, Designer, and Publisher without paying, requiring only a Canva account.
• AI features like “Generative Fill, Expand & Edit, and Remove Background” are locked behind Canva’s existing subscription plans.
• The app runs natively on both x86 and Arm versions of Windows, plus Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

The big picture: This represents a fundamental departure from Affinity’s decade-long commitment to one-time purchase software, potentially alienating users who valued the predictability of perpetual licensing.

• Affinity CEO Ash Hewson emphasized that the app was “built in close collaboration with its community of creators, shaped by thousands of conversations, feature requests, and shared ideas.”
• Unlike Adobe’s stripped-down free versions, Canva maintains full feature parity between free and paid tiers for non-AI functions.

What happens to existing apps: Legacy Affinity v1 and v2 applications will remain accessible but face an uncertain long-term future.

• Activation servers and downloads will stay online “for the foreseeable future,” allowing current owners to continue using older versions.
• However, these legacy apps “won’t receive future updates” and cannot open files created in the new v3 format.
• Files opened in v3 are automatically converted and become incompatible with older versions, creating a one-way migration path.

Privacy considerations: Canva addresses previous concerns about AI training data by implementing stricter privacy controls.

• AI features are “built with privacy and control in mind,” according to Hewson.
• Work created in Affinity apps will not be used for training AI models, distinguishing it from some competitors’ practices.

Why this matters: The transition signals how acquisition dynamics are reshaping creative software markets, forcing established players to balance legacy user expectations with new business models.

• Existing Affinity users get immediate access to enhanced features without upfront costs, but lose the security of permanent ownership.
• The move positions Canva to compete more directly with Adobe’s subscription-dominant ecosystem while maintaining differentiation through its freemium approach.