Canva excels as a beginner-friendly design tool with 500K+ templates and AI features starting at free, while Figma is a professional-grade collaborative design platform built for UX/UI teams with real-time co-editing and advanced prototyping, starting at $12/month per editor.
Canva vs Figma — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Choose Canva if you need quick, beautiful designs for social media, marketing materials, or presentations without a steep learning curve—its massive template library and AI tools make it ideal for non-designers. Choose Figma if you're a UX/UI designer or product team needing professional-grade prototyping, real-time collaboration, and design system management to support iterative product development.
Web-based design platform with templates for social media, presentations, and marketing materials.
Cloud-based collaborative design platform with real-time editing and cross-platform accessibility.
Structured comparison data for Canva vs Figma with 350 attributes.
Annual Subscription Cost (if paid yearly)
Monthly Subscription Cost (Single Editor)
Starter Plan Monthly Cost (Annual Billing)
Monthly Subscription Cost (Professional Plan)
Estimated Time to First Design (Beginner)
Team Collaboration - Simultaneous Editors
Professional Design Tool Market Share (2025)
Average Time to Proficiency for New Users
Canva vs Figma — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Canva vs Figma.
Canva is significantly more accessible for beginners and non-designers. The template-first workflow, drag-and-drop interface, and integrated content library mean a new user can create a polished social media graphic or presentation in under 10 minutes without design knowledge. Figma requires understanding design fundamentals: frames, layers, components, constraints, and the vector toolset. Most Figma users need 20-40 hours of learning before feeling productive. For someone who needs to create marketing materials, social media posts, or business presentations, Canva is the right tool. For someone training for a career in product design, UX, or interface design, learning Figma is essential — it's the industry-standard tool at virtually every tech company. The learning investment in Figma pays off for professional product design; for casual use or marketing work, Canva's ease of use is unmatched.
Figma can technically do many things Canva does, but it would be inefficient for most Canva use cases. Figma lacks Canva's vast template library (250,000+ vs. Figma's much smaller set), doesn't have built-in access to 100 million licensed stock photos, and its print production tools are minimal compared to Canva Pro's direct-to-print integration. For a marketing team creating daily social media posts, email headers, and event flyers, Figma's UI/UX toolset would be overkill and less efficient than Canva's template-driven workflow. The reverse is also true: Canva cannot replace Figma for professional UI design. Canva's component system, prototyping, and developer handoff features are primitive compared to Figma's. Most design-forward organizations use both tools for different purposes rather than forcing one to replace the other.
Figma is usable for non-designers with a learning curve, but it's not designed with non-designers as the primary audience. Figma's strength is for product designers and developers who need precision, component reuse, and developer-friendly outputs. Non-designer stakeholders (product managers, marketers) typically use Figma in view/comment mode to review designs and leave feedback — a workflow Figma supports very well. Figma's FigJam (a digital whiteboard included in the plan) is more accessible and is used widely by teams for brainstorming, planning, and process mapping without requiring design expertise. If a non-designer needs to create actual visual content (presentations, social posts, marketing materials), Canva is the better starting point. Figma's 2024 launch of Figma Slides and improved template sets may make it more accessible for presentation creation, but it's still not the right tool for general marketing collateral.
What happened to the Figma Adobe acquisition?
Adobe's proposed $20 billion acquisition of Figma was abandoned in December 2023 after European Union and UK regulators signaled they would block the deal on antitrust grounds. The EU's preliminary investigation concluded the merger would harm competition in interactive product design tools and digital asset creation software. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee as agreed in the merger contract. Figma remains an independent company, led by CEO Dylan Field who co-founded it. The failed acquisition arguably strengthened Figma's position — it retained independence, received $1 billion in cash, and continued its competitive trajectory without Adobe's constraints. Figma has since launched significant product expansions (Dev Mode, Figma AI, Figma Sites, Figma Slides) and has not pursued another acquisition offer. Adobe continues to develop its own competing design tools (Adobe XD, though it has reduced investment there, and Adobe Express which competes more with Canva).