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 drag-and-drop templates for non-designers to create marketing materials.
Cloud-based collaborative design and prototyping platform with real-time multiplayer editing.
Structured comparison data for Canva vs Figma with 280 attributes.
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
Canva vs Figma — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Canva vs Figma.
Can I use Canva for professional UI/UX design work?
Canva is not designed for professional UI/UX work. While it excels at marketing graphics and social media content, it lacks essential UX design tools like advanced prototyping, component systems, design tokens, and developer handoff capabilities. For UI/UX projects, Figma is the industry standard. Canva is better suited for design assets, mockups, and marketing collateral.
Yes, Figma's free tier includes 3 files, unlimited pages per file, basic prototyping, and commenting. However, the learning curve is steep—beginners typically need 2-4 weeks to become proficient. For absolute beginners wanting instant results, Canva's free tier is much easier to use with its drag-and-drop templates and no design knowledge required.
Which tool is better for team collaboration?
Figma is significantly better for team collaboration. It supports 10+ simultaneous users editing the same file in real-time with live cursors, presence awareness, and version history. Canva's collaboration is limited to view-only sharing or invite-based editing with sequential changes. Figma is built for design teams; Canva is optimized for individual creators.
Figma offers native code export for CSS, React, Android, and JavaScript, making it developer-friendly. Canva does not provide code export—it's focused on visual design output (PNG, PDF, video). If developer handoff is critical, Figma is the only viable option between these two.
What's the cost difference for a 5-person design team?
For a 5-person team over 12 months: Canva Teams costs $30/month for 5 users ($1,800/year), while Figma charges $12/month per editor ($60/month or $720/year for 5 editors). Figma is 60% cheaper for team collaboration. However, Canva includes AI features and templates; Figma focuses purely on design tools.