Since Canva acquired Serif —the company behind Affinity— in 2024, everyone expected a change. Some feared the platform would lose its independent spirit. Others assumed Canva would absorb it entirely.
A month ago, when Affinity stopped selling version V2 and went silent, most assumed the worst: the end of the perpetual license, the beginning of yet another subscription.
Instead, we got something different.
Affinity returns not as a trio of apps, but as one unified tool for design, vector, and publishing — available today, free for everyone.
A rare move in a time when almost every creative tool comes with a monthly cost.
But this isn’t just about pricing.
It’s about intention.
To make a professional-grade tool free is to question the logic that software must belong to investors before it belongs to its users.
And while Canva is clearly the driving force behind this “free miracle,” it’s interesting to see how the company plans to build trust among professional creators — a space it has long struggled to enter.
My Insight
I’ve used Affinity daily in my work for quite a while now. It isn’t perfect, but it feels good to work with — fast, modern, lightweight, and built around focus rather than noise.
It allowed me to create professional work with a single, honest payment.
Now it lives inside Canva’s orbit, which raises an inevitable question:
Can a company built on templates protect the value of professional tools?
For now, Affinity feels like a small correction.
A reminder that access and ownership still matter in the creative world.
And that maybe, not every platform has to charge rent for the tools we use to make things.
We’ll see.
Press release: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/all-new-affinity
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