Affinity is now free!
No sooner does one piece of great software in the shape of World Creator come along when you get another. I mentioned in a previous article that I'm trying to go Adobe-free as far as possible, and that one key to this was to use the Affinity suite of software.
Well, the three components of that suite are now in one app (with no loss of functionality, of course). And since Affinity was acquired by Canva last year, the whole app has been redesigned and made available for free. All you need to do is create a Canva account and download the software. That's it.
Just get it now
Sounds too good to be true? Only time will tell. Canva say that Affinity will be 'free forever'. I hope so, because this is a great app and if all you ever needed from Adobe was Photoshop and/or Illustrator, now you have no reason not to drop Adobe and move to Affinity. The Canva account you need is itself free, and the Affinity suite is fully-featured with a free account - there's no paywall to block certain features unless you have a paid account.
Having a Canva account also gets you access to the Canva AI should you want it. You can, of course, pay if you wish for one of the various types of Canva premium account and that gets you things like additional templates, higher access to the AI, cloud storage and so on. But if all you want is Affinity, it's entirely free.
I really liked the set of three apps that made up the Affinity v2 suite, and no longer having to swap between them is just great. I can't think of a reason not to use Affinity unless you're a hard-core Adobe fan, need something in an Adobe app not available in Affinity, or you're a corporate user forced to use Adobe apps by the management.
Just go and get it ASAP.
Updated: important caveat
Although my enthusiasm for Affinity is undiminished, you should be aware that the initial release of the new all-in-one Affinity (now known as Affinity v3) is not exactly bug-free. In fact it's far from bug-free. There is a lot of discussion about the shortcomings of the initial release on the Affinity Discord channel. If you already have v2 installed I would suggest keeping it until this release is stabilised somewhat. I stand by my 'go and get it' recommendation but do be aware that there may be issues at present and it would be wise to be cautious if using in a commercial production environment.
Page last updated November 6th 2025