Figma vs Canva vs Penpot pricing after the 2026 changes

It's tempting to line these three up as budget options against each other, but two of them aren't really solving the same problem. Figma and Penpot are for people designing software interfaces. Canva is for people designing everything else — social graphics, presentations, marketing collateral. Comparing their prices only makes sense once that's clear, because otherwise "Penpot is free" reads like an argument against paying for Canva, and it isn't one.

| Tool | Free | Entry paid | Top tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma | Starter — $0 | Professional — ~$16/full seat/mo | Organization ~$55, Enterprise ~$90 |
| Canva | Free | Pro — ~$14.99/user/mo | Teams from ~$10/user/mo (3+), Enterprise custom |
| Penpot | free, self-hostable | ~$7/user/mo (managed, optional) | — |

Figma's pricing has a real trap in it worth knowing before you budget for a team: seats come in three flavors — Full, Dev, and Collab — each billed differently, which means the per-seat number on the pricing page isn't what most teams actually pay once you've sorted out who needs full editing rights versus who's only ever commenting. That refinement happened this year specifically so teams could pay less for people who don't need full access, which is a genuine improvement, but it also means the sticker price requires more math than it used to.

Run the numbers at real scale and the gap is bigger than the per-seat difference suggests: fifty editors on Figma Professional runs close to $9,600 a year, against roughly $6,000 for the same headcount on Canva Teams — about a 60% premium. That's not really evidence Figma is overpriced, though; it's evidence the two tools are priced for different jobs. Canva spent this year pushing further into AI generation and video, broadening what "a Canva subscription" covers well past static graphics.

Penpot is the interesting third option precisely because it competes on Figma's turf rather than Canva's — open-source, genuinely capable UI and product design, and free if you're willing to self-host it. For a team that wants Figma-like tooling without a recurring SaaS line item, or that has a real requirement to keep design data on infrastructure it controls, Penpot is a legitimate substitute in a way Canva never could be.

If you're designing software interfaces, pay for Figma when budget allows — it's still the industry standard for design systems and developer handoff — and look seriously at Penpot when budget or data residency rules that out. If you're producing marketing assets, Canva is the right tool regardless of what Figma costs. Don't try to force product design into Canva, and don't try to lay out a social campaign in Figma — both are the wrong tool held at the wrong angle.