Canva vs Figma
Both are design tools. Here is what separates them.
What Canva is
Canva is a browser-based design editor, and its developer documentation sets out two distinct ways to work with it in code: apps that run inside the Canva editor, and the Connect API, which drives Canva from another system. A Canva app is a plugin built with standard web technologies such as JavaScript, rendered inside an iframe in the editor's object panel. Three pieces make one up: the Apps SDK, the App UI Kit and the Fetch API for calls out to a backend. A finished app is either distributed publicly through the Apps Marketplace or shared privately with team members only. Local development uses the Canva CLI, installed from an npm package published by Canva, and expects Node.js v24 and npm v11, with the development server running on port 8080. The Connect API works the other way round, letting an external application create and retrieve work in a Canva account. It authenticates with OAuth 2.0 using the authorisation code flow plus PKCE with SHA-256, and Canva publishes the OpenAPI specification on its developer site. An integration is either public, which means passing a Canva review, or private, which is restricted to Canva Enterprise customers. Through the API, a design can be created from four presets (doc, email, presentation and whiteboard) or at custom dimensions between 40 and 8000 pixels on each side, with a total area no greater than 25,000,000 square pixels. Assets can be uploaded: images up to 50 MB as JPEG, PNG, HEIC, single-frame GIF, TIFF or single-frame WEBP, and video up to 500 MB as M4V, MKV, MP4, MPEG, QuickTime or WebM. Autofill populates image, text, chart and sheet fields in a design, which is the mechanism behind generating many designs from one data source, though the acting user must belong to a Canva Enterprise organisation. Brand templates can be listed 25 at a time by default and 100 at most per request, and require a Canva Pro, Canva Teams or Canva Enterprise plan. Exports are produced as JPG, PNG, GIF, PPTX, MP4, PDF, an HTML bundle or standalone HTML. MP4 is available at 480p, 720p, 1080p and 4K in horizontal or vertical orientation, PDFs at A4, A3, letter or legal, and JPG, PNG and GIF images between 40 and 25,000 pixels. Plan level reaches into the API here: Pro export quality, lossy PNG compression and transparent PNG backgrounds all need a Canva Pro level plan, and on the free plan a fixed-dimension design cannot be upscaled on export by more than 1.125 times. Rate limits are counted per user of an integration: 20 design creations per minute, 30 asset uploads, 60 autofills and 100 brand template listings. Exports are governed more tightly, at 750 per five minute window and 5,000 per 24 hours for the integration, and 500 per 24 hours for any single user.
What Figma is
Figma is a design tool that runs in the browser. The product family covers Figma Design, Figma Make, Figma Weave, Dev Mode, Figma Motion, FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Draw, Figma Sites and Figma Buzz, so interface work, whiteboarding, slides, websites and marketing assets sit inside one account. Figma Design carries auto layout, variables, components, slots, brushes, textures, grid layout, multi-edit, and branching and merging. Prototyping on top of it supports Smart Animate, interactive components, conditional logic and mathematical expressions, which is enough to demonstrate state changes rather than only screen-to-screen transitions. Files auto-save a version every 30 minutes. Dev Mode handles the handoff. Selecting a layer exposes code snippets, component properties and structured layer data, and a compare changes view shows two versions of a design side by side. Code Connect maps Figma components to their counterparts in production code, dev resources link a layer out to GitHub files, Jira tickets and Storybook stories, and a Figma MCP server pulls design system components into a codebase. The rest of the family covers adjacent work. FigJam ships more than 300 ready-made templates, integrates with Asana, Jira and GitHub, and offers 24 hour guest access without a login. Figma Slides imports PowerPoint files and supports live audience polls and an alignment scale. Figma Buzz generates images through OpenAI and Gemini models, removes image backgrounds, and imports, trims and exports video. Figma Make accepts text prompts, voice input, and attached designs, images, videos, audio, PDFs and text files. Figma Sites includes a CMS view for adding, editing and publishing page content. FigJam and Figma Slides are included with every seat on every plan. Seats come in three kinds, and the gap between them is the main budgeting lever. On Professional a Full seat is $16 per month, a Dev seat $12 and a Collab seat $3. On Organization those become $55, $25 and $5, and on Enterprise $90, $35 and $5. Organization and Enterprise are sold on annual billing only. The free Starter plan gives a single team with one folder and three files, while Professional gives a single team with unlimited folders. AI usage is metered in credits. A Professional Full seat carries 3,000 per month, Organization 3,500 and Enterprise 4,250, while Dev and Collab seats carry 500 each. Starter allows 150 a day up to 500 a month. Enterprise plans can allocate credits across teams, departments or cost centres and read usage through an AI credit usage API. Variable modes are capped at 10 on Starter and Professional and 20 on Organization, and are unlimited on Enterprise through extended collections.
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