Some Canva users are about to pay more to use the service — a lot more. In the United States, Canva Teams users are reporting subscription increases from $120 per year for up to five users to $500 per year — a pretty staggering increase, and it's not offering anything new for all that cash.

An increase thanks to AI

The company has announced a price increase for subscribers to its Canva Teams service, representing a staggering 300% increase in price, an increase the company is justifying in part by the new AI tools it's already added to the platform.

To soften the financial blow, Canva is offering a 40 percent discount for the first year to bring the cost down to $300, which is still more than double what customers are paying now and a lot more than people pay for similar services such as Adobe Creative Cloud.

While the increase is huge in the US, the service is seeing an even more significant increase in the company's home of Australia. Canva Teams currently costs a flat fee of $40 for up to 5 users, Australian companies now have to pay $40.50 per user on their accounts. That means a subscription for just three users will jump from $480 a year to $1458. For now, the price increase isn't going to impact individual users.

Canva's AI toolkit

As for the AI tools that Canva is touting, some of its most notable AI-powered improvements include:

• Magic Switch: Automatically resizes designs for different platforms and formats, saving time and ensuring consistency across various outputs.
• Magic Write: An AI-powered writing assistant that helps generate text content for designs, such as captions, headlines, and more, based on prompts you provide.
• Background Remover: Uses AI to automatically remove backgrounds from images, making it easier to isolate subjects and create clean, professional-looking designs.
• Design Suggestions: AI-driven recommendations for design layouts, elements, and color schemes based on the content and context of your design.
• Text to Image: Transforms text prompts into custom images, allowing for more creative and unique visual content.
• Brand Kit: AI helps maintain brand consistency by suggesting fonts, colors, and styles that align with your brand's identity.

The price increase is likely due, at least in part, to the company's plans for an IPO in 2026. By increasing the cost of plans, the company hopes to increase profits, allowing for it to debut at a higher IPO price.