If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably felt the impulse to try every design up under the sun. I’ve lost count of how many subscriptions I got, and also canceled, over the years. Of course, the big players were unavoidable, namely Canva, Figma, and Adobe. I had all three subscriptions at some point, but canceling them was the right move because, as a hobbyist, I simply don’t need what they’re charging for.

Enter Affinity. When Canva acquired it and made the whole creative suite free last year, it kind of changed everything for designers who were tired of overpaying for design software. If you’ve read any of my creative software coverage, you’ll know I’ve covered Affinity plenty already. But I wanted to look at it from the lens of someone who’s actually had subscriptions to the three biggest design tools on the market. Can Affinity actually replace Figma, Adobe, and Canva? It turned out to be a mixed bag for me…

Affinity handles casual design without a hitch

Unless you want templates and AI, there’s no need to pay for Canva

I know most people reach for Canva because of its massive template collection, and its AI features aren’t half bad these days. But I primarily use Canva for presentations that I create from scratch. In this case, Affinity is absolutely a viable replacement for Canva. Although it is a pro-level design suite, it’s one of the easiest comprehensive design tools for beginners to pick up thanks to its intuitive interface.

Affinity’s Layout window isn’t really something I tinkered with much before I considered using it in place of Canva. It’s actually more of a direct replacement for PowerPoint for creating high-quality slides. The tools in the left pane are dead simple to use; things like text, shapes, lines, frames, and tables. It has a decent selection of premade icons under the Assets tab, and you can also add stock photos from Pexels via the Stock tab.

The biggest advantage of Canva is that its drag-and-drop functionality still makes it more suitable to users who aren’t keen or don’t have time to learn design software. At the end of the day, Affinity isn’t really in competition with Canva since they’re both part of the Canva family. But I still prefer Affinity for its control; it lets you adjust every element down to the pixel.

Affinity replaces all the major Adobe tools

It’s a core Adobe killer

When the new free Affinity app dropped, my first thought was “how could this replace Adobe?” And it ended up wiping out most of its core digital and print design tools in one swoop. The Pixel workspace, previously Affinity Photo, almost completely replaces Photoshop, even for professional work. It has the full stack, including retouching, selections, masking, adjustment layers, HDR, dodge & burn, and much more.

Inside the new Pixel workspace, we still have the personas, including Develop, which is Affinity’s RAW development space. While it’s not quite a match for Lightroom as it lacks things like file management and batch editing, it’s a decent RAW editor with solid lighting and color adjustments.

Then there’s the Vector workspace, previously Affinity Designer, which is pretty much a complete replacement for Adobe Illustrator. It gives me similar pen, shape, and node editing with precise property adjustments, and I also like how easy the gradient fill tool is to use. Moreover, it actually opens Illustrator AI files and keeps the layers intact, which made it easy to move old projects over. The Layout workspace is also a solid replacement for Adobe InDesign, with CMYK support, master pages, and the full design kit.

All of these workspaces combined also replace Adobe Express. Express is one of the few Adobe tools with a free tier, so you can get some good use out of it without paying, but Affinity is a much more comprehensive design suite than Express.

Figma is still the best tool for UX design

But Affinity is suitable for UI work

I’m not even going to pretend that Affinity replaces Figma for UX design work, primarily because it doesn’t have prototyping or collaborative editing. However, it is a solid option for designing UI layouts and elements. This will mostly be in the Vector workspace, since Figma is also vector-based.

It has all the tools for building UI screens, mockups, buttons, experimenting with fonts, color palettes, and more. You have frames, grids, precise alignment tools, and the same kind of control over shapes and text as in Figma. For anyone who pays for Figma for UI, Affinity could handle it for free. But it does fall apart when you need to create anything clickable or interactive; Affinity simply doesn’t have the tools for that.

One app sweeps my entire design stack

Affinity isn’t the perfect replacement for these big players in every scenario. But for my use case, as a hobbyist who’s simply passionate about design software and casually works on some side projects, it replaces my need to pay for Canva, Adobe, or Figma. Depending on the type of designs you work with, Affinity could be an all-kill free replacement for your entire stack.