Canva vs Adobe Illustrator

by Gralio Mar 11, 2025

Canva and Adobe Illustrator cater to different design needs. Canva excels in its simplicity and ease of use, offering a wide range of templates and design tools for quick and easy graphic creation. Adobe Illustrator, on the other hand, is a professional vector graphics editor providing advanced tools and precise control for complex design projects.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 10090 reviews and 60 websites, saving 2 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes of reading.

Canva

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Adobe Illustrator

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About

Canva is a user-friendly design platform that makes it easy to create professional-looking visuals. It offers a wide range of templates and design tools, including a library of stock images, videos, and fonts. Canva can be used to create social media graphics, presentations, marketing materials, and more. Its drag-and-drop interface and intuitive features make it suitable for users of all skill levels, even those without prior design experience. Canva's focus on simplicity and ease of use has made it a popular choice for individuals and businesses alike.

Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard software for creating vector graphics. It's used by designers to create illustrations, logos, and other artwork for print, web, and video. Unlike raster images, vector graphics can be scaled to any size without losing quality. This makes Illustrator ideal for creating designs that will be used at various sizes, such as logos and illustrations. Illustrator offers a wide range of tools and features, including tools for drawing, typography, and color.

Summary

Main difference

Canva is better for you if you need a user-friendly platform for creating quick and easy designs with pre-made templates. Adobe Illustrator is better for you if you are a professional designer who needs advanced vector editing capabilities and precise control over your artwork.

Relative strengths of Canva (compared to Adobe Illustrator)

Easy to use and intuitive interface with a drag-and-drop editor, making it accessible to non-designers.
Vast library of templates, stock images, videos, and fonts, providing a quick start for various design projects.
Affordable pricing plans, making it accessible to individuals and small businesses.

Relative weaknesses of Canva (compared to Adobe Illustrator)

Limited vector editing capabilities compared to Illustrator, restricting advanced design manipulations.
Many advanced features are locked behind a paywall, potentially increasing costs for professional use.
The mobile app is less powerful than the desktop version, limiting on-the-go design flexibility.

Who is using Canva and Adobe Illustrator?

Lane R. Ellis

Digital Futurist, 41+ Years Online

Charlie Hills

I use AI to create content that converts

Sanchit Sarhadi

Network Growth Manager DACH - Networking Consultant - Aurora

Olesia Krilyshyn

Sales Acceleration Specialist at Reply.io

Lindsay Rosenthal

Founder at Cred.Marketing

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Who should use Canva VS. Adobe Illustrator

Canva is a user-friendly design platform praised for its intuitive interface and vast template library. Users appreciate the diverse stock assets and collaboration features but note the limitations of the free version. It's a great tool for creating professional visuals without design expertise.

Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard vector graphics software for designers of all skill levels. Create stunning illustrations, logos, and artwork for any medium. While users love its versatility and integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, some find it pricey and resource-intensive.

Ideal for small to medium businesses, marketers, educators, and nonprofits.
Suitable for various sectors, including healthcare, finance, e-commerce, education, and more.

Ideal for small businesses, medium businesses, and large enterprises.
Suitable for businesses across various industries, including healthcare, finance, e-commerce, retail, and more.

Canva and Adobe Illustrator features

Supported

Partially supported

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Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Data Visualization

Partially supported

Canva supports interactive data visualization through its Flourish integration.

Partially supported

Illustrator creates static charts and graphs. Interactive charts are not supported.
Social media graphics

Supported

Canva excels in creating social media graphics, offering diverse templates, design tools, platform optimization, and integration options for seamless content creation and publishing.

Supported

Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for creating social media graphics.
Artboards

Supported

Canva supports artboards for design variations within a project.

Supported

Illustrator supports artboards for multiple designs or pages within a file.
Drag-and-drop editor

Supported

Canva supports drag-and-drop functionality for designing logos.

Not supported

Illustrator does not offer drag-and-drop logo design but has robust tools for manual design.
Artistic effects

Supported

Canva offers various artistic filters and customization tools.

Supported

Illustrator supports applying artistic filters to stylize designs.
SVG export

Supported

Canva supports SVG export, but a Pro account is usually required.

Supported

Illustrator supports exporting artwork to SVG format.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

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Customer Service

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Ease of Use

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Reliability and Performance

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Ease of Implementation

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Scalability

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Canva and Adobe Illustrator Pricing

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We couldn't find a pricing page for Canva.

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See full Pricing page

Canva and Adobe Illustrator review insights

Users love

Easy to use and intuitive interface
Wide variety of templates for every need
Extensive library of stock images, videos, and fonts
Great collaboration features

Precise and scalable vector graphics
Versatile tools for drawing, typography, and color
Seamless integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps
Industry-standard software with wide range of features
Customizable workspace and tools

Users dislike

The free version is quite limited
Many features are locked behind a paywall
The mobile app is underwhelming and laggy
Limited offline functionality

Difficult to learn for new users
Resource intensive, can cause lag and crashes
High subscription cost
Limited raster editing capabilities
Occasional bugs and glitches

Canva and Adobe Illustrator Ratings

G2

4.7/5

(2674)
Capterra

4.7/5

(2444)
TrustPilot

2.6/5

(39)
Glassdoor

4.2/5

(732)

G2

4.6/5

(2484)
Capterra

4.8/5

(2449)
Glassdoor

4.3/5

(10097)

Company health

Employee growth

21% increase in the last year

3% decrease in the last year

Web traffic

7% increase in the last quarter

1% increase in the last quarter

Financing

June 2024 - $3B

April 1984 - $3M

How easy is each product to learn for someone without graphic design experience?

Canva is designed for ease of use and requires no graphic design experience. Its drag-and-drop interface, templates, and intuitive tools make it simple to learn. Adobe Illustrator, while powerful and industry-standard, is known for having a steeper learning curve and is generally more challenging for beginners without design experience. Its complex features and professional focus require more time and effort to master.

Which product offers better control over creating scalable vector graphics for logos?

Adobe Illustrator offers significantly better control over creating scalable vector graphics for logos. Its industry-standard toolset, including the pen tool and robust SVG support, provides more precision and flexibility for creating and manipulating vector artwork compared to Canva's simplified, template-based approach. While Canva is user-friendly, Illustrator is purpose-built for professional vector graphics creation and allows for greater scalability and control over the final product.

What are the advantages of Canva?

Canva's advantages lie in its user-friendliness, particularly for non-designers, due to its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and vast library of templates, stock images, videos, and fonts. This makes it easy to quickly create professional-looking visuals for various purposes, including social media, presentations, and marketing materials. Its collaborative features also make it a good choice for teams.

What are the disadvantages of Canva?

Canva's limitations include a restricted free version, many features requiring a paid subscription, a less impressive and sometimes laggy mobile app, and limited offline functionality. Some users also find the design options less flexible compared to professional vector graphics software.

Alternatives to Canva and Adobe Illustrator

Visme

Visme is a design platform that helps non-designers create engaging visual content like presentations, reports, infographics, and social media graphics. It offers templates, stock images, icons, and data visualization tools to simplify the design process. Users can collaborate in teams, manage content libraries, and track engagement with built-in analytics. Visme is suitable for individuals and teams of all sizes who want to improve their visual communication.

Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a free graphic design tool that specializes in vector graphics. It allows you to create designs with scalable elements that retain their quality at any size, making it suitable for logos, illustrations, and marketing materials. It offers features like SVG editing, presentation tools, and customizable document sizes.

Stencil

Stencil is a web-based graphic design tool aimed at individuals and businesses looking to easily create engaging visuals for social media, ads, and more. It provides access to a vast library of royalty-free stock photos, icons, templates, and fonts. Stencil emphasizes user-friendliness and speed, enabling users to quickly create and share professional-looking images without needing advanced design skills or software.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a free design program for creating professional-quality graphics. It offers flexible drawing tools, works with various file types, and boasts a powerful text tool. Inkscape is a popular choice for both individuals and businesses looking for a versatile and accessible design solution.

Trello

Trello is a visual project management tool that helps teams organize tasks and collaborate more effectively. Using boards, lists, and cards, teams can easily track progress on projects, from simple to-do lists to complex workflows. Trello offers a high level of customization with features like templates, integrations with other popular apps, and no-code automation. Its intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to use, regardless of technical skill. Trello offers various pricing plans to suit different team sizes and needs, including a free plan for small teams.

Vector Magic

Vector Magic is an online and desktop software that converts bitmap images (like JPGs and PNGs) into vector images (like SVGs and PDFs). It automatically traces the shapes and colors in your image, creating a scalable vector version. This is ideal for logos, illustrations, and graphics that need to be resized without losing quality. Vector Magic offers both online and offline versions, with the desktop edition providing additional file format support and features.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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