Stencil vs Canva

by Gralio Feb 27, 2025

Stencil and Canva are both user-friendly design tools. Stencil is a better choice for users who prioritize speed, simplicity, and affordability for basic social media graphics. Canva is a better option for users who require a wider range of design tools, templates, and collaboration features for diverse design projects, from social media posts to presentations and marketing materials.

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 5140 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 5 hours, 3 minutes of reading.

Stencil

Website LinkedIn Twitter

Canva

Website LinkedIn Twitter

About

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.

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.

Summary

Main difference

Stencil excels in providing a simple, fast, and affordable platform for creating basic social media graphics, while Canva offers a broader range of design tools, templates, and resources suitable for both basic and more complex design projects.

Relative strengths of Stencil (compared to Canva)

Stencil is generally more affordable, especially for basic graphic design needs.
Stencil is known for its speed and simplicity, allowing users to create visuals very quickly.
Stencil offers a convenient browser extension for quick access and sharing.

Relative weaknesses of Stencil (compared to Canva)

Canva offers a much wider selection of templates, design elements, and fonts compared to Stencil.
Canva provides better collaboration features, making it more suitable for team projects.
Canva's mobile app is more robust and feature-rich than Stencil's limited mobile offering.

Who is using Stencil and Canva?

No data

Sanchit Sarhadi

Network Growth Manager DACH - Networking Consultant - Aurora

Charlie Hills

I use AI to create content that converts

Olesia Krilyshyn

Sales Acceleration Specialist at Reply.io

Lindsay Rosenthal

Founder at Cred.Marketing

Jonathan Parsons

Marketing Director - Clinique UK & Ireland

Who should use Stencil VS. Canva

Stencil is a user-friendly design tool for creating engaging visuals. Users love the intuitive interface and vast library of royalty-free images, while some find the templates and customization options limited. Perfect for social media marketers, bloggers, and small business owners seeking quick and easy graphic design solutions.

Canva is a user-friendly design platform praised for its intuitive interface and vast template library. Users appreciate the diverse stock images, videos, and fonts, enabling easy creation of professional visuals. However, some find the free version limiting and desire more offline functionality.

Best for small to medium businesses (1-1000 employees).
Ideal for marketing and advertising, and e-commerce.

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

Stencil and Canva features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

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

Data Visualization

Not supported

Stencil does not support interactive data visualization.

Partially supported

Canva supports interactive data visualization through its Flourish integration.
Social media graphics

Supported

Stencil offers various tools and features to create and share 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.
Drag-and-drop editor

Supported

Stencil offers a drag-and-drop editor for general image creation, which can be used for logo design.

Supported

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

Not supported

Stencil does not support logo generation but can work with existing logos.

Supported

Canva allows users to design and generate logos using provided templates, design elements, and a user-friendly interface. Users can customize these templates, incorporate various design elements, and export their logos in different formats.
Design elements

Unknown

Stencil might offer design elements for logo customization.

Supported

Canva provides access to a library of design elements specifically for customizing logo templates, as part of its extensive design element library.
Access to a library of pre-designed logo templates.

Not supported

Stencil does not offer pre-designed logo templates.

Supported

Canva provides access to a library of pre-designed logo templates.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

No data

No data
Customer Service

No data

No data
Ease of Use

No data

No data
Reliability and Performance

No data

No data
Ease of Implementation

No data

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Scalability

No data

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Stencil and Canva Pricing

No data

See full Pricing page

No data

We couldn't find a pricing page for Canva.

Stencil and Canva review insights

Users love

Easy to use and intuitive interface
Vast library of royalty-free images and icons
Seamless social media integration for sharing
Ability to create custom image sizes
Convenient browser extension for quick access

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

Users dislike

Limited font selection
Templates are not very modern or diverse
Limited customization options, especially for resizing
Lack of a mobile app
Workspace feels a bit cramped

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

Stencil and Canva Ratings

G2

4.5/5

(24)
TrustPilot

4.7/5

(20)

G2

4.7/5

(2674)
Capterra

4.7/5

(2444)
TrustPilot

2.6/5

(39)
Glassdoor

4.2/5

(732)

Company health

Employee growth

No change in the last year

46% increase in the last year

Web traffic

No data

7% increase in the last quarter

Financing

No data

July 2024 - $3B

How do Stencil's social media sharing features compare to Canva's?

Both Stencil and Canva offer seamless social media integration. Stencil users appreciate its direct sharing capabilities, while Canva's broader design platform with integrated sharing options makes it a popular choice for diverse visual content creation and distribution across social media platforms.

Which product offers a better user experience for quick, simple designs?

For quick, simple designs, Canva offers a better user experience. While Stencil emphasizes speed and ease of use, user reviews mention limited templates and customization options. Canva, on the other hand, is praised for its wide variety of templates and intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making it ideal for users without design experience looking to create visuals quickly.

What are the advantages of Stencil?

Stencil's advantages include its emphasis on ease of use and speed, allowing quick creation of visuals without advanced design skills. Its vast library of royalty-free assets and seamless social media integration are also beneficial for users focused on social media content creation. Users specifically praise Stencil's intuitive interface and convenient browser extension.

What are the disadvantages of Stencil?

Stencil's disadvantages include a limited font selection, templates that are not very modern or diverse, limited customization options particularly for resizing, lack of a mobile app, and a cramped workspace.

Alternatives to Stencil and Canva

Flickr

Flickr is an online platform where you can store, share, and discover photos and videos. It's known for its large and active community of photography enthusiasts. You can follow other users, join groups, and participate in photo challenges. Flickr offers both free and paid accounts, with paid accounts offering unlimited storage, advanced statistics, and ad-free browsing.

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.

Snappa

Snappa is a user-friendly, web-based design software aimed at simplifying visual content creation for non-designers. It provides pre-sized templates, stock photos, and design elements to easily create graphics for social media, ads, and marketing materials. Users can customize templates or design from scratch, with no design experience required. Snappa also allows for quick image resizing and one-click sharing to social media platforms.

Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a graphic design tool powered by artificial intelligence. It allows users to easily create professional-quality visuals for social media, presentations, and marketing materials. Designer's AI assists with design suggestions, making it suitable for users with varying design experience. It aims to streamline the creative process and offers a user-friendly experience for generating unique images, graphics, and layouts.

Picsart

Picsart is an all-in-one visual creation platform. It offers easy-to-use tools for photo editing and graphic design, powered by artificial intelligence. Users can leverage Picsart's extensive template library to design social media content, marketing materials, and more. The platform caters to both individuals and businesses, simplifying visual creation regardless of prior design experience. Picsart is accessible online and via their mobile and desktop apps.

Marq

Marq (formerly Lucidpress) is a cloud-based design and brand templating platform. It helps businesses of all sizes create marketing materials like brochures, flyers, and social media posts, while ensuring brand consistency. The platform offers drag-and-drop templates and collaborative features, making it easy for non-designers to create professional-looking content. Marq also allows businesses to lock down branding elements and automate content creation workflows.

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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