Sick of Canva? Check out these free alternatives for graphic design

Many students who do graphic design are now looking for free alternatives to Canva. Why is that so?

Considered one of the most widely used online drag and drop design tools, Canva is a free computer and mobile app that allows you to design hundreds of types of visual content for personal or professional use on the go. 

From designing a resume to a social media post, crafting your own logo, and even an infographic — this design tool allows you to take creativity into your own hands. 

But of course, as the app continues to remain popular among students and businesses, users are seeking other free alternatives to Canva due to reasons such as poor print quality. 

If you’ve used Canva before, you’ll notice that you’ll have to pay for Canva Pro in order to gain access to premium resources like Brand Kit, Magic Resize, over 100 million stock photos, Background Remover, and more.

Don’t want to pay and fed up with seeing overused Canva templates that seemingly appear everywhere but still want to easily create professional designs without experience? We got you!

These are six free alternatives to Canva every student should check out: 

1. VistaCreate 

VistaCreate is one of the free alternatives to Canva. It offers over 25,000 ready-made static templates and 9,000 animated templates that are updated monthly. 

You’ll never run out of ideas or inspiration to start your masterpiece.  

The tool lets you create designs for social media, blogs, marketing materials, and other types of ads easily.

Note that users on the free plan are only limited to download five designs every month.

2. Desygner

If you’re looking for free alternatives to Canva that also allow you to make designs on the go, you should definitely consider Desygner. 

Desygner offers slightly more than Canva on its free plan. Among them include removing background and  unlimited access to 150 million Shutterstock photos. 

The app also offers various free templates for resumes, presentations, social media posts or even business cards. 

It is available for both iPhone and Android on the App Store and PlayStore. 

3. Fotor

A powerful online photo editing tool, Fotor allows you to create graphic designs as well as access photo editing tools such as mirroring an image and adding effects to pictures. 

If you are looking to make graphics for your social media or blog, there are pre-made templates which you can use or explore to spark your own ideas. 

What’s more, you can also make a photo collage with their collage feature.

4. Adobe Express

Another one of the free alternatives to Canva is Adobe Express (formerly Adobe Spark).

Users get to enjoy the entire royalty-free stock photo and font collection and thousands of gorgeous templates.

Since this app is part of the Adobe ecosystem, you can seamlessly use Photoshop and Premiere within one platform — making it one of the best features of the app.

There are constantly new templates to support local events and seasonal moments such as Chinese New Year.

Try out the free plan with basic editing and effects, 2GB storage, thousands of templates and more. It is also available as an app on the App Store, Google Play Store and on desktop. 

New to Adobe as a whole? Here are some tutorials and resources available on the website.

5. DesignCap

DesignCap has a similar user interface as Canva with its drag-and-drop builder. 

The graphic design platform is engineered to simplify the time-consuming process of creating professional designs for those who don’t have any background experience.

Offering thousands of high-quality templates and a vast collection of illustrations, shapes and stylish fonts, users can let their creative juices flow into creating infographics, flyers, and social media graphics that pop.

Do note that the free plan only entitles users of the free plan to download up to five designs.