A year after Canva revamped Affinity for the Mac, it has now released the free iPad version too. Not only is this good for iPad users, but it will free up some Mac ones to update as well.
Canva revamped the Affinity suite of publishing and illustration tools on the Mac back in 2025, but it wasn't backwards compatible. If you worked on both the Mac and the iPad, you couldn't update because the two platforms had to stay on the same version.
Now that's over as Canva has released Affinity for iPad. At times it's been referred to as Affinity Studio, but now it is simply Affinity on Mac, iPad, and Windows. It's not just the same name, though, as Canva claims that it has precisely the same features as the Mac version.
"Creative work doesn't stay in one discipline, so your tools shouldn't either," Duncan Clark, CEO of Pro Design at Canva, said in a statement. "Since we brought Affinity together on desktop, our biggest user request has been the desire to bring it to iPad. Today we're delivering it: a fully-fledged, professional app built for touch."
In AppleInsider's initial testing, it seems to be true that the full Affinity app has come to the iPad, but then it's not a surprise. What is now a single Canva Affinity app per platform, was previously a trio of Serif Affinity apps which AppleInsider was very familiar with.
With one click, Affinity users can switch between a full illustration app, a publishing one, or more.- image credit: Canva.
As well as being strong layout, photography, and illustration apps, those old Affinity Publisher, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Designer were notable for having identical Mac and iPad apps.
What's also the same between the Mac and the new iPad Affinity app is that they are both free for individual users. It caused huge concern for users when Canva first bought Affinity and then made it free.
But a year on from the Mac version being released, there's been no change to the pricing. And the iPad app has been developed further than its Serif predecessors.
Now when you first open Affinity on the iPad, it asks whether you are planning to use primarily touch or the Apple Pencil. And it introduces a Sketch Studio for freehand drawing.
The catch
If you're an individual user, there is no catch and you can just go download Affinity for iPad from the App Store right now. There is an in-app purchase that brings AI tools and templates, but none that are needed to use Affinity in full.
These subscription features do more closely link Canva's features to Affinity's. However, in a year producing half a dozen education magazines or publications, we've had no need to even look at what those extra tools are.
A personal subscription to what's called Canva Pro costs $18/month or $143.99/year. A business subscription for Affinity costs $250/year.
Affinity for iPad requires iPadOS 18 or greater. It runs on:
7th generation iPad or later
5th generation iPad mini or later
3rd generation iPad Air or later
All generations of 11-inch iPad Pro
3rd generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro
13-inch iPad Pro M4, M5 and later
