Canva increases the price of one of its subscriptions fivefold because, according to them, AI is worth it

Subscriptions keep getting more expensive, but Canva is going even further. The company has become something of a new Adobe, and its commitment to generative AI models has been clear for months. Now those features seem to be the perfect excuse to raise prices. And not just raise them a little.

A beastly climb. The price of Canva Teams, a subscription-based platform for businesses that allows you to cover multiple users at once, is expected to rise by 300% in certain regions.

For example, a buttonIn Australia, they indicate in Information Agethis subscription costs AU$39.99 per month for five users. Now it will cost you $40.50 per month per user and there must be a minimum of three users on the plan. The math is impressive: in one year the subscription for three users will go from costing $480 to $1,458 per year, almost triple, but since until now the plan supported up to five users, the cost for that group will be $2,430, almost five times more than what was paid until now.

It was coming. Changes to Canva’s pricing plans have been threatening to happen for some time. In April, the company changed the prices of its Canva Teams plan, requiring businesses to pay $10 per month for each user with a minimum of three users. Now, the company’s communications manager, Louisa Green, Indian that existing users will be moved to these new prices “to reflect the current plan pricing and the value of our expanded product experience.”

AI is worth it, they say at CanvaAccording to Green, “Our product suite has grown significantly over the past two years with the launch of new options like Visual Suite and Magic Studio.” These options take advantage of the power of generative AI, and provide features that can be useful to design teams in all kinds of fields. However, the increase in this case seems exaggerated.

Canva becomes a bit AdobeCanva was born as a modern, simple, fresh and even fun alternative to popular Adobe products. Not only that: it was a much more affordable option in many cases, but the new prices make its proposal lose many points in terms of the price/performance ratio.

IPOThere is another possible argument behind this significant price increase: It is expected Canva is expected to go public in the US in 2026. Its co-founder, Cliff Obrecht, recently indicated that such a process was obvious given that Australian investors “don’t understand the technology as well as the many more sophisticated investors in the US”.

If it has AI, it will (probably) be quite a bit more expensiveWhat has happened with Canva is something we have been seeing for some time. Products and services that promise great advantages thanks to the use of AI functions have taken advantage of the opportunity to raise prices with that promise in mind. The big tech companies have been offering paid subscriptions for their most advanced AI models for some time now —OpenAI, Microsoft, Google or Anthropic are doing it, for example—, and everything points to the fact that these functions will end up being a common argument for raising the prices of “products with AI” compared to “products without AI”.

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