Canva keeps adding AI features. Magic Write. Magic Edit. Magic Eraser. Magic everything.

But Canva Pro costs $179.99/year. For a bootstrapped founder, that’s not nothing.

Are the AI features worth it? I spent three months finding out.

The AI Features That Justify the Cost

Magic Eraser: Remove objects from photos. Works shockingly well. I used to pay freelancers $20-50 per image edit. Now it takes 10 seconds.

If you do any product photography or social media with images, this alone is worth $180/year.

Background Remover: One click. Clean cutout. Used to use remove.bg at $0.20 per image. If you process more than 100 images per year, Canva is cheaper.

Magic Resize: Create one design, export to every social media format. Saves maybe 15 minutes per design. Not AI exactly, but included in Pro.

These three features deliver clear ROI.

The AI Features That Are Meh

Magic Write: Canva’s text generator. It’s fine. Generic. You can get the same from ChatGPT or Claude for free.

Magic Design: Upload content, get design suggestions. The suggestions are bland. A human with 10 minutes of Canva experience does better.

Magic Animate: Adds motion to designs. Cute but rarely useful for business content.

Text to Image: Generates images from prompts. The results are obviously AI. Fine for placeholders. Not for final assets.

These aren’t bad. They’re just not worth paying for specifically.

The AI Features That Suck

Magic Presentation: Turns text into a presentation. Creates the most generic, boring slides imaginable. Literally worse than doing nothing.

Beat Sync: Matches video to music. Never works correctly.

Magic Translate: Translates text in designs. Accuracy is poor for anything beyond basic phrases.

Skip these entirely.

The Real Calculation

Canva Pro costs $180/year.

Alternatives for the good features:

• Background removal: $240/year at remove.bg rates
• Object removal: $300+/year in freelancer costs
• Multi-format export: Hours of manual work

If you create more than 20 designs per month, Pro pays for itself through Magic Eraser and Background Remover alone.

My Recommendation

Get Canva Pro if: You regularly edit images, need background removal, or create content for multiple platforms.

Stay on Free if: You mostly use templates without modification or only need occasional designs.

Don’t get Pro for: The text generation or AI design features. They’re not better than free alternatives.

The image editing AI is legitimately impressive. The content generation AI is forgettable. Price accordingly.

One More Thing

Canva’s AI uses your designs for training unless you opt out. Go to Account Settings > Privacy, and turn off the data sharing options.

Your brand assets shouldn’t be training someone else’s AI.