Canva vs Figma vs Leonardo.ai
A side-by-side look at Canva, Figma and Leonardo.ai for filmmakers: what each one can do, what it costs, and where they actually differ.
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Design platform with AI 2.0 agent, Veo 3 video clips, and free Affinity for layouts and graphics
- Price
- Free plan; see the vendor's pricing page for paid plans
- Learning
- Easy
- Best for
- Title cards, lower thirds and thumbnails for YouTube or festival submissions
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Collaborative design canvas for UI, prototypes, motion and design systems, now with a built-in agent
- Price
- Free Starter. Professional Full seat $16/editor/mo; Dev seat $12/mo; Collab seat $3/mo (annual pricing)
- Learning
- Moderate
- Best for
- Designing title cards, lower thirds, end screens and thumbnails for a video channel or agency
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Image and video generation with a canvas, Motion animation and third-party video models
- Price
- See the vendor's pricing page
- Learning
- Easy
- Best for
- Concept art and key-art stills that later become motion tests
The short version
Where they differ
- Figma is the only one without text to video.
- Figma is the only one without image to video.
- Only Leonardo.ai offers custom training.
All 3 offer: public API, free tier.
Feature by feature
Canva vs Figma vs Leonardo.ai: capabilities
| Canva | Figma | Leonardo.ai | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free plan; see the vendor's pricing page for paid plans | Free Starter. Professional Full seat $16/editor/mo; Dev seat $12/mo; Collab seat $3/mo (annual pricing) | See the vendor's pricing page |
| Infinite canvas | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Node / flow builder | No | Yes | Partial |
| AI agent | Yes | Yes | Not confirmed |
| Chat assistant | Yes | Yes | Not confirmed |
| Team collaboration | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Text to image | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Image editing | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Text to video | Yes | No | Yes |
| Image to video | Yes | No | Yes |
| Native audio in video | Yes | No | Partial |
| Upscaling | Not confirmed | Not confirmed | Partial |
| Character consistency | Not confirmed | No | Partial |
| Camera control | Not confirmed | No | Partial |
| Custom training | No | No | Yes |
| Third-party models | Partial | Not confirmed | Yes |
| Public API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | Not confirmed |
| Mobile app | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Desktop / local | Partial | Partial | No |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Commercial use | Partial | Yes | Yes |
Each column comes from that tool's own researched page. "Not confirmed" means the vendor doesn't say.
Plans
Pricing compared
Canva
| Free | $0free |
|---|---|
| Enterprise | Contact salescustom |
Figma
| Starter | Freefree |
|---|---|
| Professional | $16 per Full seat ($20 monthly per Banani; check toggle)monthly or annual |
| Organization | $55 per Full seatannual |
| Enterprise | $90 per Full seat (sales-led)annual |
Leonardo.ai
| Free | $0monthly |
|---|---|
| API | Pay as you gousage |
The verdict
Which one should you pick?
Canva
Pick it for
- Title cards, lower thirds and thumbnails for YouTube or festival submissions
- Pitch decks, one-sheets and pitch posters for film projects
- Social cutdowns with captions and branded frames from a single brief
Stands out
- Fastest route from brief to finished branded graphic: templates, brand kit and AI 2.0 are one workflow, so non-designers on a team can produce on-brand assets without an editor.
- Veo 3 clips with synced audio inside a design editor. The clip lands in a timeline you can caption and music-bed immediately, which a standalone generator does not give you.
Watch out
- Veo-generated clips are capped at 8 seconds with no camera control or character persistence
- AI 2.0 is a research preview and paid-plan AI allowances have changed several times in 2026
Figma
Pick it for
- Designing title cards, lower thirds, end screens and thumbnails for a video channel or agency
- Storyboard frames and pitch decks shared with clients for review and comments
- Brand kits and template systems that a production team reuses across projects
Stands out
- Multiplayer canvas is the default: several editors, plus commenters and viewers on paid plans without a paid seat, work in one file live.
- Largest design-to-code bridge in the category: Dev Mode inspect, REST and Plugin APIs, and an official MCP server that AI coding agents can read from and, in beta, write to.
Watch out
- Credit allowances differ sharply by seat type; Dev and Collab seats get only 500 credits a month
- Large files can be slow, and the product needs an internet connection for full use
Leonardo.ai
Pick it for
- Concept art and key-art stills that later become motion tests
- Animatic and previz stills turned into 5-second motion clips
- Custom-trained visual styles for a short film or music video look
Stands out
- Canvas-first editing (AI Canvas for inpainting and outpainting, plus a realtime mode) in the same tool as image and video generation
- Several model families under one account, including Leonardo's own Lucid and Motion 2.0 alongside third-party video models such as Kling 3.0 and Veo 3.1
Watch out
- Video is short (about 5 seconds on Motion 2.0) and not built for sequences or dialogue scenes
- Hosted third-party models are removed on short notice, so a workflow that depends on one can break mid-project
Each column comes from that tool's own researched page, checked against vendor pricing and changelog pages (oldest check: ). Sources are listed on each tool's page.