Canva Business vs Canva Pro – Which is better for your team?

Canva Business vs Canva Pro – which is better for your team and should you upgrade to Canva Business? In this post we share why your team would consider it.

BY DONNA MORITZ | PUBLISHED 30 March, 2026

Posts on this blog may contain affiliate links, which means we receive a small commission at no cost to you, if you purchase through a link. 

Canva Business is perfect for growing teams as an all-in-one platform built for small teams-medium teams who need to create on-brand, high-impact visual content at scale. It saves your team time and costs while giving you the ability to scale your visual content (and your business growth!). Your team will also get higher AI access, stronger brand control features, real-time performance insights and collaboration tools that keep your brand consistent and streamline your workflows. Individuals and small teams can create faster, work smarter, and grow with confidence.

Canva Business is best suited for teams of 3 or more up to 100 seats. I'll say straight up that it's worth the investment for Canva's brand tools alone. Yes you get some brand tools in Canva Pro, but Canva Business is more than just “Pro” features for your team. 

In this post we'll break down the differences between Canva Pro and Canva Business and why you might want to upgrade (and why you might not!).

Access a 30 day trial of Canva Business here:

Why we love Canva Business!

Let's be frank: I'm writing this post as someone who loves Canva Business. As the lead creative at Socially Sorted, where we train many teams of all sizes, I've loved seeing the transformation that Canva Business brings to small-medium teams. It's the ideal system for creating on-brand high-impact visual content for small-medium teams.

As a Certified Training Partner for Canva (and a Canva Verified Expert) my agency trains both non-designers and designers in teams to create professional visual content at scale. So I see the impact of Canva Business everyday. As such, this post is focused on Canva Business vs Canva Enterprise (which is the best option for medium to large teams). If you want to learn more about Canva Enterprise then read this post. 

Let's break down the features of Canva Business vs Canva Pro so we can see if Canva Business is a good fit for your business and worth the upgrade.

TLDR? Here are the key takeaways:  

Key Takeaways (Canva Business vs Canva Pro)

• Canva Business is the perfect solution for small-medium sized teams to create on-brand, high-impact visual content faster and smarter.
• Canva Business is perfect for growing teams that don't yet need multi-team structure as an organisation.
• You can access a free trial of Canva Business for 30 days using the link below.
• Canva Business features not available in Canva Pro include:
  • Brand features like Design Approvals as part of Canva's complete Brand System.
  • AI-powered Ads and Premium data visualisation
  • Advanced administration and reporting
  • Advanced AI image generation .
• Canva Business increases productivity, reduces design bottlenecks and faster turnaround time for projects.
• Canva Business is the new version of Canva Teams. Canva Teams is no longer available to new users, upgrades or sign-ups, but existing Canva Teams accounts will retain access to the same features and can add new users at the same pricing.
• Canva Business is approximately $28 USD per month per seat with annual payment discounts available.

Find out more and do a 30 day free trial of Canva Business here:

Canva Business vs Canva Pro

In addition to all the key features you know and love in Canva Pro, Canva Business brings you the ability to scale your brand and branded content with a number of key features that you can't access in Canva Pro.

Canva Business Features worth the upgrade

Let's break down some of the key features that differ for teams that take advantage of Canva Business. These are the features that might convince you that Canva Business is worth it… and to upgrade from Canva Pro:

1. Team Management & Permissions

Canva Business is the entry level into Team Permissions and Settings to allow everyone to work better together in your team. Canva Business is tailored for teams, so you get additional team management and permission features such as:

• Advanced Admin Controls – control your team's access to everything from AI-powered tools to the Canva elements they can access (either in-Canva elements or Brand Kit elements only).
• Assign Roles to your team – with Canva Business you can manage team access and permissions (ie team members are allocated to Admin, Brand Designer or Team Member status with different access levels and abilities within the team).
• Transfer Ownership of content – as an admin you are able to transfer ownership from team members who leave your team.
• Reporting – Advanced reporting allows you to track how your team members are using Canva and get an instant picture of the type of content they are creating.
• Apps and Integrations – sync data from your favorite external source or software applications.

This takes it up a level from Canva Pro as you move into advanced funtionality as a team. When paired with the features below such as Canva Brand System, Premium AI tools and more… you'll see why upleveling to Canva Business is a smart move for your team.

2. Advanced Brand Management, Features & Controls

Like Canva Pro, Canva Business gives access to tools like Brand Kits, but with additional Brand features as part of the Brand System:

• Brand Kits – with Canva Business vs Canva Pro you can add up to 100 Brand Kits (vs 5 Brand Kits in Pro). Create brand kits for your main brand and any additional projects, products or events. You can also link folders to brand kits. For example you can add your entire photo collection via folders to the Brand Kit, so it's easily accessible from any design (only available in Canva Business and Canva Enterprise).
• Brand Templates – create Brand Templates that can be shared with your team so they are on-brand every time.
• Brand Controls & Permissions – admins on your team can control what your team members can use in Canva (from elements to AI). They can also lock down team member access to only use brand fonts and brand colors if they choose. They can also set up Design Approvals.
• Template Locking – this is one of the most powerful features in Canva when combined with Brand Templates. Locking allows your team to control how a template can be edited with fully locked, partially locked or unlocked elements. This allows locking down of the most important features including frames or layout elements and logos.
• Design Approvals – this is perhaps the key to an unbreakable brand in Canva. Design Approvals allow your team to seek and gain approval for designs in order to be able to publish or share. This can be all designs or just brand templates. It's the key to allowing self-service of templates in your team. Your Brand Designers can relax knowing that your brand is protected, while also empowering your team with visual autonomy.
• Brand Guideline Features – new Brand Guideline features make setting up your brand even easier. Now you can upload your Brand Guidelines with one click (from a PDF or website) using AI to get started. Your Brand Guidelines sit right within your Brand Kit so your team members can easily access the guidelines and dos and don'ts on everything from logo use to typography accessibility. No more brand guidelines left rotting in a filing cabinet.

ir Find out all about Brand System in this post.  

PS we think Design Approvals are 100% worth a separate highlight here as a BIG benefit of moving on up to Canva Business. Let's break that down in more detail: 

Find out more and do a 30 day free trial of Canva Business here:

3. Design Approvals

Design Approvals is a feature unique to Canva Business and Canva Enterprise. This requires team members to seek approval for designs at a team-wide level or at a brand template level.

For instance, you might choose to have all print-ready designs to be approved first before they can be downloaded.

Find out more about Design Approvals in this video:

Both the approver and the approvee can see all of their designs (either approved or submittted/waiting to be approved) in an easy-to-use dashboard under the APPROVALS tab in Canva. Again, this is only available in Canva Business and not Canva Pro, so you need to be in a team to see this feature.

In our experience, Design Approvals are one of the most powerful Canva Business features that make it worth it for teams we work with – and worth the upgrade from Canva Pro.

Designers and non-designers love Design Approvals as a feature. It lets everyone create visuals, knowing that the brand is protected and kicks design bottlenecks to the kerb once and for all! 

4. Premium AI Tools

With Canva Business, you get higher AI access to Premium AI including more AI credits than on the Canva Pro plan.

• AI generated images with Dream Lab or Ask Canva or using Canva AI on the home page of Canva. 
• Premium AI tools added to your free access to Affinity for your entire team to use.
• Ability to create video clips with Canva AI and more.

While Canva Pro gives you high usage of many of these tools, you get even more bandwidth and usage for creating when your team levels up to Canva Business. Note: some of these usage limits may change over time, but you generally get higher access with Canva Business and even higher with Canva Enterprise. 

Another bonus of Canva Business is that you get access to Advanced AI tools like:

1. Flourish Presenter Plan gives you Interactive Data Visualisationl included in Canva Business. See below.
2. AI features in Affinity (Canva users get access to Affinity's professional design software for free. BUT with Canva Business everyone on your team gets advanced AI features in Affinity).

Plus you get all the usual AI Magic Design tools for photos and video you've come to know and love in Canva Pro from Background Remover to Magic Edit to Beat Sync and Enhance Voice in video – but with higher credits and usage.  

Find out more and do a 30-day free trial of Canva Business here:

5. Workplace & Collaboration Tools

Canva Business is all about teams. As such, its important to have advanced team collaboration tools to support this. This is another key reason to upgrade to Canva Business vs Canva Pro.

While you get access to the same amazing collaboration tools like real-time collaboration, comments, ability to assign tasks and link sharing that you get in Canva Pro – Canva Business gives you more.

Canva Business gives you access to:

• Team-only links – these let you create and share dedicated links to designs that ONLY your team can access. It looks something like this:

This makes it SO much easier to organise content with your team! Combined with team permissionns, brand features and more, this allows your team to scale your visual content.

HOT TIP: although you can't have multiple “teams” in Canva Business like you can in Canva Enterprise, you can organise some of your team projects and collaboration via groups in Canva Business. Set up different groups and invite in your fellow team members. 

6. Canva Grow (AI-powered Ad Creation)

Canva Business changes the game for Ad management. With Canva Business you can scale up your marketing as it gives you access to AI-powered ads with Canva Grow.

What is Canva Grow? It's an entire ad system that lets you create, launch and learn from every ad in Canva. It is an AI ad creator that turns ad insights innto your next best ad! It's also exclusive to Canva Business and Canva Enterprise for larger teams. Use these benefits with Canva Grow:

• Ad Library – You get access to an extensive library of ads to browse. Check what is working in your industry right now!
• Use AI to create high performing ads – Leverage Canva's AI to pull business and product information from your website.
• Launch Ads to Meta – use Meta? create and launch your ads instantly to Meta. All from Canva with no need to leave the platform.
• Ad reporting – access reports to monitor how your ads are performing. You'll also get smart suggestions on what ads you should create next!

Get inspired by ads that work! Canva Grow lets you find ideas fast with their Inspire ad library. Search via keywords to sort through thousands of high-performing (and real!) ads from leading brands. Then filter to see what is working in your industry:

Then take that info and create winning ads in seconds….

Then publish your prompt to Meta direct from Canva. There's no need to export files or re-upload assets. You can take your ads live in just one click:

Then follow up with insights and reports that fuel your next ad – understand your ad performance from Canva's reports. You get provided with an easy-to-understand dashboard that shows how your ads are preforming and gives you recommendations for creating more winning ads. There is also an “active ads view” that lets you dive deeper into your ad performance with a creative report of your ad account.

Canva Grow is still new and developing but from all accounts teams who place ads are loving it. Canva Grow saves your team loads of time, especially in the ideation phase by giving you new ad ideas, then helping you generate ads (using Canva's AI Ad Generator). And with easy publishing to Meta and insights all in one place – it makes the investment in Canva Business worth it.

Find out more and do a 30 day free trial of Canva Business here:

7. Data Visualization with Flourish

Your team will stand out even more with the power of Flourish when you upgrade to Canva Business. Whether it's internal team presentations or external pitch decks – Flourish will bring it to life.

Flourish is a premium feature only available to Canva Business and Canva Enterprise users.

Flourish makes it easy to transform your data by using interactive charts, stories and maps. You can bring the wow factor to any slide, post, report or presentation with engaging movement and visualization.

Even better, you can take advantage of a Flourish template to make your job easier: 

 Add Flourish to the many reasons why your team might upgrade to Canva Business.

8. Storage & Organisation

Storage Matters. Canva Business opens up a lot more storage for your team (500 GB vs 100GB on Canva Pro). This additional storage of 500GB is necessary for growing teams.

And let's face it, you can never have too much storage right? Now that your team is turning out impactful visual content at scale, it matters more than ever. This is an important benefit of Canva Business vs Canva Pro

Canva Business Pricing & Users

Per seat, Canva Business is approximately $25 per month USD per seat and approximately $250 USD per year (with an annual discount). We recommend paying annually if you can! Note that pricing varies depending on your local region.

Canva Business is more of an investment than Canva Pro, but we find that the additional cost is balanced in savings in time and money for your team.

You can purchase Canva Business on the link below for up to 100 people. Beyond this, talk to our team and we can liaise with Canva for a package if you need more seats (or to advise if Canva Enterprise is more suited to your needs).

Try Canva Business on a 30 Day Free Trial:

 

Plus all the other features you know and love…

Don't forget that you still get these main features of Canva Pro with your Canva Business plan. All the features that you've come to use and love when you move to Canva Business are still there fro Pro:

• Premium Canva templates and elements
• Premium publishing options
• Social Content Calendar. 
• Canva's AI Design Tools (including Magic Editing Tools, Image and Video Background Remover, AI Video tools and more).

Basically Canva Business is like Canva Pro with a huge glow up for teams allowing you to scale your brand content in a whole new way.

Now that we've covered all the features to upgrade for in Canva Business, here's a quick summary comparison table of the reasons to upgrade: 

Canva Pro vs Canva Business Comparison Table

Check this comparison table for key inclusions in Canva Business vs Canva Pro:

Feature	Canva Pro	Canva Business
Price	$18/mo USD per month (discount for payment up front annually). Prices may vary depending on your local region.	$25/mo USD per user, per seat in your team (discount for payment up front annually). Prices may vary depending on your local region.
Number of Users Included	1 user	Up to 100 users (paid per seat) can be purchased online – talk to us about more.
Templates	Access Canva's full library of millions of premium templates	Same as Canva Pro
Stock photos/audio/video	Full access to Canva's premium photos, videos, graphics, and audio library.	Same as Canva Pro
AI Tools (Magic Studio & more)	High AI Access for design, images and video	Higher AI Access for more creation (ie higher usage limits although these may vary between plans depending on the AI tool).
Brand Kits	Up to 5 Brand Kits to manage your brand.	Up to 100 Brand Kits to scale your brand + can link folders to Brand Kits.
Brand Templates	Ability to create and share Brand Templates in your Brand Kit.	Same as Canva Pro + Design Approval can be added to Brand Templates (approved by individuals)
Brand System	Additional AI-driven Brand System Features	Same as Canva Pro.
Storage	100GB of Cloud Storage	500GB of Cloud Storage
Export Formats	Standard formats PNG, JPG, basic PDF as well as advanced exports including PDF print, transparent backgrounds and more.	Same as Canva Pro.
Print-ready/CMYK Options	All print formats including print-ready CYMK (pro-quality output).	Same as Canva Pro with addition of 10% discount on Print orders (available where Canva Print is offered).
Background Remover (Image/Video)	Full access to one-click background remover on images and video	Same as Canva Pro
Social Media Scheduling	Built-in content planner and social media scheduling to multiple platforms.	Same as Canva Pro
Collaboration Tools	Shared brand workspace, templates, and team collaboration tools.	Advanced Collaboration tools; Integration and centralised assets (including team-only links)
Team Management & Permissions	N/A	Can invite team members, assign roles, generate reports and transfer ownership of content as well as control AI access with admin controls.
Support Response time	Priority Support	Same as Canva Pro + Pay as you grow billing for teams.
Affinity Design	Affinity with AI (NEW!)	Affinity with AI + higher AI access than Canva Pro.
Canva Grow	Ad Inspiration and AI Ad Creation	Ad Inspiration and AI Ad Creation PLUS additional Ad Insights
	Get a free trial of Canva Pro	Get a free trial of Canva Business

Try Canva Business on a 30 Day Free Trial:

Challenges for Teams before moving to Canva Business

Here are some of the common challenges faced by teams that we work with “before” they move to Canva Business:

• Off-brand content using outdated assets – without a system for accessing the most current assets, team members risk using outdated assets and producing content that is off-brand.
• Production bottlenecks for design – from small change requests taking time to long approval waitlists, many teams experience long wait times for design jobs.
• Content inefficiencies – unnecessary re-creation of content often happens between teams and there is limited ability for team members to self-serve and create content without templates in place.
• High external agency costs and time – for those teams working with external agencies this can result in campaigns being slow to market and huge costs in time and money. It also means it's very difficult for the team to scale their visual content.
• Out-dated tools and systems – often teams are struggling with tool bloat or high costs on tech stack spend.

These issues are all solved with Canva Business, as follows: 

1. Savings in tech-stack spend

When you upgrade to Canva Business, you can drop other tools in your tech stack including collaboration and presentation tools, design tools and stock libraries as well as AI tools. Now you can roll those costs into investing in Canva Business – simultaneously reducing your time costs in terms of productivity and design.

2. Reduced production time & faster turnaround

Canva reports up to 90% in reduced production time from teams using Canva Business. You can:

• power up your content creation – by creating content faster with customizable on-brand brand templates.
• create video content faster – this empowers your team to use brand templates to create video.
• Reduce bottlenecks and bring campaigns to live – use Design Approvals to approve designs and then print them straight from Canva (from menus to flyers and more!).
• Centralised your Brand Assets – now everyone can find the correct approved logo or approved photography. Along with the brand kit, your team will achieve massive time and cost savings by moving to Canva Business.

3. Design cost savings

Canva has reported up to 30% savings in external design workload and 50% saving in design costs when teams use Canva Business. The reason? The design team can control your brand, resulting in the ability to empower team members to self-serve branded content via brand templates, scale content creation and reduce bottlenecks. Everyone can collaborate in real time and leverage design approvals.

The result? Thousands in design cost savings. Is Canva Business vs Canva Pro worth it when you look at these design and cost savings? Absolutely! If you have a team and you're creating a lot of visual content, Canva Business is definitely worth considering. 

What about Canva Teams?

A question we often get asked since the launch of Canva Business is “What happened to Canva Teams?”

Canva Teams hasn't gone away. Canva Business is essentially the new version of Canva Teams. However, it should be noted that Canva Teams is no longer available for new users, upgrades or sign-ups. New users wanting team functionality will now sign up for Canva Business to access Team features.

What if you're on a legacy Canva Teams account?

• you will retain all access to all the features you have always had on Canva Teams (unless you downgrade your team).
• All new team members will be added to your existing Canva Teams account at the same pricing with the same feature set (up to a maximum of 100 seats). 
• If you need more than 100 seats or if you have multiple teams within your Organisation or if you need more Org-level features, then talk to our agency about upgrading to Canva Enterprise.
• In summary, if you're using Canva Teams effectively and don't need to change much, stay put for now, as you have a great deal! 

Find out more about our agency (Socially Sorted) works with teams of all sizes here using Canva Business:

Why would your team NOT be suited to Canva Business?

Here are a couple of scenarios where you have a team but Canva Business might not be the best solution:

• you have a small team of only 1-3 members and you are handling Canva needs fine with Canva Pro seats. If you don't need team functionality and brand protections, maybe you can continue using Canva Pro for now.
• If your team is large with multiple sub-teams – even if you have less than 100 seats – you may want to consider Canva Enterprise. This will give you the multi-team structure that you need within your organisation.

Regardless, if you are unsure of the best team structure for your organisation, reach out to us at Socially Sorted for an audit of your team and recommendations for how to best use Canva moving forward. 

Get Training for your team in Canva Business

Want to learn more about onboarding or training for your entire team for Canva Business? At Socially Sorted we specialise in training small to large teams of non-designers and designers. Talk to us today about working with your team.

We love nothing more than helping teams create on-brand high-impact visual content as scale – and in house… ditching the agencies and leveraging Canva and saving thousands in tech-stack and design spend.

Try Canva Business on a 30 day free trial:

Got Canva Business Questions?

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That's a Wrap!

And that's a wrap on Canva Business. We hope that helps you understand more about how this powerful product can work for your team in Canva. And we can't wait to see what your team creates on Canva Business!