Affinity makes Designer, Photo, and Publisher free for six months

Following the news that the Affinity range of apps have been bought by Canva, the company has announced a half-year-long free trial. It also, perhaps not coincidentally, follows the controversy that rival Adobe recently hit over both AI terms and conditions, and how it deals with subscription cancellations.

It's not entirely fair to say that Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher are direct rivals to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. But the apps are primarily aimed at the same market, and they have broadly the same use cases, if not the same features.

A key difference has been that the Affinity apps are each a one-time purchase. There have been major upgrades that are then a further cost, but primarily users pay up front and there are no other regular charges.

With Adobe, users have to subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud, and the price can easily be $60 a month.

Now Serif, makers of the Affinity suite, has announced that price of its whole range is nothing — for six months. It's the whole suite, and every feature in the suite, with no charge on what is a half-year-long free trial.

Serif is calling it a no-obligation trial period. Without mentioning Adobe by name, the company also says that it is "particularly aimed at users who want more time to migrate to Affinity from their current software."

"So we're saying 'try everything and pay nothing' because we understand making a change can be a big step, particularly for busy professionals," said Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson in a blog post.

"Anyone who takes the trial is under absolutely no obligation to buy — in fact we won't even be taking payment details at that stage," continued Hewson. "We're really excited about welcoming large numbers of users who've decided the time is right to make a change."

The six-months free trial applies to Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher on the Mac, iPad, and Windows. Normally the apps are available for $70 on the Mac and $18.49 on iPad, but at present they are also half price.

Separately, all three Affinity apps were updated in May 2024. They added variable font support, plus the ability to generate QR codes.