Canva & Royalty-Free Images: What’s The Deal?

If you use Canva, you might be wondering whether or not its images and video are royalty-free. Here’s everything you need to know…

As online creative tools go, I honestly do not think there is anything more useful than Canva on the market right now. For the asking price, it delivers an absolute mountain of features and capabilities.

For online and offline creatives, Canva is an essential tool. And, importantly, it is a damn sight cheaper than Adobe’s suite of applications.

You can make infographics with Canva, edit images, apply effects to images, create social media posts, design email templates, create t-shirt and merch designs and then get them printed or made – and that’s just the basics.

Canva is designed to be easy to use, it uses a drag-and-drop editor, and its main USP is that ANYONE can use it to create professional-looking designs. No experience or talent is required. This is why millions of people have started using Canva in the past couple of years – it works brilliantly and has zero knowledge barriers.

And for a piece of design software, that is one hell of a USP to actually pull off. In contrast, if you wanted to learn Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you’d have to undertake hours of training and tuition.

With Canva, you can just do stuff right away – this is the software’s true magic.

Are Canva Images Royalty-Free?

If you have Canva and plan on using it for commercial projects, you will rightly be concerned about whether or not its images are royalty-free. The good news is that Canva’s 60+ million images, graphics, and icons are all completely royalty-free, so you can use them however you wish.

If you go with Canva Pro – find out why you should inside our Canva Pro review – then your monthly fee covers all of your image’s licensing costs. But there are a few things you need to be aware of, especially if you plan on using premium images multiple times.

Don’t worry, though: Canva is A LOT simpler to use than Shutterstock.

You see, Canva has a couple of licensing options that exist inside its Canva Pro subscription: One-Use License and Multi-Use License.

• One-Use License: Royalty Free but limited to one project. If you use a premium image in a social media post, that counts as one use. If you decide to use the same image again in another piece of content, you’ll need to download the image and pay a license fee.
• Multi-Use License: This license covers multiple uses of the same image across various mediums and purposes. Essentially, with this license you can use an image as many times as you like, no additional licenses required.

What’s Included In Canva Pro

• 60 million curated stock photos
• 3.5 million graphic elements (illustrations, shapes, icons, etc.)
• 20,000 extra premium templates: social media graphics (like Instagram story templates and Tiktok templates), flyers, business cards, and everything in between, including customization options
• 21,000 stock videos
• 750 premium fonts

If you’re not already using Canva Pro, I would strongly advise you to check it out today – you can even get a free trial to get a feel for the platform.