If you have been looking for a viable alternative to expensive, subscription-heavy motion graphics software, your digital toolkit just got a massive upgrade. Following its recent acquisition of the procedural animation tool Cavalry, Canva has officially scrapped the software’s paid Professional tier. The entire application, fully loaded with its premium features, is now available at absolutely no cost to individual users.
For those unfamiliar with the software, Cavalry is not just a basic, simplified timeline editor. It is a highly respected, professional-grade 2D motion design application built heavily around procedural workflows and data-driven graphics. Instead of manually keyframing every single movement, designers can connect elements so they react dynamically to changing parameters. This makes it an incredibly powerful tool for generating scalable advertising content, complex infographics, and generative art. Before this announcement, unlocking these advanced capabilities required a monthly subscription of roughly RM95. Now, all of those previously paywalled features—including advanced rendering codecs, batch processing, and extensive export formats—are wide open to anyone.
The transition to a free model comes with a very clear promise from Canva: they are not watering the software down. The core development team behind Cavalry has officially joined Canva to continue shaping its future, explicitly stating that the goal is to strengthen its professional capabilities rather than dilute them for casual users. The only catch in this new pricing structure applies to massive corporate teams. While individual creators, freelancers, and hobbyists get the full software for free, enterprise operations will still require a paid Canva Enterprise or Education plan strictly to access Single Sign-On and team management functionalities. To get started, individual users simply need to download the latest version of the application and log in using a standard Canva account.
This aggressive pricing shift highlights Canva’s broader strategy to directly challenge established creative ecosystems like Adobe. By acquiring high-end tools—first the Affinity suite for vector and photo editing, and now Cavalry for motion design—and removing their immediate financial barriers, Canva is rapidly building a comprehensive, professional-grade creative platform. For motion designers across the board, whether you are a seasoned professional tired of recurring software bills or a beginner looking to explore procedural animation without a heavy financial commitment, the barrier to entry has just been completely eliminated.
