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Design · head to head

Affinity Designer vs Envoy

Affinity Designer logo

Affinity Designer

Design

Professional graphic design software for everyone

From
$69.99/one-time
Free plan
No
Visit Affinity DesignerFull review
Envoy logo

Envoy

Developer Tools

A high-performance L7 proxy written in C++ that is configured by an API rather than a config file, and is usually deployed under a control plane.

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit EnvoyFull review

The short version

  • Affinity Designer is a professional vector graphics editor.
  • Envoy is free; Affinity Designer starts at $69.99 one-off.
  • Only Affinity Designer lists vector drawing; only Envoy lists xDS dynamic configuration.
  • Where Affinity Designer falls short: premium AI features require separate Canva subscription; pricing for those plans not disclosed.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Affinity Designer and Envoy actually diverge.

Attributes where Affinity Designer and Envoy differ
AttributeAffinity DesignerEnvoy
Starting price$69.99/one-timeFree
Pricing modelOne-timeOpen-source
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWindows, macOS, iOSWeb
CategoryDesignDeveloper Tools

Not yet recorded: founded for Envoy.

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Affinity Designer

  • Vector drawing
  • Bezier tools
  • Gradient tools
  • Typography
  • Pixel-perfect editing
  • Artboards
  • Symbols
  • Non-destructive effects

Only in Envoy

  • xDS dynamic configuration
  • Protocol breadth
  • Filter chain architecture
  • Observability by default
  • Outlier detection
  • Traffic shaping
  • mTLS termination and origination
  • Hot restart

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Affinity Designer

  • Logo designnot Envoy
  • Vector illustrationnot Envoy
  • Icon designnot Envoy
  • Brandingnot Envoy

Envoy

  • Acting as the data plane under a service mesh or Gateway API implementation, which is how the overwhelming majority of deployments use itnot Affinity Designer
  • An edge or API gateway that needs per-route retry budgets, circuit breaking and outlier detection rather than round-robin proxyingnot Affinity Designer
  • Migrating traffic between service versions or between a monolith and its replacement, using weighted splits and shadow trafficnot Affinity Designer
  • Standardising observability across a polyglot estate, so that latency, error rates and tracing look the same regardless of the language a service is written innot Affinity Designer

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Affinity Designer

  • Premium AI features require separate Canva subscription; pricing for those plans not disclosed
  • Core Affinity tools are free but Canva premium add-on costs are not detailed

Envoy

  • The configuration surface is very large and hand-written bootstrap YAML runs to hundreds of lines for routing that Nginx expresses in twenty, which is why nearly every production deployment sits under a control plane and inherits that control plane's constraints as well
  • xDS is the real API and it is not stable in the comfortable sense; the v2 API set was removed outright, resource types continue to be deprecated, and your control plane and Envoy binaries have to be upgraded roughly in step or the proxies stop accepting configuration
  • Extending it properly means writing a C++ filter and building and maintaining your own Envoy binary; the alternatives are Lua, which adds per-request overhead, and proxy-wasm, whose ABI has remained effectively experimental for years with a real performance cost
  • At sidecar density the per-proxy memory and CPU footprint is a measurable share of cluster capacity, since thousands of workloads each carry a full proxy, and this is precisely the cost that has pushed mesh projects towards node-level or ambient architectures
  • There is no single vendor selling support for Envoy itself; you get the community plus control-plane vendors such as Solo.io and Tetrate, so an Envoy-level production bug is your own engineers in a C++ codebase unless a support contract happens to cover it
  • Diagnosing why a request got a particular response involves reading config dumps, the stats endpoint and the RESPONSE_FLAGS codes in access logs rather than a readable error, which is a specific skill you must hire or spend months growing

Pricing, plan by plan

Affinity Designer

$69.99/one-time
  • Standard$69.99 one-off
    • Full version
    • All features
    • Lifetime updates

Envoy

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Envoy review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Affinity Designer if

  • You need vector drawing.
  • You work on Windows, macOS, iOS.
  • You also want bezier tools.
Affinity Designer review

Choose Envoy if

  • You need xds dynamic configuration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want protocol breadth.
Envoy review

Questions people ask

Is Affinity Designer or Envoy better?
Neither clearly leads. Affinity Designer starts at $69.99/one-time and Envoy at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Affinity Designer or Envoy?
Envoy has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $69.99/one-time for Affinity Designer and Free for Envoy.
Does Affinity Designer or Envoy run on more platforms?
Affinity Designer runs on Windows, macOS, iOS. Envoy runs on Web.
Can I use Envoy for free?
Yes. Envoy has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Affinity Designer starts at $69.99/one-time.
What is Affinity Designer best used for?
Affinity Designer is most often used for logo design, vector illustration, icon design, branding. Of those, logo design and vector illustration are not what Envoy is typically brought in for.
What can Affinity Designer do that Envoy cannot?
Affinity Designer covers Vector drawing, Bezier tools, Gradient tools, Typography. Envoy covers xDS dynamic configuration, Protocol breadth, Filter chain architecture, Observability by default.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Affinity Designer: Is Affinity Designer free?

Yes, Affinity Designer is completely free. Every tool in the Pixel, Vector, and Layout studios, plus all customization and export features, are available at no cost with no seat count restrictions or payment requirements.

Source
Envoy: Should I run Envoy on its own, or under a control plane?

Almost always under one. Directly authoring xDS or static bootstrap configuration is viable for a handful of routes and becomes unmanageable beyond that. Envoy Gateway, Istio, Contour, Gloo and Consul all exist to generate that configuration for you.

Affinity Designer: Are there premium features available in Affinity by Canva?

Affinity by Canva includes optional AI features available through separate Canva premium subscriptions (Pro, Business, Enterprise, Education tiers). Core design tools remain free; premium AI functionality requires a Canva subscription.

Source
Envoy: How does it compare with Nginx or HAProxy?

Envoy is dynamically configured over an API and instrumented far more heavily; Nginx and HAProxy are faster to configure and lighter for straightforward reverse proxying. If you never need to change routing without a reload, Envoy is more machinery than the problem requires.

Affinity Designer: Do I need to pay for Affinity Designer updates?

No. Affinity by Canva receives free updates and new features over time. The core application and all design, editing, and layout tools are updated at no additional cost.

Source
Envoy: What does it cost?

Nothing to licence; it is Apache 2.0 and there is no paid edition. The cost is engineering time and, for most organisations, a commercial control plane or cloud service that packages it.

Envoy: Can I write extensions without C++?

You can write Lua filters or proxy-wasm modules in Rust, Go, C++ or AssemblyScript. Both carry per-request overhead compared with a native filter, and the Wasm path has been slower to stabilise than the project originally projected.

Envoy: Is it a CNCF project?

Yes, it is a graduated CNCF project licensed under Apache 2.0, which means the trademark and governance sit with the foundation rather than with Lyft or any vendor.

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