The numbers behind our guides
Last updated: 3 November 2026. Every figure on this page came from a free account on our own screen — file sizes as our computer reported them, prices as the checkout page showed them, limits found by pushing until the tool stopped us. Each block links to the full test it came from. Nothing here is estimated from a vendor's marketing page.
These numbers are free to cite. The citation format is at the bottom.
1. Canva Free: 18 locked features, by location
We worked through every Pro-only action we could find on a free account and recorded where the wall appears. Eleven of the eighteen live in just two panels — the Download dialog and the photo tools panel — which is why beginners meet most of them in the last thirty seconds of a project, after the work is done.
| Where you hit it | Count | What is locked |
|---|---|---|
| Download dialog | 6 | SVG export, transparent PNG, upscaling past 1×, the PNG quality setting, anything over 2000 px, CMYK colour profile |
| Photo tools panel | 5 | One-click background removal, AI eraser, AI cutout, text capture from an image, AI background replacement |
| Monthly AI allowance | 1 | The AI counter ran out after our second AI deck of the month; it resets on the 1st |
| One-click shortcuts | 2 | Magic Resize, and resizing a finished design to US Letter |
| Fonts | 2 | Premium fonts (Aprilime, Archetype Aubette and Avenir were all marked), uploading your own font |
| Publishing | 2 | Posting straight to Instagram, scheduling in Content Planner |
CMYK was confirmed separately in four categories — brochure, poster, invitation and invoice — because the crown appears at export time, not at template selection.
Source: Canva Free plan limits: the 18 paywalls we hit.
2. Template crown density, 9 categories
No other guide we found counts this. For each category we searched Canva's template library on a free account, took the first 20 results, and counted how many wore the Pro crown.
| Template search | Crowned in first 20 | Density |
|---|---|---|
| Presentation | 1 | 5% |
| Invitation | 2 | 10% |
| Logo | ≈2–3 | ≈12% |
| Brochure | 3 | 15% |
| Poster | 3 | 15% |
| Instagram post | 4 | 20% |
| Book cover | 6 | 30% |
| YouTube thumbnail | 7 | 35% |
| Invoice | 8–10 | 40–50% |
If you pick from the first screen or two of results, you have an 80–95% chance of landing on a free template. The category you choose matters much less than how deep you scroll.
Source: Crown density by template category.
3. The bait shelf in invitation results
Invitations looked like the cleanest category on the site — then the crowns appeared. This is the only place in the library where we measured the density changing as you scroll.
| Depth in invitation results | Crowned | Density |
|---|---|---|
| Results 1–20 | 2 | 10% |
| Results 21–30 | 6 | 60% |
| Results 40–70 | 13 of 30 | 43% |
| Results 80–100 | 7 of 20 | 35% |
Source: Canva invitation templates on a free account.
4. Twelve exports, weighed on disk
These are the file sizes our own computer reported, not estimates. Same designs, exported from a free account.
| Export | Format | Size on disk | Pixels / pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple flat design | PNG | 12.3 KB | — |
| Same design, same export | JPG | 23.3 KB | — |
| Same design, same export | 15.3 KB | — | |
| First-ever design | PNG / JPG | 52.7 KB / 65.3 KB | 1080 × 1080 |
| Logo, white background | PNG | 192 KB | 2000 × 2000 |
| YouTube thumbnail | PNG | 1.17 MB | 1280 × 720 |
| Kindle book cover | PNG | 2.56 MB | 1410 × 2250 |
| 8-slide AI deck | PPTX | 23.2 MB | 8 slides, 62 media files |
| Same 8-slide deck | 28 MB | 20 × 11.25 in pages |
Two things fall out of that table. JPG came out roughly twice the size of the PNG for the same flat design, which is the opposite of what most guides tell you. And the deck exports are the outliers: a 28 MB PDF from eight slides is normal on the free plan.
Source: Canva export formats explained.
5. The 3.125x export cap
Canva Free exports at an effective 96 DPI. Pro multiplies that by 3.125:
96 × 3.125 = 300 DPI
That is the whole trick behind "print quality". It also explains why a 2000 px design is a hard ceiling on a free account — the crown appears next to the size option at that point, regardless of the paper size you plan to print.
Source: Canva's 3.125x export cap.
6. What Canva actually charges
Read off our own account's upgrade screen on 1 November 2026, after we paid for one month to check the billed amount rather than the advertised one.
| Plan | What the screen showed | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Canva Pro | US$18 / month | Monthly, no annual commitment |
| Canva Pro | US$144 / year = US$12 / month | A 33% saving, not the 16% printed on Canva's own badge |
| Canva Business | US$25 / month | After trial; marketed as 20× more AI usage than Free |
| Adobe Express Premium | US$9.99 / month | Our comparison baseline; no annual lock-in |
Source: Canva Free vs Pro cheat sheet and Canva vs Adobe Express.
7. DeepSeek API: context and cost
The context and price figures are read from DeepSeek's own documentation on 3 November 2026, not from a reseller's summary. The cost totals are our arithmetic on their published rates.
| Figure | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 1M tokens, both models | Official pricing table |
| Max output per response | 384K tokens | Official pricing table; per response, not per conversation |
| 1M tokens in English | ≈3.3M characters ≈555,000 words ≈six 300-page books | Their 0.3 tokens-per-character estimate, our arithmetic |
| Concurrency | 2,500 (Flash) / 500 (Pro) | Official rate-limit page; per account, not per API key |
A 900K-token prompt run for 100 turns, on Flash, at the published off-peak and peak rates:
| Assumption | Per turn | 100 turns |
|---|---|---|
| Cache miss, off-peak | $0.135 | $13.50 |
| Cache hit, off-peak | $0.0027 | $0.27 |
| Cache miss, peak | $0.27 | $27.00 |
The same prompt costs 50× more on a cache miss than a cache hit. At this context size, caching is not an optimisation — it is the difference between 27 cents and 27 dollars.
Sources: DeepSeek 1M-token context window and DeepSeek API key.
8. How much we tested
| Guides published | 46 |
| Tests we started and could not finish, published as failures | 7 |
| Image generators run on one identical prompt ("a red fox") | 6 |
| Background removers run on the same photo | 3 |
| Canva template categories counted, first 20 results each | 9 |
| Canva exports weighed on disk | 12 |
| Spent on advertising | $0 |
The seven failed tests are listed on how we test, including the tools we could not test at all because of identity checks or regional blocks.
9. How to cite this page
Copy this line, or adapt it:
<p>Source: <a href="https://myeasyaiguides.com/data">My Easy AI Guides — measured AI tool data</a>, tested on free accounts, updated 3 November 2026.</p>Permitted: quoting any number on this page, in articles, videos, newsletters and reports, with attribution and a link.
Please keep the date. Vendors change limits and prices without notice. A number without a test date is a rumour with a decimal point.
What we will not do: we do not sell links, we do not publish sponsored rankings, and we do not present a vendor's claim as a measurement. If a figure on this page is wrong, tell us through the contact page and we will re-test it and correct it with a dated note.
How these numbers were collected
Free accounts, no payment details entered unless stated. Screenshots taken at the moment the limit appeared. File sizes read from the operating system, not from the browser's estimate. Prices read from the checkout screen in the currency it showed us. Where a vendor publishes a figure (DeepSeek's token estimates), we say so and show the arithmetic we applied to it.
The full method, including the seven tests we failed, is on how we test.