Piktochart has been making infographics since 2012, which puts it a year ahead of Canva and in a much narrower lane. It never tried to be the everything-design tool; it built a chart engine and a long-canvas editor and sold them to communications teams, HR departments and academics who had data and needed it to look like something. The AI layer arrived on top of that foundation, not in place of it.
- Genuinely strong at data visuals — interactive charts and maps, CSV import, live Google Sheets data
- Free tier includes 60 AI credits and unlimited projects, not a crippled trial
- Pro at $10 per member per month billed annually is cheaper than most rivals
- Brand Kit on Business covers unlimited colour palettes, custom fonts and logos
- Education at $39 a year and Nonprofit at $60 a year are steep, genuine discounts
- Pro exports PNG only — PDF and PowerPoint require the $17 Business tier
- AI features run on monthly credits (60 free, 500 Pro, 1,000 Business) that do not roll over
- Brand Kit is entirely absent below Business; Pro gets zero brand colours, fonts or logos
- Free tier allows just two downloads and 1GB of storage
- Template library and community are far smaller than Canva's
- Report and infographic work where charts are driven by real data
- Comms and HR teams producing branded internal documents on the Business tier
- Students and non-profits, who get the best value on the price list
- You need PDF or deck export on a budget — the tier jump is the deciding factor
- You want the widest template selection and collaboration ecosystem, where Canva wins
- Heavy AI generation is the plan; credits will run out and are metered per action
Pricing
Unlimited visual projects, 60 AI credits, free templates only, 2 PNG downloads, 1GB storage, up to 4 members in a workspace.
Unlimited PNG downloads, premium templates, 5M+ IconScout icons, illustrations and 3D graphics, 500 AI credits a month, transparent-background PNGs, 100GB storage. PNG export only.
Everything in Pro plus unlimited PNG, PDF and PowerPoint downloads, the full Brand Kit — unlimited brand colour schemes, custom fonts and logos — Branded Templates, 1,000 AI credits and 250GB storage.
PNG, PDF and PowerPoint downloads, limited Brand Kit, premium assets and 250 AI credits. Requires a valid educational email address.
The same shape as the education plan for registered non-profit organisations.
Enterprise covers 101+ members with SSO/SAML, security review and a dedicated account manager. Campus is a university-wide licence starting at 3,000 seats.
What it is good at
Data. Piktochart's charts and maps are interactive, they import from CSV, and they can be wired to a live Google Sheet so a figure updates when the spreadsheet does. Every tier including Free has those features. If you produce a monthly report where the numbers change and the layout does not, that single capability is worth more than a thousand extra templates.
The second strength is the long canvas. Infographics, timelines, one-page reports and posters are the native format here, and the templates are built for that shape rather than for a square social post that someone stretched.
The AI layer, and the credit meter
Piktochart has bolted a large set of AI generators onto the editor — an AI design generator, presentation maker, infographic generator, poster, flyer, carousel, report and document generators, image generation and a summary tool. In practice they are the same underlying capability pointed at different starting templates.
They run on credits. Free gets 60 a month, Pro 500, Business 1,000, and the Education plan 250. Credits reset with the billing period rather than accumulating. That is a fair model and it is worth doing the arithmetic before subscribing, because a generation-heavy workflow burns through an allowance quickly and a design-with-occasional-AI workflow will never touch it.
The tier trap worth naming
Read Piktochart's own feature table and one line matters more than the rest: download formats. Free and Pro are PNG only. PDF and PowerPoint export begin on Business.
A PNG is fine for a social image and useless for a printable report, a handout or anything that has to go into a slide deck — which is exactly what most people make infographics for. The effective price of Piktochart for professional output is therefore $17 per member per month billed annually, not the $10 on the marketing page. Budget accordingly.
Business is also where the Brand Kit lives, and the gap is stark: Pro gets zero brand colours, zero palettes, zero custom fonts and zero logos. There is no partial brand support below Business.
The pricing in full
Free is $0 with 60 AI credits, unlimited projects, two downloads, 1GB of storage and up to four members in a workspace. Pro is $10 per member per month billed annually or $15 month-to-month, adding unlimited PNG downloads, premium templates, several million IconScout icons and illustrations, transparent backgrounds and 100GB. Business is $17 annually or $20 monthly for the export formats, Brand Kit, Branded Templates, 1,000 credits and 250GB. Enterprise covers 101 or more members with SSO and a dedicated account manager, and Campus is a university-wide licence from 3,000 seats.
The education and non-profit plans deserve a mention because they are unusually generous: $39 per member per year for students and teachers with a valid school email, $60 per member per year for registered non-profits — both including the PDF and PowerPoint exports that Pro subscribers do not get.
Against Canva
Canva is bigger in every direction that can be counted: templates, collaborators, AI features, third-party integrations, mobile polish, brand recognition. If your team needs one design tool for everything, that is the answer and Piktochart will not change your mind.
The case for Piktochart is specificity. Data-driven visuals are a first-class citizen here and a secondary feature there, and the long-form infographic templates are better shaped for reports. It is also cheaper at the entry tier — until you hit the export limit, at which point the two land in similar territory.
The other half of the product: video
Piktochart is not only a static-design tool, and the video side is easy to miss because it barely features in comparisons with Canva. There is a screen recorder, a browser-based video editor, a social media video maker, a video cropper and a video-to-text converter that pulls a transcript out of a recording.
For the audience Piktochart actually serves — internal communications, HR, education, non-profits — that combination is well judged. The same person asked to produce the quarterly infographic is usually the person asked to record a two-minute explainer, and having both in one subscription with one brand kit behind them removes a tool from the stack.
It is not a serious competitor to a real editor. There is no multi-camera work, no colour grading, no advanced audio. Treat it as the video equivalent of the infographic tool: fast, template-led, good enough for internal and social output, and not the thing you would use to cut a client film.
Who should buy it
Communications, HR and marketing teams producing recurring branded reports with real numbers in them, on the Business tier where the exports and the Brand Kit live. Students and non-profits, who get the best deal on the price list by a wide margin. And anyone whose main output is an infographic rather than a social post.
Everyone else should look at Canva first, and anyone whose real deliverable is a presentation should look at a deck tool instead of a poster tool.
