Last updated: April 2026
You’ve probably heard of PicsArt — it has 150 million monthly users which is a fairly significant number by anyone’s standards. But if you’re an artist trying to figure out whether it’s worth your time and potentially your money, the generic reviews aren’t particularly helpful. Most of them are written for social media influencers or small business marketers, not for people who make original art and want to sell it.
So let me give you the version that’s actually relevant to artists. After 16 years in digital marketing I’ve used more tools than I care to remember and I have a fairly low tolerance for anything that doesn’t deliver genuine value for the time and money you put into it. Here’s my honest take on PicsArt — and how it stacks up against Canva, which I covered in a separate review here.
What Is PicsArt Actually?
PicsArt started in 2011 as a mobile photo editing app — think filters, effects, collages, that kind of thing. Over the past few years it’s expanded significantly into a full creative platform with AI image generation, video editing, templates, background removal and a suite of tools that put it in direct competition with Canva for the creative design market.
The key distinction from Canva is where each platform comes from. Canva was built as a design and template tool that added photo editing later. PicsArt was built as a photo editor that added design tools later. That heritage shows in how each platform feels to use and where each one excels.
PicsArt is mobile-first in a way that Canva isn’t — it was designed primarily as an app and it shows in the experience. If you do most of your social media content creation on your phone, that’s a meaningful differentiator.
What Can PicsArt Actually Do for Artists?
The honest answer is that PicsArt is most useful for artists in a specific set of situations:
- Editing photos of your artwork — removing backgrounds, enhancing colours, improving the presentation of photographs of your physical work before posting online or listing on your shop
- Creating social media content on your phone — if you shoot and post primarily from mobile, PicsArt’s app experience is genuinely superior to Canva’s mobile version
- Applying creative effects to your artwork — the AI style effects and filters can create interesting secondary content from your original work
- Collages and mood boards — useful for presenting collections, commissions or inspiration boards to clients
- AI image generation — PicsArt has 93 different AI models available which is a significant number if generative AI is part of your creative practice
What PicsArt is less useful for:
- Building a consistent brand identity across multiple platforms
- Creating professional marketing materials like price lists, press kits or exhibition flyers
- Website graphics that need precise layout control
- Print on demand mockups at a professional level
The Free vs Paid Problem
This is where I have to be blunt about something that most PicsArt reviews dance around.
The free tier puts a watermark on every single export. Not a subtle watermark — a PicsArt branded watermark that makes it immediately obvious you’re using the free version. For an artist who cares about the professional presentation of their work, the free tier is essentially unusable for anything you’re going to publish publicly.
This is fundamentally different from Canva, where the free tier is genuinely useful and produces professional-looking output without any watermarking. With PicsArt you’re making a binary choice from day one — pay or don’t use it for anything public-facing. That’s a legitimate business model but it does mean the “try before you buy” experience is limited.
PicsArt Pricing for UK Users in 2026
| Plan | Monthly Cost | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | £0 | Basic tools, watermarked exports, ads |
| Pro | ~£7/month (annual billing) | Background removal, premium templates, 500 AI credits/month, 100GB storage, no watermark |
| Ultra | ~£18/month (annual billing) | Everything in Pro plus 93 AI models, advanced generation tools, team collaboration |
The Pro plan at around £7/month on annual billing is actually competitive — it undercuts Canva Pro which runs at £100/year (around £8.33/month). If PicsArt’s feature set covers what you need, the price point is reasonable.
The AI Features — Where PicsArt Actually Has an Edge
If AI tools are a meaningful part of how you create or market your work, PicsArt is genuinely interesting. The Ultra plan gives you access to 93 different AI models which is a significantly broader range than anything Canva offers.
For artists specifically the most interesting AI features are:
AI Style Transfer — apply the visual style of one image to another. You can take your own artwork and generate derivative content in different styles, which is useful for creating varied social media content without starting from scratch each time.
Background Removal and Replacement — clean, fast and works well on photos of physical artwork. If you’re photographing paintings or drawings on a messy studio desk and want a clean white or contextual background for your shop listings, this works well.
AI Image Generation from Text Prompts — 93 models is a lot. If you’re experimenting with AI as part of your creative practice, PicsArt gives you access to a wider range of generation styles than most alternatives at this price point.
Object Removal — useful for cleaning up photos of artwork where you want to remove something from the background without rebuilding the entire image.
PicsArt vs Canva — The Direct Comparison
| PicsArt | Canva | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier usability | ❌ Watermarked — not really usable | ✅ Genuinely useful |
| Paid price (annual) | ~£7/month (Pro) | ~£8.33/month (Pro) |
| Photo editing quality | ✅ Superior — photo-first heritage | ⚠️ Decent but not primary strength |
| Template range | ⚠️ Smaller range | ✅ Enormous — 2 million+ templates |
| Brand kit | ⚠️ Basic | ✅ Strong — proper brand management |
| AI tools | ✅ 93 models on Ultra | ⚠️ Good but fewer models |
| Mobile experience | ✅ Excellent — built mobile-first | ⚠️ Good but desktop-first heritage |
| Background removal | ✅ Excellent | ✅ Excellent |
| Video editing | ✅ Strong | ⚠️ Basic |
| Transparent PNG export | ✅ On paid plans | ✅ On Pro plan |
| Best for | Photo editing, mobile creation, AI effects | Brand consistency, templates, marketing materials |
Cross-Platform Access
One thing worth knowing — PicsArt integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox which makes it reasonably easy to work across devices. You can start editing on your phone and continue on the web version without losing your work. For artists who shoot photographs of their work on mobile and then want to finalise edits on desktop, that workflow is genuinely useful.
The web version has improved significantly in recent years and is now a proper alternative to the mobile app rather than an afterthought. That said, the mobile app is still where PicsArt feels most natural and most polished.
Who Should Use PicsArt
PicsArt makes the most sense for artists who:
- Do most of their content creation on mobile
- Take a lot of photographs of their physical work and need strong editing tools to present it well
- Are experimenting with AI as part of their creative practice and want access to a wide range of models
- Create a lot of video content for social media alongside their artwork
- Are already paying for Canva and want to supplement it with stronger photo editing rather than replace it
Who Should Stick with Canva
Canva remains the better choice for artists who:
- Want to build a consistent, professional brand identity with a proper brand kit
- Need a wide range of templates for marketing materials — price lists, exhibition flyers, press kits
- Want a genuinely useful free tier before committing to paying
- Work primarily on desktop or laptop rather than mobile
- Are building a Shopify or Squarespace store and need graphics that integrate cleanly with those platforms
The Honest Verdict
PicsArt is a genuinely capable tool but it’s not the right primary tool for most artists building an online presence. The watermarked free tier means you’re committing financially from day one, and at the Pro level Canva offers better value for the majority of things artists actually need — brand consistency, templates, marketing materials, transparent PNG export.
Where PicsArt genuinely wins is photo editing quality, mobile experience and AI model breadth. If those three things are important to your workflow — and for some artists they absolutely will be — PicsArt Pro at around £7/month is a reasonable investment.
The most pragmatic approach for a serious artist building a brand online is probably to use Canva Pro as your primary design tool and consider PicsArt as a supplementary photo editing and AI tool if you need capabilities beyond what Canva’s photo editing offers. Running both simultaneously would cost you around £15-16/month combined — which is still less than a single Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
But if you had to choose one — and most artists starting out should choose one and master it before adding another subscription — start with Canva. Come to PicsArt when you’ve hit the limits of what Canva’s photo editing can do.
Rating: 3.5/5 for artists. 4.5/5 for mobile-first content creators.
→ Try PicsArt Pro → Read Our Canva Review
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