Adobe Express vs Magnific (formerly Freepik)

Adobe Express is Adobe's online and mobile design app for quick, template-based content. It launched under that name in December 2021, replacing Adobe Spark, and has since been rebuilt with Firefly generative AI built in. Its core job is letting non-designers make social posts, flyers, presentations and short videos without learning Photoshop.

Express offers a large template library, drag-and-drop editing, one-click quick actions such as background removal and resizing, Firefly text-to-image and generative fill, video editing with captions and animations, brand kits, PDF quick actions, a content scheduler for social channels and real-time collaboration. The free plan includes core tools, 5 GB of storage and limited AI generations. Premium adds premium templates and fonts, 250 generative credits a month, brand kits, one-click resize and video background removal; Firefly Pro bundles Premium with 4,000 credits and Photoshop on web and mobile; Teams adds pooled storage and an admin console.

Express fits teams already paying for Creative Cloud, since it opens Photoshop and Illustrator assets through Creative Cloud Libraries. Canva has a larger template and stock library, a more mature whiteboard and docs suite and stronger team workflows; Figma is a professional interface design tool rather than a template editor. Express can feel less polished than Canva for multi-page documents.

Buying tip: Premium comes with a 30-day free trial, and Express Premium is also included in Creative Cloud Pro, so check whether your team already has access before buying separate seats.

Magnific is the new name of Freepik, the stock asset marketplace founded in Málaga, Spain, in 2010. EQT took a majority stake in 2020, and in May 2024 the company bought Magnific AI, the upscaling startup whose name it adopted for the whole platform on April 28, 2026. It reports more than one million paying subscribers. It now offers two things: a library of 250M+ photos, vectors, PSDs, icons, videos and templates, and an AI studio that puts many third-party and in-house models behind one subscription.

The AI suite covers image generation (Google's Nano Banana and the in-house Magnific One), video generation with Kling, Seedance, Veo and others, the Magnific image and video upscalers, music, voice and sound effects, and Spaces, a shared canvas for workflows. All paid plans use annual credit pools that do not reset monthly, include a commercial AI license and promise no model training on your data. Premium starts at $20 a month, Premium+ adds unlimited generations on selected models and music rights, and Pro Starter sells larger credit pools for production teams.

It suits designers, marketers and agencies who want stock assets and many AI models in one bill. Krea and Leonardo AI offer similar multi-model studios but no stock library, and Midjourney gives a more distinctive look but fewer tools. Credit math is complex and video burns credits fast.

Buying tip: freepik.com and the old magnific.ai upscaler address both redirect to magnific.com now, and existing accounts carried over. Compare per-model credit costs before choosing between Premium+ and Pro Starter.