Cards vs Canva for text carousels
Cards and Canva make Instagram carousels in opposite ways. In Canva you place and adjust every element by hand, which gives full control. Cards makes those layout decisions for you, so a set of slides comes out of your text on its own. If your starting point is writing, Cards is a focused Canva alternative for carousels.
| Cards | Canva | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Automation: lays out the slides from your text | Manual: you place and adjust every element |
| Making a carousel | Paste text, slides are built for you | Design each slide on a canvas |
| Number of slides | Auto-builds up to your card limit | Add and design each one |
| Editing the text later | Every slide re-splits and redraws | Re-balance each affected slide by hand |
| Control over each element | Decided for you, consistent across the set | Full manual control |
| AI | Does not rewrite your text | AI writing and design tools available |
| Account to export | No account needed for the first 8 cards | Free account required |
| Price | Free core, Pro at $5 a month | Free plan, plus a paid Pro subscription |
| Video | Renders the deck as an MP4 up to 30 seconds, with Pro | Full video editor, with premium assets on Pro |
Canva capabilities checked July 2026. Its plans move and vary by region, so read their pricing page for current numbers.
Two different approaches
Canva, like Photoshop or any canvas editor, hands you every element to position yourself. That is powerful when each slide needs its own custom graphics, and it also means you do that work on every slide. Cards works the other way, closer to automation: you give it text, and it splits, sizes, and lays out the slides for you. You cannot nudge the text on an individual card, and you do not need to, because the layout stays consistent across the set.
Make a carousel in one step
Because Cards builds the slides from the text, the count follows the text until your card limit. Signed-out carousels go up to 8 cards. A free account raises one project to 18 cards, and Pro raises it to 200. Instagram itself allows up to 20 slides per post.
Your words stay yours
Cards does not use AI to rewrite or summarize your copy. It lays out the exact text you paste. If you do write with AI, you can still paste that text in. You decide the wording, and the tool leaves it alone.
When Canva is the better choice
Canva does far more than carousels. If you want custom graphics, a different design on every slide, brand kits, or a large template library, Canva or a similar editor is the better fit. Cards covers one job: turning written text into a clean, consistent set of slides, fast.
Try Cards
The Cards editor starts free and needs no account for the first 8 cards. Paste your text, pick an Instagram size, and export a PNG set.
Questions
- Is Cards a free Canva alternative?
- For text carousels, yes. Making the cards, previewing them, and exporting the images cost nothing, and the first 8 cards need no account. Canva has a free plan too, though it asks you to sign up and keeps its better assets and tools on Pro. Cards Pro is $5 a month and adds video export, article import from a URL, up to 200 cards, Buffer publishing, and multi-format export.
- Why use Cards when I already have Canva?
- Speed on one job. In Canva you build each slide; in Cards you paste the whole text once and the slides come out laid out. Rewrite a sentence and everything after it reflows, with no slide to re-balance by hand.
- Can I design each slide individually in Cards?
- Up to a point. Per-card overrides let one slide take its own background, typography, text position, header, and footer, so a cover card can stand apart from the rest. Placing arbitrary elements anywhere on the canvas is what Canva is for.
- Do Cards exports have a watermark?
- No. The exported JPEG or PNG matches the editor preview with nothing stamped on it, on both the free tier and Pro.
- Which sizes can Cards export?
- Instagram square at 1080×1080, Instagram portrait at 1080×1350, Story and Reels at 1080×1920, LinkedIn at 1200×627, and X at 1600×900. Pro re-splits the text for every canvas and exports them in one ZIP.