The best free graphic design software to create social media posts in 2024

As both a photographer and writer, I'm very aware of what gets me likes. Whether you use Facebook, Instagram, X-formerly-Twitter, LinkedIn, or TikTok, visual posts, like photos, videos, and graphics, get more engagement.

The good news is you don't have to hire a designer or spend hundreds of dollars on software to get great visuals—there are some awesome free graphic design apps out there you can use to create incredible social media graphics. I've been writing about and using these kinds of tools for more than a decade, so I'm very familiar with what's good. And what isn't.

Here are the best free apps for creating social media graphics.

The best free graphic design apps for social media

• Canva for template-based design

• Adobe Express for scaling a side hustle

• Pablo by Buffer for quickly making images to share on social media

• Snappa for creating occasional images

• VistaCreate for a free social media and print design app

What makes the best social media graphic design app?

For most businesses, social media posts have a very short lifecycle. The event is this week, the promotion is running for a few days, and Independence Day only happens once a year. While there will always be some posts you can reuse, you shouldn't spend hours creating each one. It's more important that you get your content out into the world where people can actually see it than you pore over every pixel to get things perfect. You need people to see your message, not admire your design skills.

This is why a good graphic design app is so crucial: instead of starting from scratch each time you have to create a post, you have a range of great templates and design resources (like stock images, icons, shapes, and text styles) ready to go. Then, all you have to do is mix and match things with your own brand elements to have something unique and powerful. Being able to repurpose the posts you've already made is a huge time-saver.

And you don't need to pay huge prices to get incredible results. What makes graphic design apps free isn't necessarily a lack of quality, but a lack of some powerful design features and nice-to-have extras, like AI-powered features. I've considered close to 40 free graphic design apps and found five great, free resources. Granted, some of these are more limited free plans of premium products, but they're all up to the job of creating awesome images for your social media marketing channels. I'll also flag what you get if you're prepared to pay a few dollars a month—some of these options have great value paid plans.

I've relied on Adobe Photoshop for over a decade, and it sets a high bar for paid products. I didn't expect these free social media post makers to eclipse it, but they had to offer a great service. Even if something is free, I won't recommend it if it's awful.

To test each app, I spent a significant amount of time browsing hundreds of themes to get a feel for the quality of each one. I also created at least two test posts using the templates (with most of the favorites, even more). I generally focused on the overall ease of use and professional offerings of each app, but I also had some key criteria that each app needed to meet to be included on this list:

• Is this app easy enough for anyone to use? Tools like Photoshop and Illustrator (which I love) are incredible in the right hands, and unusable in the wrong ones. Social media management is rarely done by people with a design background, so any app has to cater to regular people. If you have the chops to use Photoshop and pay for it, you'll probably get the best results, but it isn't the right option for the majority of people looking for a free tool. This isn't to say there won't be some learning curve, just that it doesn't require a textbook to climb. 

• Is this app suited well for social media marketing? Again, Photoshop and Illustrator can do incredible things, but they're complete overkill for most people trying to create images for their social media marketing channels. I wanted apps that streamlined the process of creating strong graphics, not offering every tool under the sun. 

• Is the app experience good? A free graphic design app has the potential to be, frankly, awful to use (looking at you, GIMP). But even if you're not (yet) paying for a service, you shouldn't be hamstrung by a slow, janky, and just unpleasant experience. Especially when there are great apps out there you could be using. 

• Are the design assets varied and professional? It's easy to find social media templates online, but many of them are awful. You can't slap some cheesy clipart on a graphic that represents your brand, or keep recycling the same social media post design over and over. I only included apps that had assets that would allow you to represent yourself or your company in a professional light. (To be honest, this criterion cut the most apps.)

• Can you use the app in multiple ways? If you create one post for Twitter, it should be easy to repurpose it for Instagram, or even for a flyer. Similarly, you should be able to quickly edit and update last year's Christmas sale post with this year's info. Apps that made this list had to be multi-purpose, rather than force you into one way of working. 

One other thing: while AI tools like DALL·E 3 and Stable Diffusion are incredibly popular right now and can generate impressive images from a simple text prompt, they aren't yet able to create the kind of complex graphics that are part of most brands' social media strategies. If you want to find out more about using AI-generated images, check out the best AI image generators or a list of all the AI art generators out there. They're a lot of fun to play around with and can certainly be an occasional part of a social media post, but they aren't a replacement for any of the apps on this list.

With that said—on to the apps.

The best social media design apps at a glance

Best free social media design app for template-based design

Canva (Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows)

Canva pros:

• Countless templates

• Incredible free plan

Canva cons:

• You still see paid features in the app, which can be annoying if you try to use them

Canva is a powerful, but still simple-to-use, template-based free design app. There are over a million templates, graphics, and photos you can use as part of the free plan (that goes up to multiple millions of assets with a Canva Pro subscription).

Canva has thousands of templates for everything from posters to Instagram Posts. It's a lot to navigate, but there's great search built in. Click the search bar at the top of the screen, and look for something like "birthday instagram stories" to see more specific options. (I got almost 2,700 suggested free templates just for that. Best of all, you can filter by free, so you can easily find a template you can use.)

Once you've got a template to work from, the drag-and-drop editor makes it simple to add your own resources and customize everything to fit your needs. If you need a second set of eyes on your design, you can also share and collaborate with others—even on the free plan. Canva has recently added lots of AI-powered features. Most are locked behind a Canva Pro subscription, but you can check out the AI text-to-image generator and a few of the other Magic Design tools on the free plan. They're solid and can be handy if you need to create something totally offbeat. 

Once you're done, you can download your post, and there won't be any watermarks unless you've accidentally used some premium assets. Even then, you may have the option to pay to remove their watermarks (normally at about $1 per asset), although some features and assets are locked in to paying subscribers. 

If you need more from Canva, the Pro plans starts at $15/month and adds heaps of extra designs and some nice features, like automatic resizing, a social media scheduler, lots more AI usage, and the ability to upload your "brand kit," so you can easily add your logo, brand colors, and font to your designs.

If Canva does the trick for you, you can probably stop here—it's an all-around winner. But if you're looking for Canva alternatives, keep reading.

Canva price: Free for 1,000,000+ templates and other assets, and 5GB cloud storage; from $15/month for Canva Pro, which offers 1TB of storage, multiple millions of assets, powerful AI features, and more.

Best free social media design app for scaling a side hustle

Adobe Express (Web, iOS, Android)

Adobe Express pros:

• Best-in-class editor

• Free AI features

Adobe Express cons:

• Templates aren't as extensive as Canva's

• Some features push you to upgrade

Adobe is the biggest name in graphic design, so it's no surprise they have an app designed for making social media and web graphics. Adobe Express isn't as well known as Photoshop or Illustrator, but it's better for most people who are looking to create graphics to share on social media. And it's free to get started. 

Template-wise, Express still falls behind Canva. It has less to choose from, and the search isn't as good. Don't get me wrong: there are still thousands of awesome free templates, but you're less likely to find that perfect template and more likely to have to spend a few minutes tweaking one that's close but not quite there. 

For all that, Express is a better editor in many respects. It has familiar features from Adobe's other better-known apps, like blend modes, text effects, color toning, advanced layer options, image resizing, and a whole lot more. It integrates with Adobe Fonts and Adobe Stock, so you've got a serious collection of assets you can use (though only some of them for free). It really hits that nice middle-ground: quick and easy to use for 90% of jobs, but with the more powerful features available for when you want them. 

Adobe has also gone all-in on AI. Its generative AI, Firefly, is available throughout Express—and you even get 25 credits per month on the free plan. You can use Text to Template to generate a template for anything (though I found only one of the four options was free to use), generate backgrounds and other elements for your designs, generate custom text effects, and more.

Express is truly an excellent standalone app for designing social media graphics, but it's also hard to overlook its integration with the rest of Adobe's Creative Suite. If you plan to scale your business to the point where you need to use (and pay for) Adobe's more powerful tools, Express is the way to go. You can access the same assets across the suite of apps, and premium features are even included on some plans.

Adobe Express price: Free for 100,000+ templates, 25 AI credits per month,  and 2GB of cloud storage; from $9.99/month for premium features, such as logo upload and placement, branded templates and tools, 250 AI credits per month, and 100GB of cloud storage.

Best free social media design app for quickly making images to share on social media

Pablo by Buffer (Web)

Pablo by Buffer pros:

• You don't even have to sign up for an account

Pablo by Buffer cons:

• By far the most basic app on this list

Pablo is a minimalist tool for placing text over the top of images, from the team behind the social media scheduling app Buffer. It couldn't be simpler to use or in its design. For me, that's a feature—but if you need something with more options, check out one of the other great apps on this list. 

Seriously, Pablo is a barebones post maker app. Open the website, and you're straight into the app. There's no need to create an account—because there are no accounts. In the center of the screen, there's a preview of your image. On the left, you can search for an image through Unsplash or click Upload Image to add your own. At the top of the screen, click Templates to choose from one of the six defaults. On the right, you can choose the size and shape of the canvas, add a filter, position the text, and insert your logo or another graphic. Click on the text to change its formatting, double-click on it to edit it directly. Oh, and click Reposition to change the position and crop of the background image. That's literally it. 

Once you're happy with your post pic (and it won't take long for you to be), click Share & Download to save your image or post it directly to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram (or queue it up with Buffer). If you do queue it up with Buffer, you can also connect it to any of the other apps you use with Zapier. 

For all the lack of options, Pablo is still on this list. It makes it beyond simple to create basic-but-good-looking social media images, and by stripping most features, it makes it impossible to create ugly ones. If you're a fan, you should also check out Remix by Buffer—it's a smartphone app for creating graphics for Instagram. It's too niche to make this list, but it does what it claims to do.

Pablo price: Free

Best free social media design app for creating occasional images

Snappa (Web)

Snappa pros:

• All the features available for free

Snappa cons:

• More limited than Canva or Adobe Express across the board

Of all the apps on this list, Snappa is the only one whose free plan has access to the exact same templates, graphics, images, and other design resources as the paid plan. The catch is that, instead of having to carefully check what template you're using, you can only download three designs a month. 

If you only occasionally need to create images for your social media channels—or just want to create a one-off banner for your Twitter account or Facebook page—it's really nice to not constantly be running into upgrade notifications or selecting themes only to be told they're only available on the Pro plan. As good as Canva and Adobe Express are, the free plans do make you very aware that there's a paid plan they'd love you to be on. Snappa is a lot less pushy—but no less useful.

The other mild difference with Snappa is that its templates—while excellent—aren't as thoroughly themed as some of the other options, nor is there an easy way to search through them. You need to look at the defaults as a base you can customize and build from, rather than something ready-built where you're simply adding a photo and changing the words.

If you want to make a birthday post, for example, you should look at the templates and pick one that has a layout you like, and then make it yours by adding your own images—or finding one of the included royalty-free stock images that works for you. You can customize it further by adding a color overlay, blur, or other adjustment, or adding other graphical elements like balloons.

When you're happy with how things look, you can download or share your post directly to social media—so long as you haven't maxed out your free posts. If you have, you'll need to upgrade or save it to keep the file until the monthly limit resets.

For what it's worth, Snappa hasn't yet integrated the kind of AI features that are now a big selling point of Canva and Express. If that's a deal breaker, skip it, but it's still an awesome free app that you can use to make any kind of post.

Snappa price: Free for 3 downloads or shares per month; from $15/month for Snappa Pro with unlimited downloads, shares, and integration with Buffer and your social media accounts.

Best free social media and print design app

VistaCreate (Web, iOS, Android)

VistaCreate pros:

• A surprisingly great free graphic design app

VistaCreate cons:

• Lacks some of the depth of features of Canva or Express

You might know the name VistaPrint as one of the biggest online custom print shops. Well, its free design tool, VistaCreate, is capable of making awesome graphics for social media as well. It used to be a popular tool called Crello, but Vista (as the parent company now calls itself) acquired it a few years back. 

VistaCreate stands out for how much it offers for free. There are more than 100,000 free templates available across all the different design categories, and the paid templates aren't too in-your-face when you're browsing through them. There are also more than a million photos, videos, and vectors you can add to your creations—though that goes up to more than 70 million with the $13/month Pro plan.

Similarly, the editor's Styles feature makes it simple to change the color palette and font of any template, which gives you even more options. You can even create your own custom "brand kit" with your logo, color palette, and chosen font so that you can make any template match your brand with a single click—something that most apps lock away behind a Pro plan.

What's more, VistaCreate gives you a whopping 10GB of file storage, so you can upload all your brand assets and marketing material. Of course, Vista is presumably hoping you'll take the opportunity to design and order some matching business cards or flyers—but it's hard to fault what's on offer. 

If you want to collaborate with your teammates, have multiple brand kits, or be able to automatically resize any graphic into a different format, you'll have to upgrade to that $13/month Pro plan. Still, with unlimited storage and version history, it's a pretty solid deal. And even the free plan comfortably goes toe-to-toe with Canva and Adobe Express.

Like Snappa, VistaCreate hasn't yet implemented any big headline AI features. They might come, but if you're looking for text-to-image generators, you need to look elsewhere.

VistaCreate price: Free for thousands of templates plus 10GB of file storage; from $13/month for VistaCreate Pro with team features, millions of stock assets, and unlimited storage. 

Other great graphic design software

This was a list of the best free graphic design software for social media posts, so there are a lot of otherwise great apps that didn't make the cut because either their free plans were too limited or their features weren't perfectly tailored for creating awesome graphics for social media. 

While Canva and Adobe Express are awesome tools whether you stick to the free plan or pay for them, here are some other apps worth considering:

• Desygner is a solid Canva alternative, though its free plan isn't as easy to use. For $12.95/month, a team of five can collaborate with the Pro+ plan, so if you're looking for an affordable-but-not-free app, give it a look.  

• Fotor is another good design app with a free plan that's just too basic to be competitive. But for less than $50/year if you pay annually, Fotor Pro can be a great deal—especially if you're looking for AI features. 

• Visme is a powerful design app with collaboration and AI-powered tools. The free plan isn't as competitive as Canva or Express, but its paid plans (starting at $29/month) are worth considering if you manage a team. 

• Pixlr is a nice collection of tools, including an AI image editor and a social media design app. On its own, the free version of the social media design app wasn't enough to make this list, but if you need the other tools, it's worth considering—especially as the whole lot cost just $7.99/month. 

What is the best free graphic design software?

When it comes to creating social media posts, you want to use the app that will make it the quickest—so you can get your content out there and get people engaging with it. Since these are all free graphic design tools—and they're all easy to use—give each one a spin for a few minutes and see which one works best for you.

Related reading:

• The best AI photo editors

• The best Twitter alternatives

• The best photo editors for iPhone and Android

• How to create social media graphics in Buffer using the Canva integration

This article was originally published in October 2017 by Emily Irish. The most recent update was in May 2024.