Affinity vs Amadine
Both are bought outright, both sit in design, and both are bought by people leaving Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Creative Cloud. Here is what actually differs — including what each price does not buy.
The short answer
- Affinity is free; Amadine costs $29.99.
- Affinity has the cleaner licence: free, against lifetime plan available for Amadine.
- Affinity needs an account with the developer; Amadine does not.
Side by side
 AffinityFreeFree |  Amadine$29.99Lifetime tier | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | the whole design suite, now free for individuals | approachable vector drawing app with a 29.99 dollar lifetime licence |
| Price | Free | $29.99 |
| Licence | Free | Lifetime plan available |
| What you get | No licence to buy. | Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists. |
| The catch | Free, but the download runs through a Canva account and the AI tools need a paid Canva plan | The iPhone and iPad app is a separate purchase with its own monthly subscription |
| Macs per licence | not established | not established |
| Account required | yes | no |
| Works offline | partly | yes |
| Apple Silicon | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| On Setapp | No | No |
| Minimum macOS | not established | not established |
| App Store rating | not established | not established |
| Last updated | not established | not established |
| Price checked | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-22 |
Apple’s public API reports a rating for only a small minority of Mac apps, and returns zero for most of the rest even when the store page plainly shows reviews. A blank here means we could not read a number, never that an app is unrated or disliked.
In their own right
Affinity
The former Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher merged into one app with vector, pixel and page layout in a single document, and given away to individuals by Canva.
Amadine
A mid-weight vector illustration app from BeLight covering everyday drawing work: pen and shape tools, artboards, layers, gradients, text on a path and export to SVG, PDF and EPS.