professional-headshots.ai vs Canva.
An honest side-by-side. Generalist design tool with a free AI headshot generator bolted on. Here's how we line up on price, turnaround, privacy, and team workflow.
The quick comparison
| Feature | professional-headshots.ai | Canva |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $24.99 (40 portraits) | Free tier; Pro at $12.99/mo |
| Turnaround | ~20 minutes | Seconds per render, but no real fine-tuning |
| Privacy | EU-hosted · 30-day hard deletion | Global data processing; broad terms typical of a free freemium tool |
| Model retraining on your data | Never | Implicit via broad ToS; opt-out requires manual steps |
| Refund policy | 14-day refund before generation; goodwill after | Subscription refunds only, not per-image |
| Team mode | Seats, central billing, VAT invoice, manager dashboard | Discounted bulk, limited admin tooling |
| Style calibration | Per-industry (finance / tech / legal / creative) | Generic style library |
Where we win
- Purpose-built for headshots, not a checkbox feature inside a design suite
- We train a Soul on your face — Canva's tool generates a generic look-alike
- EU-grade privacy with a hard 30-day source-file deletion, not a global ToS
- Industry-calibrated style packs (finance, tech, creative, legal) recruiters actually recognise
Where Canva can be the right call
If you already have an active subscription, credits to burn, or a specific style you've dialed in there — keep using it. Switching tools is only worth it when the new option is meaningfully faster, cheaper, or safer for your data. For most of our customers, all three.
FAQ
Why not just use Canva's free AI headshot generator?
Canva's tool is a one-shot text-to-image render. It doesn't train on your face, so the output looks 'like you' at best — never recognisably you. We train a private model on 8–15 of your selfies, which is why the portraits hold up on LinkedIn and in interviews.
Is paying $24.99 really worth it over a free tool?
If you only need a stylised avatar, no. If you need a portrait a recruiter, client or hiring committee won't flag as AI-generated, yes — that's the whole gap our product exists to close.
What about privacy?
Canva's terms cover their whole product surface. We're a single-purpose tool with a 30-day hard deletion and EU-grade hosting, so source selfies don't sit in a generalist data lake.