The useful Photoshop alternative is a website

Photopea is not a Canva clone. It is a browser editor that copies the Photoshop job: layers, masks, smart objects, PSD as the main format.

I opened photopea.com on 23 August 2026. The homepage calls itself a free online photo editor. The claims that matter are specific: “There are no uploads. Photopea runs on your device, using your CPU and your GPU. All files open instantly, and never leave your device.” And: it fully supports opening and saving PSD.

That local-processing sentence is why this page exists. Most “free Photoshop” web tools upload the file. Photopea says it does not.

What they document besides PSD

Official homepage: layers, masks, layer styles, smart objects, adjustment layers, channels, paths; Levels, Curves, Gaussian Blur, Liquify, Puppet Warp; vector drawing; RAW formats they list as DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RW2, RAF, ORF and FFF; plus PNG, JPG, GIF, WEBP, SVG, PDF, AI and a long tail they point at a GitHub formats list.

They also advertise one-click background removal and generative replace. Those are AI features on a local editor. I did not test whether those particular AI calls stay on-device. The “no uploads” paragraph is about your files in the editor. I will not extend it to every AI button without their docs saying so.

Free means ads. Premium is real. The price is not on the marketing page.

Photopea’s official accounts page: two consumer account types, Free and Premium. Free is available to anybody at photopea.com. Premium “lets you use Photopea without advertisement and may have other benefits.” Prices, they say, live in the Account window after you log in with Google or Facebook.

I am not going to print “$5 a month” from comparison blogs. It is not on the page I can cite. Open Account if you want the live number.

Schools can buy a yearly domain whitelist starting at $450 a year for the whole school, no student logins. Self-hosted Photopea is a different product they price between $500 and $2,000 a month, paid a year ahead. That is for people embedding the editor, not for opening a PSD.

Versus Photoshop, Pixlr, Affinity, Canva

Photoshop is Adobe’s subscription desktop suite. Photopea is the “I was sent a PSD and I do not have Adobe this afternoon” tool.

Pixlr is a photo/AI editor with a published Plus price. It is not a PSD-first Photoshop surface.

Affinity is now a free desktop install via a Canva account. Use that if you want an app. Use Photopea if you want no install and a file that never leaves the tab.

Canva is templates. Photopea will feel hostile if you came for Instagram sizes and stock photos.

How I would choose, labelled as opinion

If someone mails me a layered PSD, I would open Photopea before I paid Adobe for one afternoon.

If I edit photos every day and I want no ads, I would look at the Account window, or download Affinity for $0, and stop living in a tab.

I have not subscribed to Photopea Premium. I am not going to invent a cloud-storage limit I did not see on the accounts page.