Build

Everything you build with the Canva Developers SDK is an app. The three surfaces differ in where your app runs and how a user reaches it, rather than in what you're allowed to build.

An app can implement any combination of the following surfaces:

• Apps inside Canva: Your app runs in the Canva editor, in an iframe, and is built with standard web technologies. Choose this surface to reach users while they're designing, by importing content into Canva, adding elements to a design, and automating design tasks. Apps here are built with intents, which let Canva present your app wherever its capability is relevant to what a user is doing.
• Canva for your platform: Your app runs on your own infrastructure and calls the Canva REST APIs. Choose this surface when the experience belongs in your product rather than in Canva, such as creating and syncing assets, designs, and comments between the two, or embedding Canva in an existing workflow.
• Canva for AI assistants: Your app connects to the Canva MCP server. Choose this surface so that your users can create, edit, and export designs by asking for it in the AI tools they already use.

• Prerequisites lists the accounts, tools, and skills that each surface needs. You only need the tooling for the surfaces you build on.
• Quickstart walks through getting an app running, with a separate path for each surface.

• Canva CLI
• Canva App Scripts
• Dev MCP server