Texva vs Canva — lecture slides and class handouts
Canva is easy and looks good, but maths formulas end up pasted in as images. A comparison for maths and science teachers, including where Canva still wins.
Who each tool is for
Canva is a design tool: you place things freely on a frame, and it is genuinely strong for posters, cover images, notices and image-led decks. Texva is not a free-form design tool — it is a structured document editor where content flows and formulas are data rather than pictures. For a literature lesson or a form-group session, Canva usually fits better. For a maths lesson with ten formulas, that reverses.
Side by side
| Area | Texva | Canva |
|---|---|---|
| Maths formulas | Typed directly, stay editable, print sharp | Pasted as images from elsewhere; one wrong symbol means a new image |
| Layout | Structured and flowing — change the content and the page re-sets itself | Free placement — great for design, laborious for long documents |
| Slides and handouts | One document produces both | Two separate designs, kept in sync by hand |
| Questions and answer keys | Question blocks, automatic numbering, answer keys | No concept of a question |
| Geometry and graphs | Subject-specific canvases exporting vector | Drawn from shapes, or an inserted image |
| Stock library and design templates | Small — the templates here are subject document templates | Very large, and the main reason people use Canva |
| The printout | A PDF set by LaTeX — right for something handed out on paper | A design PDF; the formulas inside it are images |
When to pick the other one
Canva wins clearly on anything that needs free placement and imagery: an activity poster, a cover image for the class page, a card, an infographic. Its stock library, fonts and design templates are far larger, and if you need something eye-catching in ten minutes Texva will not compete. Texva has no Figma-style free canvas and does not claim one.
What moving to Texva involves
There is no import path from Canva, and usually none is needed: what is worth moving is not the decks that already look good but the ones where formulas are pasted screenshots. The practical split is to build the formula-and-figure content in Texva — which doubles as the printable handout — and keep Canva for purely visual design. In Texva the slides and the handout come from one document, so editing the content once updates both.
Common questions
- Can Texva present?
- Yes. Present mode runs from the document itself, with private speaker notes, step-by-step reveals and 21 colour themes. It exports to PDF or Beamer.
- Do Texva slides look as good as Canva’s?
- Not if you measure design freedom — Canva has a far larger stock and template library. Texva optimises for something else: formulas, figures and tables on a slide being correct and editable, and the deck coming with a printable handout.
- Can I use both?
- Plenty of teachers do: Canva for posters and notices, Texva for formula-heavy lessons and the handouts. The two overlap less than it looks.
Related templates
- Lesson SlidesA teacher lesson deck with objectives, concept, equation, and practice slide.
- Physics Lecture SlidesA physics lecture deck with a real circuit diagram and a worked numerical example.
- Parent Newsletter (Vietnam)A letter template for keeping parents up to date on class work and school events.