MagicBrief alternative after the shutdown

What happened to MagicBrief after Canva bought it

MagicBrief closed on 31 July 2026, 13 months after Canva announced it had bought the company. Its homepage still reads “MagicBrief will shut down on July 31, 2026 at 8 PM EST” and “The MagicBrief team has joined Canva” (read 2 October 2026). The app’s login page says “MagicBrief has shut down.”

Canva announced the deal at Cannes Lions on 18 June 2025 (B&T). The customer FAQ MagicBrief posted that day said “MagicBrief will continue to operate as its own platform” (archived 2 July 2025).

The shutdown FAQ gives the reason: “The MagicBrief team spent the past year building Canva Grow”.

What MagicBrief cost, and its free trial

MagicBrief sells nothing today. The pricing page archived on 14 January 2026 shows Pro at “Ad spend based pricing, starting at $249 per month” (archived pricing page). Creative Intelligence, the second plan, had no price and a “Let’s chat” button. The price tracker lists MagicBrief as Discontinued.

“Your billing was cancelled at the time of the shutdown announcement,” the shutdown FAQ says, and anyone charged after that date is told to email support@magicbrief.com.

No trial exists now. MagicBrief’s comparison page, archived in January 2026, offered a “14-day free trial of MagicBrief, no credit card required” in one block (archived page). Its FAQ gave a “7-day trial” with full access “outside of our creative intelligence features”. The same page describes “an initial 3-month subscription that rolls onto monthly billing”.

Is Canva Grow the MagicBrief replacement?

Partly: the MagicBrief team built Canva Grow, and MagicBrief’s own FAQ calls it “not a direct port”.

The same FAQ says Canva Grow is “built on the same DNA as MagicBrief” and “currently supports Meta and TikTok for both publishing and analytics”. It is “available to all Canva users, with different usage tiers across plans”, with the highest limits on Canva Business.

The free Business offer is over: “All promo codes must be redeemed by September 30, 2026. Codes not redeemed by that date will be void.” A code redeemed in time reverts to the free Canva tier after six months unless a paid plan follows.

Canva Business has no verified price on our price tracker: Canva’s pricing page refused automated reads on 2 October 2026.

What replaces each MagicBrief feature

At monthly list price, Atria Core is the cheapest plan in the table that covers all three MagicBrief features. Without briefs, Superads Professional covers the library and account reports, up to $100,000 of monthly ad spend. For the ad library and briefs alone, Foreplay Basic is the cheapest priced plan in the table.

MagicBrief’s comparison page also listed YouTube and LinkedIn account syncing (archived page). Of the plans in the table, Motion names both platforms and Superads names LinkedIn.

Prices from the Foreplay, Atria, Superads and Motion pricing pages; platforms from the Superads homepage and Motion’s help centre.

Foreplay Basic covers one user, at $20 for each extra, and Lens reports start on Workflow at $175 a month (Foreplay pricing, 2 October 2026).

Atria Core includes 5 seats and follows 50 brands with “no AI insights” (Atria pricing). Its homepage sells “Data-driven briefs built from your own ad performance”. No clause in Atria’s terms gives you ownership of AI outputs (sections 6 and 10; Atria profile).

Superads Professional adds $100 a month for each extra 100k dollars of monthly spend (Superads pricing). Its homepage says you can “Follow any brand, see every ad they’re running, and save their top ads into shared reports and collections”.

• Creative research

  Foreplay

  Ad swipe file and research tool: save ads from ad libraries, search an ad database, track competitors, write briefs.

  From $59 a month · checked 2 Oct 2026

• Creative research

  Atria

  Ad library plus own-account creative analytics, with an AI strategist that writes concepts, scripts, copy and images.

  From $159 a month · checked 2 Oct 2026

• Creative research

  Superads

  Creative reporting for Meta, Google, TikTok and LinkedIn ads with AI tagging, a per-ad score and an AI analyst.

  From $150 a month · checked 2 Oct 2026

• Creative research

  Motion (motionapp.com)

  Creative analytics for Meta, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn ads: an AI analyst that tags Meta ads and writes briefs.

  From $750 a month · checked 2 Oct 2026

Foreplay in full: Foreplay profile and price tracker. Every research and reporting tool: creative research hub.

MagicBrief vs Motion: what Motion costs now

MagicBrief’s own comparison page is gone: magicbrief.com/magicbrief-vs-motion answered 404 on 2 October 2026. Its last archived copy, of 14 January 2026, promised “30% lower pricing” than Motion and “Free Migration” of Motion reports (archived page).

Motion prices by spend: Starter at $750 a month up to $50,000 of monthly ad spend, and Pro at $1,200 a month above it (Motion pricing, 2 October 2026). Starter alone is about three times MagicBrief Pro’s entry price. For that, Starter includes unlimited seats and ad accounts, against Atria Core’s 5 of each, and reads YouTube and LinkedIn accounts too (feature matrix).

Motion’s terms (12 May 2026) let you use reports “solely for the Permitted Purpose” during the Service Term (3.3). Clause 1.39 defines that purpose as “internal use”, unless an Order Form adds another. Plans and terms in full: Motion profile.

Your MagicBrief ads and data after the shutdown

MagicBrief reports not exported before the closure are gone. The shutdown FAQ let Insights reports be “exported as CSV files” until 31 July, from Overview reports only: “Comparison reports and Co-pilot reports cannot be exported this way”. After that date “data cannot be recovered”.

Saved Inspire collections had no bulk export. Campaign data stays in your Meta and TikTok accounts, which connect to each reporting plan in the table above. Data requests go to support@magicbrief.com, the FAQ says.

MagicBrief’s terms, last modified 10 September 2024, decide what you may still do with the ads:

Clause 7.1 says MagicBrief owned “the outputs created, invented, or devised by any AI System related to MagicBrief”. Paying subscribers could use them “for your internal business purposes”, producing ads within MagicBrief among them, during the Subscription Term. The licence also covered “publicly displaying those advertisements thereafter”. Clause 7.1 neither names nor bars ads made for clients.

Ads made before the closure can keep running; making new ones from the outputs ended with the subscription. The rights matrix marks those pre-closure ads Allowed with conditions for paid and organic use (7.1), beside every MagicBrief clause by use.

Under 7.2, your uploads stay yours. MagicBrief’s licence to use them “continues after our Agreement ends”, and anonymised data feeds “aggregated statistical data” under a perpetual licence.

Under 7.3, library ads were shown for “transparency, criticism, comment, and research only”, and MagicBrief “does not claim ownership” of them. The clause grants you no right to reuse a saved competitor ad.

What MagicBrief users said

Four public reviews of MagicBrief, from January 2023 to April 2024, predate the Canva deal. Each praises saving ads from the Meta and TikTok libraries into a shared swipe file (4 of 4 sources: Trustpilot, aazarshad.com). Two credit storyboards and real-time collaboration for turning saved ads into team briefs (2 of 4 sources: Trustpilot, aazarshad.com).

The one drawback named in them is the missing YouTube and Snapchat ads (1 of 4 sources, an affiliate review: aazarshad.com). The swipe file they praise maps to the library rows in the table above.