Gamma vs Canva AI: Tested both with the same presentation prompt

 

TL;DR

We pasted the same presentation prompt into Gamma and Canva AI: an 8-slide client report with 20 figures and a rule against adding anything. Then we checked every slide against the source, across two runs per tool. Both kept all 20 numbers. Both also added things the prompt ruled out: Canva misreported the TikTok result in both runs, and Gamma credited the ad data to Meta Ads Manager, a source the brief never mentions.

Canva's decks looked more designed. Gamma applied the exact brand colors and font in its second run, after ignoring two of the three colors in its first. Neither tool produced the same deck twice from the same prompt, and slide generation took about a minute in both.

The biggest practical difference showed up after export. Canva's PowerPoint file broke when opened in Google Slides, while Gamma's opened intact.

 

The test

Both tools got one identical prompt: a Q3 social media report for a fictional bakery, written by a fictional agency. It's the kind of deck agencies send clients every quarter. It contains 20 specific figures, so any number a tool changes or invents is easy to spot.

The rules:

• The same prompt, pasted word for word into both tools, two runs each.
• The prompt tells each tool to use only the information provided, add no statistics, quotes or claims, and keep every number exactly as written.
• Brand colors given as hex values (#1F3A2E dark green, #F4EDE1 cream, #D98E32 amber) and Montserrat as the font.
• Two image placeholders, on the title slide and the top post slide.
• Gamma ran at Lite effort, described in its menu as "Basic effort for simple work". The image setting stayed the same in both runs.
• Both tools generate an outline before the slides. We timed the two steps separately, using screen recordings with the clock showing seconds.
• After generation we exported each deck to PowerPoint and opened it in Google Slides.

Two runs per tool is a small sample. The results show how each tool handles this type of brief, not a general ranking.

The full prompt, if you want to repeat the test:

"Create an 8-slide presentation from the content below. Use only the information provided. Do not add statistics, quotes or claims that are not in the text. Keep every number exactly as written.

Style: clean and modern. Colors: #1F3A2E (dark green), #F4EDE1 (cream), #D98E32 (amber). Font: Montserrat.

Slide 1: Title
Ostria Bakery: Q3 2026 Social Media Report
Prepared by Northline Studio, October 2026
[Image placeholder: storefront photo]

Slide 2: Summary
Total reach across Instagram and Facebook: 183,600, up 53% from July to September.
Engagement rate rose to 4.1%, from 2.9% in Q2.
Paid ads brought 64 online pre-orders.

Slide 3: Monthly reach (show as a bar chart)
July: 48,200
August: 61,500
September: 73,900

Slide 4: Engagement
Engagement rate: 4.1% (Q2: 2.9%)
Saves: 1,840
Shares: 960
Carousel posts had the highest save rate of any format.

Slide 5: Top post
Reel: "Olive bread, oven to table"
22,400 views and 311 shares
Posted on a Saturday at 9:00, the bakery's busiest morning.
[Image placeholder: product photo of bread]

Slide 6: Paid ads
Spend: €1,200
Clicks: 9,850
Cost per click: €0.12
Online pre-orders: 64

Slide 7: What did not work
Story engagement dropped 18% compared to Q2.
Three TikTok test videos each stayed under 1,000 views.

Slide 8: Q4 plan
Post two carousels per week focused on seasonal products.
Move 30% of the ad budget to Saturday mornings.
Pause TikTok until January and review again.
Next review meeting: 15 January 2027."

 

What each tool got wrong

Both tools kept all 20 figures in both runs. The problems were in what they added.

Canva

• The TikTok result, twice: The brief says three test videos each stayed under 1,000 views. Run 1 put "1,000" in large type as a headline stat, which reads like an achievement. Run 2 wrote "1,000: the most views on any TikTok test video", which is false, and dropped the fact that there were three videos.
• Invented recommendations: Run 1 added an "Areas for improvement" block with three generic bullets, such as "focus on content that resonates with our audience". The prompt explicitly ruled this out. Run 2 didn't repeat it.
• Images on slides without a placeholder: The prompt had two image placeholders. Canva filled both with AI images, then added images to 5 more slides in run 1 and 6 more in run 2. Its AI storefront with "OSTRIA BAKERY" on the sign is a reasonable way to fill a placeholder in a draft, but it isn't the client's shop, so it has to be replaced before the deck goes out.
• Repetitive imagery: Run 2 used the same storefront image on slides 1 and 2, and a similar round loaf appears on seven of eight slides. In run 1, a laptop on the paid ads slide showed garbled interface text.

 

Gamma

• A source the brief doesn't mention: Run 2 captioned the paid ads slide "Meta Ads Manager · Q3 2026 campaign overview". It's a plausible guess, since Instagram and Facebook ads run through Meta, but the prompt ruled out adding claims.
• A misleading label: Run 2 tagged September with "+53% peak". The 53% is growth from July to September, not a peak value.
• Placeholder text left on the slide: Run 2 printed "[Image placeholder: product photo of bread]" as visible text and also generated an AI photo next to it.
• Different image handling each run: Run 1 left both placeholders as labeled frames. Run 2, with the same settings, filled them with AI images, including a storefront with "Ostria Bakery" on the sign.
• Filler labels: Both runs added interpretive tags the brief didn't contain, such as "Organic advocacy" and "High format retention" in run 1 and "Benchmark" and "Virality" in run 2.

Neither tool fully followed "use only the information provided". Canva's additions changed what the report says. Gamma's mostly added labels and one unsourced attribution. Whichever you use, check every slide against the source before it goes to a client.

 

Same prompt, different deck

Neither tool gave the same result twice from an identical prompt and identical settings but the layout was very similar. The Gamma vs Canva reviews we found judge each tool on a single generation, and our runs show why that's unreliable.

Canva, run 1 vs run 2:

• Font: Montserrat in run 1, HK Grotesk in run 2. The exported file confirms it.
• Colors: close to the brief in run 2 but not exact. The exported file uses several near shades, such as #23361D instead of #1F3A2E and #D98216 instead of #D98E32.
• Content: the invented recommendations disappeared, while the TikTok mistake went from misleading to false.

Gamma, run 1 vs run 2:

• Colors: run 1 used white backgrounds, used the dark green only for text and chart bars, and skipped amber entirely. Run 2 used the exact cream background, a dark green title slide and amber accents.
• Images: none in run 1, two AI images in run 2, with the image setting unchanged.
• Credits: 56 in run 1, 70 in run 2.

 

How the decks look

Canva produced the more designed decks in both runs, with some layout variety: a diagonal image split, stat lists with large amber numbers, a label-and-value grid, numbered steps for the Q4 plan. The weak point is imagery: in run 2 a similar round loaf appears on seven of eight slides, and the deck starts to look templated.

Gamma's run 2 deck is clean and on-brand but plain. It repeats the same rounded-card grid on five slides, and the "What did not work" slide is two small boxes on an otherwise empty page. Its chart uses 3D bars, which look dated and make bar heights harder to compare.

The practical takeaway: generate two or three versions and pick the best one, rather than trusting the first result.

 

How good is PowerPoint export?

Gamma's export survived Google Slides intact, and Canva's didn't. We exported both run 2 decks to .pptx, uploaded them to Google Drive and opened them in Google Slides.

Canva

Titles overlapped their subtitles ("Monthly Reach" ran over "Q3 2026 Social Media Performance"), and words broke mid-word. On the top post slide, the reel title ran into the view count.

The cause is in how the file is built. Every text box is sized tightly around its text in HK Grotesk, the font Canva chose. Google Slides doesn't use fonts embedded in a .pptx, so it substitutes another font, and any slightly wider font forces a line break. Other things we found in the file:

• Size: 24.2 MB for 8 slides.
• Slide dimensions: 20 × 11.25 inches instead of the standard 13.33 × 7.5. Slides pasted into a standard deck get rescaled.
• Blank layouts only: Every element is a separate shape or text box with fixed colors and fonts, so applying a theme won't restyle the deck.
• The chart is drawings: The bars are shapes and the labels are text boxes, with no data behind them.

 

Gamma

Gamma's file opened in Google Slides as it looked in Gamma: cream backgrounds, rounded cards, Montserrat and the same layout. The deck is plain, but nothing broke.

• Speaker notes on every slide, containing that slide's content from the brief.
• The chart is a flat image, so it isn't editable either.

If you edit decks in Google Slides or PowerPoint, Gamma's file needs far less repair.

 

Speed and credits

Speed is a tie. Slide generation took under a minute in Canva and just over a minute in Gamma. The outline step varied more between runs than between tools. Canva's slide time includes generating AI images for seven or eight slides per run, which makes its speed more impressive. It also means you spend time afterwards replacing images you didn't ask for.

Gamma charged 56 credits for run 1 and 70 for run 2, at Lite effort. Run 2 was the one with two AI images. Gamma doesn't publish a fixed cost per deck: its help page says cost depends on the action, the AI model and the length.

At our measured cost, the 1,000 monthly credits on Gamma Plus cover about 14 to 17 decks like this per person. Standard and Max effort cost more per deck. Canva doesn't publish how many AI generations each plan includes.

 

What is Gamma

Gamma generates presentations, documents and simple webpages from a prompt, pasted notes or an uploaded file. It drafts an outline first, then builds the slides, which it calls cards. You choose an effort level: Lite, Standard or Max, where higher effort uses more credits and Max needs the Pro plan.

Decks export to PowerPoint and PDF and Gamma can also work inside ChatGPT and Claude.

Pros

• Applied the exact brand hex colors and Montserrat in run 2.
• Left labeled image placeholders as instructed in run 1.
• In run 1, chart bars matched the data exactly.
• The PowerPoint export opened intact in Google Slides.
• Added speaker notes to every slide.

Cons

• Plain, repetitive layouts: the same card grid on five slides and one nearly empty slide.
• Ignored two of the three brand colors in run 1.
• Added a "Meta Ads Manager" source caption the brief doesn't mention, and a misleading "+53% peak" label.
• Left placeholder text visible on a slide.
• 3D chart, exported as a flat image.
• Cost per deck varied from 56 to 70 credits between identical runs, and Gamma doesn't publish it.

Pricing

Gamma charges per seat, and each member gets a monthly credit allowance. Paid plans for one person start €10 a month on Plus (1,000 credits), €24 on Pro (4,000), €35 on Business (10,000 plus a shared workspace pool) and €86 on Ultra (20,000). Credits refill monthly and roll over up to double the plan's allowance. On every plan except Business and Enterprise, credits belong to each member, so one heavy user can't draw on a colleague's. Our team cost breakdown covers how much would team of 5 pay for different design tools, including Gamma.

 

What is Canva

Canva is a general design platform covering presentations, social posts, print, video and websites, with a large template and asset library. Its AI generates editable designs from a prompt. For presentations it drafts an outline first, then builds the slides and, as our test showed, generates images for them.

The AI is part of the same editor, so everything it produces can be changed by hand afterwards. That matters given how much of the output you may need to fix.

Pros

• The most designed-looking decks, with more layout variety than Gamma and strong emphasis on the key numbers.
• Used all three brand colors visibly in both runs.
• Fast: 54 to 58 seconds for the slides, including images.
• A full design editor for fixing or extending the result.

Cons

• Misreported the TikTok result in both runs and added invented recommendations in run 1.
• Added AI images to 5 or 6 slides that had no image placeholder, with a similar loaf repeated across most of them.
• Switched from Montserrat to a different font in run 2, and its colors were close to the brief but not exact.
• The PowerPoint export breaks in Google Slides.
• The chart exports as loose shapes, with no data behind it.
• No speaker notes.

Pricing

Canva Pro costs €144 a year for one person. Canva Business costs €17 per person per month, and the AI Pass add-on costs €90 per person per month on top of that. Canva doesn't publish how many AI generations a plan includes.

 

Grafista

Grafista is an AI graphic designer that creates beautiful designs with no prompt or design skills required. If you need presentations that don’t have the generic AI look, Grafista’s blueprints can help you create designs that are unique and uncommon.

Plans start as low as €10 a month for unlimited members. Every plan also includes unlimited brand kits, downloads and published designs.

 

FAQ

Is Gamma or Canva better for client presentations?

Canva produced better-looking decks in our test, and Gamma produced files that survived export. If the client receives a PDF, Canva's design advantage counts for more. If they will edit the file in Google Slides or PowerPoint, Gamma's export needs far less repair.

Can Gamma export to PowerPoint?

Yes. Gamma exports to .pptx and PDF. In our test the .pptx opened intact in Google Slides, but the chart came through as an image, and the "Made with Gamma" badge sits in a slide layout.

Can Canva export to PowerPoint?

Yes, but our export used a non-standard 20 × 11.25 inch slide size and was 24.2 MB for 8 slides. Text overlapped and words broke mid-word when we opened it in Google Slides.

Do Gamma and Canva follow brand colors and fonts?

Inconsistently. Canva used Montserrat in one run and switched to HK Grotesk in the other, with colors close to the brief but not exact. Gamma ignored two of the three colors in one run and applied all three exactly in the other.

Do Gamma and Canva AI make things up?

Both did, even with an explicit instruction not to. Canva wrote a false statement about the client's TikTok results and added recommendations nobody asked for. Gamma credited the ad data to Meta Ads Manager, a source the brief never mentions, and labeled September's figure a "+53% peak".

Which is faster, Gamma or Canva?

Neither by a meaningful margin. Slide generation took 54 to 58 seconds in Canva and 65 to 70 seconds in Gamma, while the outline step varied between 20 and 56 seconds in both.