When should you upgrade to Adobe Creative Cloud Pro? We did the math

If you’re a working creative, there’s a good chance your Adobe subscriptions have grown quietly over the years – a Photography plan here, a single-app license there, maybe a Firefly add-on for generative AI.

Since earlier this year, all of that sits alongside Creative Cloud Pro, the rebranded All Apps plan that now costs $69.99 per month on an annual, billed-monthly contract in the US and includes over 20 desktop and mobile apps.

On paper, Adobe pitches it as the “everything” bundle – but the real question is simple: once you rely on three or more Adobe tools, does Creative Cloud Pro genuinely work out cheaper?

To help you find out, we've crunched the numbers using real-world creative workflows and clear tables to show exactly where the tipping point lies.

From now until December 15, Adobe is offering unlimited Firefly and third-party image generations and unlimited Firefly video generations to all Firefly and Creative Cloud Pro users.

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How much do Adobe plans cost?

On their own, Adobe’s individual plans don’t look too painful – it’s when you start stacking them that costs ramp up.

At the time of writing, the Photography Plan starts at around $14.99 per month for legacy 20GB customers, while the mainstream 1TB version is about $19.99. Lightroom on its own costs $11.99 per month.

Most flagship single-app plans, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, sit at roughly $22.99 per month each, and Firefly’s paid tiers start at as little as $9.99 per month, but can rise based on AI credit usage.

If you’re paying for the Photography Plan plus Firefly, or two or three separate apps and some AI on top, you can easily end up spending more than Creative Cloud Pro’s $69.99 monthly fee without really noticing.

We did the math: When Creative Cloud Pro is cheaper

To help you make sense of when Creative Cloud Pro is cheaper, we've done the math to compare individual plans for different apps and how much could be saved when you take the plunge, on a monthly and yearly basis.

All of the prices are correct as of the time of writing in December 2025.

Even before you factor in fonts, stock assets, or extra AI credits, the pattern is clear: as soon as you’re paying for three heavyweight apps and Firefly – or four apps of any kind – Creative Cloud Pro stops being a luxury and starts becoming the cheaper option on raw subscription cost alone.

What Creative Cloud Pro includes

So what exactly do you get for that $69.99 per month?

At its core, Creative Cloud Pro is the full All Apps bundle: over 20 desktop and mobile tools including Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Acrobat Pro, Express, and their web and mobile apps.

On top of the core apps, the plan layers in services that would otherwise be extra line items, boosting the subscription prices.

You get a generous pool of Adobe Firefly generative AI credits baked into the plan, so you can use AI for image generation, text effects, and smart edits across supported apps.

There’s access to the full Adobe Fonts library, a curated set of free Adobe Stock assets, Frame.io for cloud-based review and approval on video projects, and Adobe Portfolio, plus cloud storage for hosting your work.

Time savings

Pure subscription maths is only half the story – Creative Cloud Pro also buys back time, which for most creative professionals is the real currency, even if it sounds a little cheesy to say.

For example, Photoshop’s Firefly-powered tools, such as Generative Fill and object removal, can turn what used to be half-hour retouching jobs into a handful of clicks, while Illustrator’s vector and layout assistants make iterating on logo or poster concepts much faster.

In video, Premiere Pro’s AI-driven features help you deliver edits and variants without painstaking manual tweaks.

Add up those saved hours over a month or a year, and the difference between juggling separate plans and paying for Creative Cloud Pro often works out in Pro’s favour even before you factor in the raw cost savings.

Who Creative Cloud Pro is really for

Adobe's Creative Cloud Pro makes the most sense if your work already spans several disciplines.

For example, if you’re a photographer who also edits video and designs social graphics, a graphic designer who often works on layout, web, and motion, or a videographer who relies on motion graphics, audio work, and AI tools.

If you genuinely live in a one Adobe app and rarely touch anything else, a single-app plan will usually still be cheaper.

But as a rule of thumb, if you’re paying for three or more Adobe apps, or the Photography plan plus at least two extra apps and Firefly on top, Creative Cloud Pro is generally the better-value choice over a year.

TechRadar Pro created this content as part of a paid partnership with Adobe. The company had no editorial input in this article, and it was not sent to Adobe for approval.