Review
Figma won by being in the browser and letting non-designers watch. After a year of product work, here is where it is brilliant and where it still frustrates.
Still the default for interface design and still deservedly so. Real-time collaboration and components make it the only tool where designers, developers and stakeholders work from the same file without exporting anything.
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Figma's real innovation was never a drawing tool. It was the URL. Design stopped being a file someone exported to PNG and became a place everyone could stand in at the same time, and that changed the politics of product work more than any feature.
Six people in a file, cursors moving, comments landing in context — it works, at speed, without conflicts. Design reviews that used to be a meeting with a slide deck are now twenty minutes in the file with the actual screens.
Over a year, the number of times a stakeholder asked for a PDF export dropped to roughly zero.
This is where Figma stops being a drawing app. A well-built component library means a button change propagates everywhere, variants cover states, and variables handle theming and spacing tokens consistently with code.
Dev Mode gives engineers measurements, tokens, assets and change tracking in a view designed for them. It has not eliminated handoff conversations — nothing will — but it has eliminated the boring half of them.
Prototyping is good enough for user testing and not good enough to answer questions about real data, real performance or real edge cases. Big files get sluggish. And seat-based pricing means every stakeholder who wants to nudge a rectangle costs money, which leads to the familiar dance of who really needs an editor seat.
The strongest tool in its category by a wide margin, and the one place where design work is genuinely shared. Penpot is a credible free open-source alternative if licensing matters; for everyone else, Figma is simply where the work happens.
| Free plan | 3 files, unlimited viewers |
|---|---|
| Professional | $16/editor/mo annually |
| Organisation | $55/editor/mo with design systems tools |
| Dev Mode | Included for developers on paid plans |
| Platforms | Browser, macOS, Windows, mobile viewer |
| Offline | Limited — recent files only |
Scores from our own testing. Prices are launch RRP in USD.
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