figma.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
A collaborative design tool in the browser: vector editing on a shared canvas with components, variables and prototyping, where several people can work in the same file at once.
Do not build this. Multiplayer on a canvas is years of work and it is the whole product. A vector editor is already a large project — hit testing, snapping, boolean operations, text on a transformed layer, undo. Making several people edit the same file at once, correctly, in a browser, is a distributed-systems problem on top of that. WHAT TO DO INSTEAD - Keep it if a team designs together - If one person designs and the rest only look, check the pricing tiers. Viewing is often free, and paying for seats that never edit is a common accident - Penpot is open source and self-hostable if you must own the files WHAT YOU CAN BUILD, AND SHOULD **The handoff layer**, which is what developers actually need and what teams argue about: - Design tokens exported from the file's own styles — colours, spacing, type scale, radii, shadows — into CSS custom properties, JSON, and whatever the codebase uses - Generated from the file rather than typed, so they cannot drift. That single pipeline ends the recurring argument about which blue is correct - A generated page showing every token with its value and a contrast matrix for the colours, measured rather than eyeballed - Asset export in a batch: every icon as SVG, every image at the sizes needed, named consistently, into a directory the build consumes - A check in CI that fails when a colour appears in the codebase that is not a token That is a weekend with the plugin API, and it is worth more to a small team than any collaboration feature. AND THE ONE THAT SAVES REAL TIME An automatic export on every published version, into a directory in the repository. Then the design file's contents are versioned alongside the code, diffable, and available when somebody has left the company and nobody can open the original. THE ONE-LINE VERSION Do not write a vector editor. Write the token pipeline, and check who is paying for a seat they only view with.
What you lose
- Multiplayer editing on a canvas, which is a hard distributed-systems problem, not a feature
- A rendering engine fast enough for thousands of vector nodes in a browser
- Components, variants and variables — a design system that actually propagates
- The plugin ecosystem and the fact that every handoff tool already speaks Figma
- Everyone you work with already having a file open in it
If you would rather not build
- Sketch — paid, macOS, single-player heritage
What it costs
read from their page 15 Aug 2026
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | $16/mo | — | 15 Aug 2026 |
Their pricing page is where these came from. Seeing a different price? Tell us.
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Penpot
$0Design and prototyping in the browser, open source and self-hostable.
penpot/penpotfree · open source
Excalidraw
$0Hand-drawn style whiteboard and diagrams, embeddable in your own app.
excalidraw/excalidrawfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
11/100
Verdict no at 11: a multiplayer vector editor is one of the hardest things on this entire list, and nobody should attempt it as a replacement. The prompt takes the part that genuinely belongs in code — tokens and contrast checks — and leaves the canvas alone.
History
tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Figma
answered from the record above
Is Figma free?
No — the plan we track is $16 a month. Professional at $16 per full seat per month billed monthly, $12 annually; view-only collaborators are free, dev seats are priced separately.
Can you replace Figma by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 11 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Figma cost?
$16 a month on Professional — $192 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Figma?
Multiplayer editing on a canvas, which is a hard distributed-systems problem, not a feature; A rendering engine fast enough for thousands of vector nodes in a browser; Components, variants and variables — a design system that actually propagates; The plugin ecosystem and the fact that every handoff tool already speaks Figma; Everyone you work with already having a file open in it. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Figma?
Yes: Penpot, Excalidraw. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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