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For years, Figma and Adobe XD were positioned as the two leading choices for UI/UX design, and plenty of articles compared their features side by side as if picking between them was an open question. That question has effectively been settled. Adobe discontinued Adobe XD, phasing it out and steering users toward Figma (which Adobe itself tried to acquire in 2022 before the deal was blocked by regulators) and its own Adobe Express and Firefly tools. If your team is still on XD, or you're researching design tools without knowing the current state of the market, here's what actually matters now.
What Happened to Adobe XD
Adobe XD launched in 2016 as Adobe's answer to the rise of dedicated UI/UX design tools, offering a lighter, faster alternative to Photoshop or Illustrator for screen design work. It built a loyal user base, particularly among designers already inside the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem.
In 2022, Adobe announced a deal to acquire Figma for roughly $20 billion, a clear signal of how dominant Figma had become in the design tool market. Regulators in the UK and EU blocked the acquisition over competition concerns in late 2023, and Adobe walked away from the deal. Shortly afterward, Adobe shifted its own strategy: XD was moved into "maintenance mode" with no new feature development, and Adobe began actively encouraging XD users to migrate to Figma, even while continuing to invest in Adobe Express and AI tools like Firefly for other parts of its design and content workflow. For practical purposes, Adobe XD is no longer an actively developed, competitive product, and teams still using it are working on a tool that isn't moving forward.
This matters for anyone evaluating design tools today. The comparison isn't "which actively developed tool is better," it's "Figma is the standard, here's why, and here's what to know if you're migrating off XD."
Why Figma Won
Real-time multiplayer collaboration. Figma was built from the ground up as a browser-based, collaborative tool. Multiple designers, developers, and stakeholders can work in the same file simultaneously, seeing each other's cursors and edits live, the same way Google Docs works for documents. This wasn't a bolted-on feature, it was Figma's core architectural bet from the start, and it's a large part of why design teams, especially distributed and remote ones, adopted it so quickly.
No installation required. Figma runs in a browser (a desktop app is available but optional), which removes friction for stakeholders who just need to view or comment on a design without installing dedicated software. Clients, product managers, and developers can jump into a file with a link.
Dev Mode for developer handoff. Figma's Dev Mode gives developers a dedicated view of a design file showing exact spacing, colors, typography, exportable assets, and even generated code snippets for CSS, iOS, and Android, reducing the back-and-forth between design and engineering that used to require separate handoff tools or detailed specification documents.
Plugin ecosystem. Figma has a large, active plugin community covering everything from automated accessibility checks to content population, icon libraries, and direct integrations with project management and development tools. This ecosystem has grown well beyond what Adobe XD's plugin library reached.
What Made Adobe XD Different in Its Time
It's worth understanding what XD offered, both to appreciate why it had a dedicated following and to know what you're leaving behind if migrating.
- Tight Creative Cloud integration. XD connected directly with Photoshop and Illustrator, letting designers pull assets between tools without exporting and reimporting, which mattered for teams deep in the Adobe ecosystem.
- Repeat Grid. A feature for quickly duplicating design elements like lists or card layouts with auto-populated content, which felt faster than Figma's equivalent approaches at the time.
- Voice prototyping. XD had early, relatively unique support for prototyping voice-activated interfaces, a niche but genuinely useful feature for teams designing for voice assistants.
- Lighter weight feel. Many designers found XD's interface simpler and faster for certain prototyping tasks, particularly before Figma's collaborative features became essential to most workflows.
None of this offset the structural disadvantage of XD not being collaborative-first and, ultimately, Adobe choosing not to keep developing it. Features that were genuinely good ideas in XD, like fast asset repetition, have direct or close equivalents in Figma today.
It's also worth noting that XD's pricing model worked differently from Figma's per-editor structure. XD was often bundled within an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, which made sense for designers already paying for Photoshop and Illustrator but added cost for teams that only needed UI design and didn't use the rest of the Adobe suite. That bundled pricing made XD's standalone value harder to evaluate on its own, and it's part of why teams outside the Adobe ecosystem found Figma's simpler, design-specific pricing easier to justify even before the discontinuation made the decision moot.
Figma Pricing
Figma's pricing is structured in tiers based on team size and feature needs:
| Plan | Who it's for | Approximate cost |
|---|---|---|
| Starter (Free) | Individuals, small projects, students | $0, limited files and version history |
| Professional | Freelancers and small teams needing unlimited files | Around $12-$15/editor/month (billed annually) |
| Organization | Larger teams needing design systems, advanced permissions | Around $45/editor/month |
| Enterprise | Large organizations with advanced security and admin needs | Custom pricing |
Figma also offers FigJam, a separate but integrated whiteboarding tool for brainstorming and workshops, often bundled or priced alongside the core design product. The free tier is genuinely usable for small projects and individual designers, which lowered the barrier to entry significantly compared to XD's positioning inside the broader, paid Creative Cloud subscription.
Migrating From Adobe XD to Figma
If your team still has active projects in Adobe XD, migration is generally straightforward:
- Figma offers a built-in importer that converts XD files directly, preserving most layers, frames, and basic styles.
- Complex prototyping interactions, especially anything built with XD's specific auto-animate or voice prototyping features, typically need to be rebuilt manually in Figma's prototyping tools.
- Design systems and component libraries benefit from being rebuilt natively in Figma rather than imported, since Figma's component and variant system works differently from XD's symbols.
- Budget time for the team to adjust to Figma's interface and collaborative workflow, even though most designers find the transition fast given how widely Figma is already used and documented.
Given that XD is no longer receiving updates, there's little reason to delay this migration for any team planning to keep designing actively. Waiting only means doing the same migration later with more accumulated files to convert.
Design Systems and Team Collaboration at Scale
Beyond individual files, the bigger difference between the two tools shows up at the team level. Figma's component and variant system lets teams build a single source-of-truth design system, shared across every file in an organization, with changes to a core component propagating automatically to every instance that uses it. Combined with shared libraries and team permissions, this makes Figma genuinely effective for organizations running dozens or hundreds of product screens that need visual consistency without a designer manually checking every file against a style guide.
Adobe XD had a components and "states" system that covered similar ground, but it never reached the same level of team-wide library management or the ecosystem of design-system tooling (like Figma's Tokens plugins and design-to-code pipelines) that grew up around Figma once it became the default. This is part of why migration from XD isn't just about converting files one for one, it's an opportunity to rebuild a design system properly using patterns that didn't have a clean equivalent in the older tool.
Stakeholder review is another area where the gap is wide. Figma's comment threads, version history, and branching (for testing design variations without disrupting a main file) all support a review process that includes non-designers naturally, whether that's a product manager leaving feedback directly on a frame or a developer checking measurements in Dev Mode before writing code. XD supported commenting too, but the ecosystem of integrations (Slack notifications, Jira links, direct handoff to popular front-end frameworks) matured around Figma specifically, because that's where the active user base and plugin developers consolidated after XD's future became uncertain.
What to Expect From Figma's Roadmap
Since absorbing the attention of designers who would otherwise have split time between XD and Figma, Figma has continued adding features rather than slowing down, including AI-assisted design tools, expanded Dev Mode capabilities, and deeper integration with code repositories for keeping design and implementation in sync. For a team evaluating tools today, this active development is itself a selling point separate from any individual feature: you're choosing a tool with a clear forward trajectory rather than one in maintenance mode.
Why This Matters Beyond the Tool Itself
The design tool a team uses shapes how design and development collaborate day to day. Figma's Dev Mode and real-time collaboration directly support practices like rapid iteration and stakeholder feedback loops that good UI/UX work depends on. If you're working on improving how design decisions translate into conversion outcomes, our guide to UI/UX design best practices that increase conversions covers the design side of that equation, and our look at AI-powered web design trends covers where tools like Figma are heading next as AI features get built into the design workflow itself.
Zentric Solutions designs and builds interfaces in Figma as the standard toolchain for client work, which keeps handoff to development fast and design files easy for clients and stakeholders to review without needing specialized software. If you need a design partner for a new product or a redesign, you can hire us on Upwork or Contact us to talk through your project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Adobe XD still usable in 2026?
Existing XD files and licenses generally still work, but the product is no longer being actively developed by Adobe, meaning no new features and a shrinking ecosystem of plugins and integrations built around it. For new projects, starting in XD is not recommended given Adobe's own direction away from the product.
Can I open Adobe XD files in Figma?
Yes, Figma includes a direct import tool for Adobe XD files that converts frames, layers, and basic styling. More complex interactive prototypes and specific XD-only features typically need manual rebuilding after import, so review imported files carefully rather than assuming a perfect one-to-one conversion.
Is Figma only good for UI design, or does it handle other design work too?
Figma covers UI/UX design, prototyping, and basic graphic design well, and FigJam extends it into whiteboarding and brainstorming. It's not a replacement for dedicated tools like Photoshop for heavy photo editing or Illustrator for complex vector illustration work, but for product and interface design specifically, it covers the full workflow from wireframe to developer handoff.
Does Figma work offline?
Figma is primarily browser-based and built around real-time online collaboration, though the desktop app provides some offline functionality with syncing once you're back online. If your team frequently needs fully offline design work, this is worth testing against your specific workflow before fully committing.
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