Figma and Sketch both publish list prices on their pricing pages, so the real question for a buying team is not who is transparent — it is what each vendor charges for. Figma prices three different seat types across its Professional, Organization, and Enterprise plans. Sketch prices one Editor seat per plan, then offers a separate one-time license for people who only want the Mac app.
That difference decides how your bill scales as non-designers join the file.
What it is and who it’s for
Figma sells access by seat type across four tiers: Starter, Professional, Organization, and Enterprise. Paid plans split users into Full seats for core design work, Dev seats for developer-oriented workflows, and Collab seats for lighter participation. Figma defines a Full seat as full access to Figma Design, Figma Make, Figma Draw, Figma Sites, Dev Mode, FigJam, Figma Slides, and Figma Buzz.
Sketch sells a 30-day free trial with no credit card needed, then a choice between a subscription and a one-time license. Subscription tiers are Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Private Cloud, and Sketch prices them per Editor rather than by role. Every subscription includes the native Mac app, the web app in any browser, and the iPhone and iPad app.
The buyer split shows up fastest in team shape. Sketch’s model fits teams where the people who open files are mostly designers, since everyone who edits pays the same Editor rate. Figma’s model fits teams where developers and stakeholders need real product access, since Dev and Collab seats cost less than a Full seat.
How it works
Figma’s three seat types are not just price points — they gate different products. A Dev seat gets full access to Dev Mode, FigJam, Figma Slides, and Figma Buzz, plus view and comment access in Figma Design files. A Collab seat gets full access to FigJam, Figma Slides, and Figma Buzz, view and comment access in Design files, and only basic inspection in Dev Mode.
Sketch’s subscription tiers move on capability rather than user role. Standard covers real-time collaboration, unlimited documents, document version history, and free developer handoff. Professional adds Single Sign-On, project archiving, and permissions groups. Enterprise adds SCIM provisioning, BYOK encryption, dedicated support, and custom reviews and terms.
Free viewing is where the two models look more alike than the marketing suggests. Sketch says subscriptions include unlimited free Viewers who can browse and comment in a browser, and even inspect files and download assets for developer handoff. Figma says that on a paid plan you can let others view and comment on your files without purchasing extra seats, and that free viewers can view measurements and property values, copy CSS, iOS, and Android code, export assets, and comment.
So the genuine structural difference is not free viewers, which both vendors offer. It is that Figma sells two paid tiers between a free viewer and a full designer — the $12 Dev seat and the $3 Collab seat — while Sketch’s page lists a single paid unit, the Editor, with nothing priced in between.
Read across roles rather than down plan names, and the two models line up like this:
| Who needs access | Figma | Sketch |
|---|---|---|
| View, comment, inspect, export assets | Free on paid plans, unlimited viewers | Free on subscriptions, unlimited Viewers |
| Developer working from the file | Dev seat, $12–$35/mo depending on plan | Free developer handoff; Viewers can inspect files and download assets |
| Lighter collaborator (whiteboard, slides, comment in design) | Collab seat, $3–$5/mo depending on plan | No separately priced tier |
| Full-access designer | Full seat, $16–$90/mo depending on plan | Editor, $12–$44/mo billed yearly |
| Offline, no collaboration needed | Not offered on the pricing page | Mac-only license, $120 one-time per seat |
The developer row is the one to read carefully, because the two offers are not equivalent. Figma’s paid Dev seat carries full Dev Mode, including advanced inspection, the ability to compare changes between versions, and the VS Code extension, while free view-and-comment access on Figma includes only basic inspection in Dev Mode. Sketch’s free handoff sits with its Viewer tier rather than a paid seat.
Pricing and cost considerations
Both pricing pages carry list prices, so most of a budget can be modeled without a sales call. The numbers below are the USD list prices displayed on each vendor’s pricing page as of August 2026. Figma’s Professional tier carries a monthly/annual toggle, and $16, $12, and $3 are the per-seat figures the page displays; it does not publish a separate discounted annual per-seat number, so treat these as the displayed rate rather than confirmed parity across both billing modes.
| Product | Plan | Billing | Seat type | List price | Selected included items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Figma | Starter | Free plan | Limited access | Free | Unlimited drafts; UI kits and templates; 150 AI credits/day up to 500 AI credits/mo |
| Figma | Professional | Displayed rate | Full | $16/mo | Unlimited files and folders; team-wide design libraries; 3,000 AI credits/mo |
| Figma | Professional | Displayed rate | Dev | $12/mo | Advanced Dev Mode inspection and MCP Server; 500 AI credits/mo |
| Figma | Professional | Displayed rate | Collab | $3/mo | FigJam, Slides, and Buzz; view and comment in Design; 500 AI credits/mo |
| Figma | Organization | Annual | Full | $55/mo | Unlimited teams; shared libraries and fonts; centralized admin tools |
| Figma | Organization | Annual | Dev | $25/mo | Unlimited teams; centralized admin tools |
| Figma | Organization | Annual | Collab | $5/mo | Unlimited teams |
| Figma | Enterprise | Annual | Full | $90/mo | Custom team workspaces; design system theming and APIs; SCIM seat management |
| Figma | Enterprise | Annual | Dev | $35/mo | Custom team workspaces |
| Figma | Enterprise | Annual | Collab | $5/mo | Custom team workspaces |
| Sketch | Standard | Billed yearly | Editor | $12/mo | Real-time collaboration; unlimited documents; unlimited free viewers; version history; free developer handoff |
| Sketch | Professional | Billed yearly | Editor | $24/mo | Everything in Standard; SSO; project archiving; permissions groups |
| Sketch | Enterprise | Billed yearly | Editor | $44/mo | Everything in Professional; SCIM provisioning; BYOK encryption; dedicated support |
| Sketch | Private Cloud | Contact for pricing | Editor | Quote | Everything in Professional; private cloud environment; choice of hosting locations; unlimited Workspaces |
| Sketch | Mac-only license | One-time | Per seat | $120 | Native Mac app; work privately offline; save documents locally; includes one year of updates |
The two vendors are not like-for-like, and treating a seat as a seat is the fastest way to misbudget. A Figma Full seat bundles Figma Design, Make, Draw, Sites, Dev Mode, FigJam, Slides, and Buzz, while a Sketch Editor seat buys the Sketch design platform. The seat types also cut differently: Figma’s $16 Professional Full seat is the standard paid entry point for one full-access designer, while Sketch’s $12 Standard Editor is what anyone who edits at all costs.
Storage is the cost variable most likely to force a tier change on the Sketch side. Sketch lists 50GB per Editor on Standard and Professional, and unlimited storage on Enterprise and Private Cloud. It also lists 1 Workspace on Standard, Professional, and Enterprise, with unlimited Workspaces only on Private Cloud. Figma lists unlimited cloud file storage across its plans.
Several cost-adjacent rules sit outside the seat price on both sides. Sketch gives qualifying non-profits a 50% discount on either a yearly Standard subscription or a Mac-only license, applies a one-time setup fee to Private Cloud plans with possible additional charges for custom requirements, and notes that its displayed pricing covers direct purchases on sketch.com, with prices on other platforms varying. On Figma’s side, AI credits are a paid add-on beyond the included monthly allotment, available pay-as-you-go or by subscription.
How to choose
Choose Figma if a meaningful share of the people who touch design files are not designers. The Dev seat at $12/mo and the Collab seat at $3/mo on Professional let a buyer put developers and lighter collaborators on cheaper access instead of paying full designer rates, and Organization and Enterprise carry that same three-tier split at $25/$5 and $35/$5.
Choose Sketch if your editing population is mostly designers, or if the Mac-native path matters. Sketch’s native Mac app lets teams design and prototype offline or in real time, and the $120 one-time Mac-only license is the only option here that buys software outright rather than renting it — though Sketch is explicit that the license excludes collaborative features, sharing documents online, previewing on an iOS device, and a free trial.
Compliance requirements can settle it before price does. Sketch’s Private Cloud explicitly offers a choice of hosting locations in the US and EU, while Figma’s equivalent control is localized file hosting for key parts of Figma and FigJam files in the EU, listed at its top tier.
Limitations and gotchas
The published list prices do not cover every cost or purchasing path. Figma’s Governance+ add-on is available only on the Enterprise plan and is quote-only, and Organization and Enterprise both route through Contact sales rather than self-serve checkout. On Sketch’s side, Private Cloud is listed as Contact for pricing, and Enterprise directs buyers to get in touch rather than showing a checkout path.
Billing cadence is easy to misread across the two pages. Figma’s Organization and Enterprise plans are billed annually. Every Sketch subscription price quoted above is per Editor per month billed yearly, so a monthly-billed Sketch plan is not the same number, and Sketch says yearly billing saves money over a 12-month period.
Sketch also has offboarding rules that matter at renewal time. Canceled subscriptions keep access until the end of the billing period, then documents go read-only and stay downloadable for up to 90 days. Sketch permanently deletes the Workspace and all documents 90 days after cancellation or expiration, and a canceled subscription can be reactivated within those 90 days only if the Workspace was not manually deleted.
FAQ
What happens if you add Figma seats mid-year on an annual plan? It depends on the tier. Figma says that on a Professional plan, new paid seats added during an annual term are charged as a separate monthly subscription at the monthly price, prorated from the approval date and added to the next monthly invoice. On Organization and Enterprise, admins approve new seats, and Figma invoices them quarterly with pricing prorated to the end of the annual term.
Do all Sketch Enterprise benefits apply at any team size? No. Sketch’s comparison table gates custom security reviews, a customer success manager, custom terms, and priority support at 15+ Editors, so a small Enterprise workspace does not automatically get the full support package.
Does Figma’s AI agent consume AI credits? Not during the beta. Figma says the agent is free to use and consumes no AI credits for prompts or actions while in beta, and that standard AI credit usage will apply once it becomes generally available.
Where does Sketch store customer data? Sketch says it hosts on Amazon Web Services, with data located in AWS us-east-1 across multiple availability zones in the North Virginia region. Only the Private Cloud offering provides a choice of hosting locations in the US and EU.
Can customers in India buy Sketch directly? Not since 15 July 2026. Sketch says it can no longer support direct purchases from customers in India, and directs both new purchases and renewals to its partners.
