Figma vs Sketch

A browser-based collaboration platform against a native Mac app, compared on 2026 pricing, workflow, and ecosystem.

At a glance

Pricing

Figma prices by seat type. On the Professional plan, a Full seat (all products, including Figma Make and Dev Mode) is $16 per month on annual billing, a Dev seat is $12, and a Collab seat is $3. The Organization plan raises the Full seat to $55 per month and Enterprise to $90, both billed annually. The free Starter plan is enough to learn the tool, and view-only access is free on every plan. AI credits are bundled by seat and tier.

Sketch has two ways to pay. The subscription runs $12 per editor per month billed yearly on Standard, $24 on Professional (adds SSO and permission groups), and $44 on Enterprise, all with unlimited free viewers and a cloud workspace. The alternative is a $120 one-time Mac-only license per seat, which includes a year of updates and works offline with no cloud features. That one-time option has no equivalent at Figma.

When to pick Figma

I would pick Figma for any team, full stop. Real-time multiplayer editing, browser access from any operating system, and free view seats mean product managers, engineers, and stakeholders can all be in the file without buying licenses or installing anything. Dev Mode gives engineers measurements, tokens, and code snippets in a dedicated seat that costs less than a Full one.

The ecosystem argument is just as strong. Community plugins, shared libraries, and the fact that most designers you hire already know the tool all reduce friction. Figma has also been expanding around the core editor with FigJam, Slides, Make, and Sites, so a Full seat covers more of the design workflow than it did a few years ago.

The costs to accept: your files live in Figma's cloud, the subscription never ends, and org-level seats are not cheap. At $55 to $90 per Full seat per month on Organization and Enterprise, a mid-sized design org is a real line item, and post-IPO Figma has every incentive to keep it that way.

When to pick Sketch

I would pick Sketch as a solo designer or a small all-Mac team that values ownership and native performance. The $120 one-time license is the cheapest legitimate way to own a professional design tool: you keep working versions forever and only pay again when you want another year of updates. Even the $12 per editor subscription undercuts Figma's $16 Professional Full seat.

There is also a quieter argument about files. Sketch documents are local files you can store, back up, and version however you want. If your client work has strict data-residency or confidentiality requirements, or you simply dislike renting access to your own archive, that is a real difference rather than nostalgia.

The honest limits: it requires a Mac for editing, the plugin ecosystem has thinned as developers followed the market to Figma, and cross-company collaboration usually ends up in Figma anyway because that is where everyone else is.

What most comparisons miss

Most comparisons still describe the 2020 matchup. Sketch has had real-time collaboration, a web viewer for sharing, and version history for years now; the collaboration gap is smaller than the standard write-up claims, though Figma's browser-first model is still more convenient for mixed teams.

The other miss is total cost at the org level. Figma's advertised $16 seat is the Professional price; companies that need SSO and design system controls end up on Organization or Enterprise at $55 to $90 per Full seat per month, plus the overhead of managing three seat types. Sketch's top tier is $44. For a ten-person all-Mac design team, that difference compounds into thousands of dollars a year, which does not make Sketch the right answer, but it does make the choice worth an actual calculation.