If you are still weighing Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD as three comparable options, the comparison itself is out of date. Adobe XD has been in maintenance mode since 2024: Adobe is not building new features, and the app is no longer sold as a standalone single-app subscription to new customers. For a business choosing a UI design tool now, the real decision is Figma versus Sketch — with XD relevant mainly as something you may need to migrate away from.
Below is what each tool costs and what it actually does as of mid-2026, taken from the vendors' own pricing pages rather than from older roundups.
Adobe XD: supported, not developed
Adobe's position on XD is public and unambiguous. The product sits in maintenance mode, which means Adobe will fix bugs and address security and privacy issues but will not ship new capabilities. XD is no longer available to buy as a single app; existing customers can still access it through a Creative Cloud All Apps subscription.
The backstory matters for anyone assessing long-term risk. Adobe agreed to acquire Figma in a roughly $20 billion deal announced in 2022. After sustained scrutiny from UK and European regulators, the two companies terminated the agreement in December 2023, and Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. Adobe subsequently stopped investing in XD, and Figma went on to file for a New York Stock Exchange listing under the ticker FIG in July 2025.
The practical takeaway: do not start a new design system, a new product, or a new hire's onboarding in Adobe XD. A tool with no roadmap accumulates compatibility problems — with operating system updates, with plugin ecosystems, and with the handoff tools your engineers use. If your team has legacy XD files, treat migration as a scheduled project, not an emergency, since the app still opens and exports files today.
Figma: the default choice, with pricing that changed shape
Figma is browser-first and runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, and ChromeOS, which is the single biggest reason it became the standard at mixed-hardware companies. The thing most buyers get wrong is the pricing, because Figma replaced its old editor/viewer split with a multi-tier seat model that took effect on March 11, 2025.
What the seats mean
- Full seat — access to every Figma product: Figma Design, Dev Mode, Figma Make, Figma Draw, Figma Sites, FigJam, Figma Slides, and Figma Buzz.
- Dev seat — full Dev Mode, FigJam, Slides, and Buzz, plus view and comment access in Design files. This is the engineer seat.
- Collab seat — FigJam, Slides, and Buzz, plus view and comment in Design files with only basic Dev Mode inspection. This is the PM, marketer, and stakeholder seat.
What it costs
Per Figma's pricing page, the Starter plan is free with limited product access. On the Professional plan, a Full seat is $16 per month, a Dev seat is $12, and a Collab seat is $3. Organization runs $55 for Full, $25 for Dev, and $5 for Collab. Enterprise is $90 for Full, $35 for Dev, and $5 for Collab. Organization and Enterprise are billed annually.
The seat split is what makes the math work. A twenty-person product team with four designers, eight engineers, and eight stakeholders does not need twenty Full seats. On Professional that mix costs roughly $184 per month rather than $320 if you provisioned everyone identically. Budget accordingly — and configure admin approval for seat upgrades, since Figma now bills approved upgrades on a prorated basis.
Where Figma gets expensive
The jump from Professional to Organization more than triples the Full-seat price. You are paying for org-wide design systems, shared libraries with analytics, SSO, and centralized administration. Small teams frequently do not need that tier. Confirm you have a concrete compliance or governance requirement before you move up.
Sketch: still viable, on one condition
Sketch remains a credible tool, but only for teams that are entirely on macOS. Design and editing happen in the native Mac app; the web app and the iPhone/iPad apps handle viewing, prototyping, and mirroring. There is no Windows or Linux design client. If a single engineer or product manager on Windows needs to open and edit a file, that constraint decides the question for you.
Where Sketch wins is cost predictability and native performance. Per Sketch's pricing page, the Standard plan is $12 per editor per month billed yearly and includes real-time collaboration, unlimited documents, version history, developer handoff, and unlimited free viewers. Professional is $24 per editor and adds SSO, project archiving, and permissions groups. Enterprise is $44 and adds SCIM provisioning, bring-your-own-key encryption, and dedicated support. A Private Cloud option is priced on request.
Sketch also keeps something no competitor matches: a one-time Mac-only license at $120 per seat, including a year of updates. That buys a perpetual offline native app without collaborative features or online sharing. For a solo designer or a two-person studio that does not need multiplayer editing, it is the cheapest serious option available — and the license does not expire when you stop paying.
The unlimited free viewers matter too. Stakeholders who only need to browse and comment cost nothing on Sketch, whereas Figma charges $3 to $5 per Collab seat for a comparable role.
How to choose
- Mixed Mac and Windows hardware — Figma. Sketch cannot serve a Windows designer, and the workaround is not worth the friction.
- Large stakeholder group, small design team — compare carefully. Sketch's free viewers can undercut Figma's Collab seats at scale.
- Engineering-heavy handoff — Figma Dev seats at $12 on Professional give developers real Dev Mode access without paying Full-seat rates.
- Solo designer or small all-Mac studio — Sketch's $120 one-time Mac license, or the $12 Standard plan if you need collaboration.
- Regulated environment — both offer SSO and enterprise controls; Sketch adds BYOK encryption and Private Cloud hosting at the top tiers.
- Currently on Adobe XD — plan a migration. Figma is the more common destination and has the larger plugin and community-file ecosystem.
Run a two-week trial with a real project before committing, and price the seat mix you will actually have in twelve months, not the one you have today. Seat-based billing punishes teams that guess low and then scale.