Figma won this category. XD is a maintenance tool now — do not start a new file in it.
Still the design tool everyone else is trying to be.
A good tool Adobe stopped feeding. Do not start here in 2026.
This is for designers and small teams picking a collaboration tool, and for anyone with an old XD library wondering whether it is worth migrating. We look at prototyping, team features and pricing rather than nostalgia.
The problem it solves: design work is now multiplayer. Handoff, feedback, tokens and component libraries decide how fast a team ships, not how nice the vector tools feel. Choosing a frozen product means re-tooling in a year and dragging your files with you.
| FEATURE | FIGMA | ADOBE XD |
|---|---|---|
| Development status | Actively developed, frequent releases, dev mode and variables maturing. | Feature-frozen. No meaningful updates since Adobe wound it down. |
| Real-time collaboration | True multiplayer — multiple cursors in one file, live comments, branching. | Coedit exists but is fragile; most teams still pass files and share links. |
| Prototyping | Smart animate, interactive components, variables, conditional flows. | Auto-animate and simple wiring — pleasant, but capped at the basics. |
| Design systems | Published libraries, variants, variables, tokens, versioned components. | Components and character styles only. No token layer. |
| Developer handoff | Dev Mode, inspect, code snippets, plugin bridges to most stacks. | Basic specs; teams bolt on Zeplin to fill the gap. |
| Plugins & community | The largest ecosystem in design, plus a huge community file library. | Ecosystem has largely emptied out; many plugins unmaintained. |
| Pricing | Free for starters; paid per editor, viewers free. Predictable for teams. | No standalone plan — access only through certain Creative Cloud subscriptions. |
| Platform | Web, macOS, Windows | macOS, Windows (desktop only) |
| Get it | TRY FIGMA → | TRY ADOBE XD → |
| PLAN | PRICE | WHAT YOU GET |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0 /mo | limited editors/projects |
| Professional | $12 /seat/mo | billed annually |
| Organization | $45 /seat/mo | billed annually |
| PLAN | PRICE | WHAT YOU GET |
|---|---|---|
| Bundled | Creative Cloud only | No standalone plan sold; access comes with some CC plans |
Figma wins outright, and this is one of the few comparisons where we would call it a non-decision. It is not that XD is bad — the file format is clean and the prototyping model is easy to teach — it is that XD stopped moving while the job changed around it. Multiplayer editing, variables, dev handoff and a living plugin ecosystem are now table stakes, and Figma has all four.
The only reason to keep XD open in 2026 is an existing library you cannot afford to rebuild this quarter. Even then, treat it as legacy: freeze new work, rebuild your components in Figma, and migrate screen by screen as projects come up for revision.
On pricing, Figma is also simpler. Viewers and commenters cost nothing, so stakeholders can look without a licence — the exact scenario that used to force teams into exporting PDFs from XD.
| IF YOU... | PICK | WHY |
|---|---|---|
| New product or brand work | Figma | Active development, tokens, dev mode and real multiplayer. |
| Teams with non-designer stakeholders | Figma | Free viewers and comments mean feedback happens in the file. |
| Maintaining an old XD library | Adobe XD | It still opens legacy files and does simple prototypes fine. |
| Prototyping for a real website | Figma | Interactive components and variables get closest to shipped behaviour. |
The open-source Figma alternative that finally makes "self-hosted design tool" a realistic option, if you can live without some polish.
TRY PENPOT →A design-to-published-website tool that collapses two jobs into one, ideal for designers who want to skip handing off to a developer.
TRY FRAMER →A one-time-purchase vector and layout tool that covers most of what Illustrator does at a fraction of the long-term cost.
TRY AFFINITY DESIGNER →