Figma vs. Adobe XD After the Antitrust Ruling

The Adobe-Figma deal collapse in late 2023 was, at the time, treated as a Figma victory and an Adobe defeat. The medium-term reality is more interesting. Figma got the freedom to operate independently and has used it; Adobe got the kick that forced its design tool to compete on the merits and has, surprisingly, used it well. The XD that exists in 2025 is dramatically better than the XD that Adobe was content to ship in 2022 when the Figma acquisition was the strategy.

We tested both at three design organizations through Q2 2025: a 14-person product design team at a mid-stage SaaS company, an 8-person agency design team, and a 22-person enterprise UX team at a Fortune-1000 company already standardized on Adobe Creative Cloud.

Where Figma still wins

Collaboration model. Figma's multi-user real-time editing, comment threading, and the design-handoff experience for engineering remain the category standard. The product was built around collaboration from the first version and that DNA has compounded into a moat. Adobe XD has improved here — the multi-user experience is no longer broken — but it is visibly behind.

The component system is the second durable Figma advantage. Variants, properties, and the recent "deeply-nested component overrides" feature are best-in-class. For a design organization with a real design system, Figma's component model is meaningfully better than XD's equivalent.

The plugin ecosystem is the third moat. Figma's plugin marketplace has compounded into a developer ecosystem that XD has not been able to replicate. For organizations whose design workflow depends on specific plugins — and many do — the migration cost from Figma is high in part because the plugin gap is not closable in twelve months.

The XD that exists in 2025 is dramatically better than the XD Adobe was content to ship in 2022. The deal collapse may have been the best thing for the product.

Where Adobe XD has caught up

The core design surface. Vector tools, prototyping, layout systems, the basic blocks of the design experience — these are now competitive. A designer with no preference, evaluating the two products in 2025, would find each one capable of doing the job.

AI features are the second area where Adobe has moved well. The Sensei-branded AI features in XD are no longer marketing fluff; the generate-from-prompt, design-system-aware variations, and the asset-generation pipeline are useful tools. Figma has shipped competitive features, but the gap is narrower than the design-Twitter consensus would suggest.

The third XD strength is the Adobe Creative Cloud integration. For organizations whose creative team also uses Photoshop, Illustrator, and the rest of the Adobe stack, XD's integration with the Creative Cloud ecosystem produces real workflow benefits. This is not a feature Figma can match without a structural pivot.

On pricing

Figma's pricing has moved materially upward since the acquisition collapse. The Organization tier is now meaningfully more expensive per seat than it was 24 months ago, with annual escalators that have eaten into renewal budgets. We have watched two of our test customers' procurement teams begin to push back on Figma renewals in a way that was uncommon in 2023.

Adobe XD's pricing — bundled into Creative Cloud for most enterprise customers — is structurally cheaper for any organization already paying for Creative Cloud. For organizations that are not Creative Cloud customers, XD as a standalone is comparably priced to Figma but with the friction of an additional vendor relationship.

The migration question

Migration cost between the two products is high. Component systems do not port cleanly. Plugin-driven workflows have to be rebuilt. Design system documentation needs translation. The migration is feasible but expensive enough that incumbent decisions are mostly decisive.

For new design organizations standing up tools today, Figma remains the obvious default. For organizations already on XD that are evaluating a switch, the answer is now defensible to stay. Two years ago, we would have recommended migrating. We no longer would.

The verdict

Figma earns the 4.6 on durable structural strengths — collaboration, components, plugins. Adobe XD earns a separate, lower review on its own merits, but the product is no longer the embarrassment it was when the acquisition was the strategy. The competitive landscape is healthier for the antitrust intervention. Customers benefit. The deal's collapse, in retrospect, may have been the best thing that happened to design tooling in the last decade.