Choosing the Best Platform for Web Designing is one of the tough work to do. When it comes to UX and UI design, it’s tricky to know which tool is best without trying them all. Some people (including myself) would argue that Figma is the best design tool on the market. Others say it’s a close battle of Figma vs Adobe XD.

So, Today I will try to debate about the two popular tools - Figma VS Adobe XD.

Figma

Figma is a user interface design software that runs in a browser. Figma is easy to use and highly intuitive. It's very favourite to creatives and UX/UI designers.

Here, You can create dynamic designs with Autolayout, easy-to-use constraints, advanced animations with Smart Animate, and set component combinations to heart’s content.

Senior Product Designer, Peakon says - "When it comes to designing collaboratively, Figma is lightyears ahead."

Design Lead, Medium says - "Figma has designed the future. It’s the modern approach to product design."

Adobe XD

Adobe XD are a vector-based user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designing software for websites and applications. Adobe XD is mainly created for UI/UX designers. Here, XD stands for Experience Design. XD provides the capacity to support files from Illustrator, Photoshop, and AfterEffects for teams to integrate useful communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Working with XD becomes easier for you when you already have used other Adobe software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

It automatically identifies the type of content that you drag and drop in the software environment. The program promotes Prototype Mode, where you can share your prototype with others by uploading it to Adobe servers.

Figma vs Adobe XD

Figma is an online and prototyping software that provides real-time collaboration. Adobe XD, on the other hand, extends a well-designed UI, integrating deeply with other Adobe apps.

So, now you will see the Figma in one step upper in comparison to Adobe XD from the following point of view -

Pagination

Figma can organise your files into pages, each page has its canvas with its own set of artboards (frames in Figma). That is very useful when you want to keep files neat when you’re testing things out. There’s a lot you can do with it, which spares you the trouble of making multiple versions of one file just to test things out between different team members. This way it helps the team to see how the design has progressed without needing to go through many different files. On the other hand, XD’s limited canvas size becomes very frustrating, when you want to keep previous versions in the same file without confusing other team members about what’s final at a sight.

Availability

Figma is a web app that can be managed from a desktop web browser with a good internet connection. The Android and iOS versions would let you watch real-time updates but don’t support designing. On the other hand, XD is only available on Windows and Mac. No web app which means you can’t work with XD on any of the computers. So, This is one of the drawbacks of Adobe over Figma.

User Interface

Figma and Adobe XD both are the best software for UX designers. Both have a pure User Interface that is natural and responsive. In Figma, your layers are always visible on the left, even if you’ve got a plugin widget open or are editing styles. The navbar allows for quick access to basic controls. Using dropdowns and the editing area on the right has signposted sections. However, XD seems very similar to Figma than it does to other Adobe software.

Design

Both Figma and XD have a standard set of tools such as rectangle, oval, polygon, text box, line, pen tool, etc. What makes them different is their implementation. In Figma, you can adjust corners to smooth it out with a slider that would give you iOS-style rounded corners, blend seamlessly into an edge. Even Adobe allows you to create an object, adjust its position, control individual corner’s roundness, quickly change color and stroke, apply shadow, blur, and many more.

But Figma still gets the upper hand because of the corner smoothening feature and better implementation.

Collaboration

Figma was built with keeping this thing in mind. You can share a link with a team member and jump into a file together so easily. There is no need to ask if they’ve synced the latest version of a file, or ask them to get out of a file so you can go in. Everyone has a single source and can work together in a file. Even Adobe also features these above points. The only difference is that Adobe XD needs a Creative Cloud account and Figma needs a Figma account.

Price

Adobe and Figma offer their free plan to beginners. Figma offers unlimited editors on 3 files with unlimited storage. On the other hand, In Adobe XD you can create one document with co-editing, share a link to one document and 2GB of Creative Cloud storage. Figma eliminates all the limitations at $12/month/editor and Adobe XD does the same at $10/month.

Every team, every business, every project has their different needs from the very starting but both tools cover all the basic needs of a designer. Both are powerful tools to unleash your creativity and design projects.

Both are good for work purposes but if talk about choosing between these two designing tools then I would suggest going for Figma to the designers out there. Rest is your choice.

Have a happy reading!

Thank You!!