Figma Dev Mode

On January 31, Figma, a popular tool among designers and developers, decided to end free beta access to Dev Mode, transforming it into a paid service starting in February. This move surprised many in the community (us included), since we assumed all we'd need was an individual professional account for each developer. The reality is different, though, and it seems Figma has adopted a controversial business model that could fairly be called a "dark pattern."

Dev Mode
as a tool
for more efficient
development

Dev Mode was created as a feature to make developers' work easier by giving them advanced tools for inspecting and exporting code directly from designs. For example, it allows you to easily switch between units and automatically shows guide lines for measuring distances between objects, which simplifies working with layout and typography. Some tools that used to be in Figma are now missing from the basic view.

Without a paid account, you can of course still find individual values like font size and type, spacing, and so on, but it's at least no longer as clear, and working with Figma becomes clunkier. For example, the letter-spacing value is shown only as a percentage by default. You have to manually convert it into more sensible units, and, importantly, know that -4% means -0.04em.

Besides better inspection tools, Dev Mode also lets you copy chunks of code prepared for CSS, iOS, or Swift directly. Got used to using Figma right inside VS Code thanks to the plugin? That won't work without Dev Mode anymore.

You also can't do without it if your designer uses Figma at an advanced level – for example, marking sections as "ready for dev," or creating modifiable, reusable components whose variants and states you can inspect using the "component playground," which is also part of Dev Mode. Not to mention easier asset export or comparing changes between versions, both completely missing from the basic view.

Figma itself presents Dev Mode as a tool meant to help developers "code faster." That's certainly true, but in our view it's also a tool designed to push developers into paying, since Figma had somewhat slowed things down beforehand. There would be nothing wrong with that in itself. Figma is undoubtedly a quality tool, we use it ourselves every single day, and quality things should be paid for. But there's one big catch here that we don't like one bit.

Can you still use Figma without Dev Mode? Yes, you can. But if you've already gotten used to a certain way of working and the ergonomics it offers, going back will feel awkward.

How do I get
Dev Mode
and how much does it cost?

As we mentioned at the start, Figma has gone down a path we don't like.

Getting access to Dev Mode isn't as simple as it might seem. It's not tied to individual accounts – it requires a paid membership for the team that owns the project. That can be a significant financial burden for freelancers and small teams working on multiple projects across different organizations.

If you pay for your own professional account, you'll only have Dev Mode on your own projects. For every other project, the organization in question needs to pay for it again.

So a freelancer working on three projects across three different teams will end up paying three or even four times (if they also pay for an account for their own projects).

The base price for the "Professional" plan is €12 a month with annual billing, or €15 with monthly billing. For the "Organization" plan, it's as much as €25 a month. Multiply all that by three, going by our example above, and you're already talking about a fairly hefty sum.

Unfortunately, Figma doesn't explicitly flag this anywhere, and it's not at all obvious at first glance.

In closing

So what does all this mean for us as developers with Figma Dev Mode? Many of us who got used to the comfort and efficiency Dev Mode offered might now be scratching our heads over how to keep going without having to dig deeper into our pockets.

Ending beta access to Figma Dev Mode and turning it into a paid service marks a significant change. For some, this move might even be motivation to switch to alternative tools that offer similar features without the added cost.

Either way, it's clear that with this move Figma is underlining the value Dev Mode brings to developers, betting that professionals in the field are willing to pay for that benefit.

For developers and designers, this means it's worth considering how critical Dev Mode's features are to their work, and whether they're willing to accept the costs that come with them.