Figma vs Adobe XD vs Sketch vs Webflow: A Design Tool Comparison
By: Olivia Baer
Tags: Adobe Xd, Sketch, Webflow, Webdesign Tools, Figma

Whether you’re a designer working freelance or a manager trying to set your team up for success, choosing a design tool can be a challenge. New options launch every year, and existing tools continue to evolve. The competition seems to be never-ending.

Photoshop and other Adobe products have been the dominant tools for digital user interface design for most of the short history of the discipline. The first serious competitor to emerge was Sketch. Launched in 2010, Sketch was tailored to the needs of UI designers, while Photoshop’s UI design features felt like afterthoughts in a program made for editing photos. Sketch was awarded Apple’s Design Award in 2012, just two years after its release, and an annual Avocode Design Report announced that 56.4% of designs added to Avocode in 2018 were Sketch files.

In the short time since Sketch took the crown from Photoshop, new competitors like Figma and Webflow have entered the fray, while Adobe has sought to retake ground with Adobe XD. All four of these tools are tailored to the needs of user interface designers. But what unique features does each of these design tools have? How do the workflow and handoff differ in each? We scoured the internet for articles, tested the products, and interviewed working professionals to answer these questions and more. The result? This comparison of Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, and Webflow, which we think will help you determine which design tool is best for you.

Best overall: Figma

Figma is easily the best overall design tool. Figma is great for UI design, print design, prototyping, collaboration, sharing, and code exports; it’s the total package. It also has cross-platform support for users who might use Linux or ChromeOS, and it gives users the best value in both free and paid payment plans. It’s simply unmatched in its live collaboration features, and it takes the lead in almost every area of digital user interface design.

Best for designing: Figma or Webflow

All four of these tools are built with designers in mind and include structural elements (like artboards, grids, templates, and presets), reusable symbols or components, styles, and resource libraries. These features make each option a powerful, modern design tool, but Figma and Webflow set themselves apart by supporting nested components and nested collection lists. With Figma’s nested components, users have the ability to place components within components, allowing designers to structure their content in a variety of ways and reduce the size of their components. This powerful concept of nesting is also demonstrated in Webflow’s nested collection lists which allows users to display one collection list within another collection list. This can be especially useful for organizing dynamic content from two collection lists.

Figma also has an auto-layout feature and advanced drawing and editing tools included in their unique vector networks feature. Vector networks help designers create complex shapes made up of many divergent paths. Compared to drawing with traditional vector path tools, Figma’s vector networks offer a much faster workflow.

Best for collaboration: Figma

Figma was built with collaboration in mind, so it’s no surprise that Figma stands alone in this category. Not only does Figma offer a fully-featured web client, making collaboration features easy to access, but it also has multi-user simultaneous editing, commenting, an observation mode, team libraries, platform diversity, and automatic save and sync. Other apps are constantly developing their collaborative features to compete with Figma, but as of now Figma’s multiplayer mode is more advanced than other apps’ real-time collaboration features like XD’s coediting beta.

Best for prototyping: XD

While all four web design tools enable users to create prototypes and share them with others, Adobe XD takes the lead with two advanced features that other design tools don’t have: auto-animate and voice prototyping. XD’s auto-animate feature lets users link elements across artboards and a variety of options allow the user to customize these animated transitions. XD’s voice prototyping feature allows users to trigger interactions with voice commands. This can be used to prototype voice commands in mobile apps, in-car navigation systems, or even Amazon Alexa. This type of prototyping is impossible in apps like Sketch or Figma.

If these features are essential to your prototyping development, XD might be for you, but if you’re looking for an app that will accomplish basic prototyping, any of these four tools will be sufficient.

Best for handoff: Figma

Figma can generate and display CSS styles for web, Swift for iOS, and XML for Android, all of which can be helpful starting points for developers after design handoffs. XD has this capability as well, but it requires users to generate a link to view the code, which can get cumbersome during design updates. But Figma makes its code suggestions extremely accessible with a code tab on the right hand panel. It also adjusts to design changes in real time and has a comment mode feature that creates a space for designers and developers to easily communicate. While neither Figma nor XD are capable of producing the code base for a finished website or application, the generated suggestions can help speed development by giving developers a starting point for their own code.

Best for creating websites without writing code: Webflow

Webflow stands out from Figma, Sketch, and XD in that its main purpose is to make fully functioning, fully-coded websites, without the need for a developer. Instead of having a central focus on visual design to then hand off reference code to developers, Webflow combines visual and code development. Webflow’s UI maps directly to the way HTML and CSS work. Front-end development becomes visual as you design, generating functioning code in real time. This code-focused design process also means that you’ll have to have at least some knowledge of web development concepts like flexbox and floats, which will be a challenge for some designers. So, if you have some understanding of CSS layouts — or you’re up for the challenge — and your goal is to create a website without having to rely on a developer, you should consider Webflow.

Best for sharing work with clients: Figma or XD

Both Figma and XD approach client sharing via generated links. When your client clicks on this link, they’ll be redirected to a read-only version of your project. This gives you, the designer, the power to control what your client sees. Figma and XD also give you the ability to review your designs with clients in real-time without the need for screen sharing or passive, click through presentations. While Sketch and Webflow also have sharing options designated for clients, Figma and XD make it extremely easy with the convenience of a link as well as instant feedback commenting features.

Best for working offline: XD or Sketch

If working offline is essential to your workflow, XD and Sketch are your best bets. With cloud-based tools like Webflow or Figma, you can only perform certain actions while offline. And, while these changes will be synced when you reconnect, there’s always a possibility that your computer will crash or your battery will die, losing all your progress.

Like all Creative Cloud applications, Adobe XD can be used without an Internet connection. This can be extremely useful for designers who travel frequently or work for companies with security policies that don’t allow files to be hosted in the cloud. XD’s May 2020 release also announced offline support for coediting, which allows you to coedit designs with your team online or offline. Once your connection is reestablished, any changes you made while offline will be automatically updated for collaborators to see.

Sketch also functions offline at all times, but doesn’t have the collaborative features that XD has recently added, putting it at a slight disadvantage.

Best for a budget: Figma

When it comes to pricing plans, Figma generally offers the most value in both their free and paid tiers. Figma’s free plan gives you considerably more features than the free plans offered by XD and Webflow, while Sketch doesn’t even have a free plan. And Figma’s paid plan may be more expensive, but still wins with additional features that other tools don’t have.

Deciding on a pricing plan is heavily influenced by your individual or team needs. We highly recommend checking out our Deep Dive Comparison Notes to see each design tool’s pricing plan broken down tier by tier.

Note: Some of these tools offer educational and promotional pricing which may be a good thing to look out for if applicable to you.

Pros & Cons

Adobe XD

Pros

Extensive resource library (especially if you have the Adobe Creative Cloud plan)

Can be used directly with other Adobe apps

Live collaboration (beta)

Most developed prototyping features (with Auto animate and Voice prototyping)

Offers quality settings when image exporting

Cons

Doesn’t support multiple pages

Components don’t allow customization per instance

Limited to character styles for text elements (no way to save a set of characteristics as an individual style)

Requires you to generate a link to be viewed in the browser every time you want to see your code

Requires plugins to export CSS

Figma

Pros

Desktop app for Mac OS, Windows

Browser-based app (supports Linux, ChromeOS, Windows, and macOS)

Most developed design features (Auto-layout and Advanced drawing and editing tools with vector networks)

Supports nested components and lists

Most advanced real-time collaboration

Easy access to inline code

Comment mode that makes it easy to communicate with developers

No pricing restrictions for file saving

Most developed web API

Cons

Somewhat limited prototyping

Working offline can be dangerous and has the potential to lose your progress

Sketch

Pros

Most extensive plugin ecosystem

Large design community with many helpful resources

Work offline on any files that are stored locally

Clear and robust user interface

Cons

macOS users only

No live collaboration features

Limited prototyping abilities

Paid tool ($99 with 1-year updates)

Steep learning curve (if you’re new to UI/UX design)

Requires plugins for certain features compared to other tools that are all-in-one

Webflow

Pros

Doesn’t require a front-end developer

Generates functioning code in real-time as you design

Browser-based (supports Linux, ChromeOS, Windows, and macOS)

Templates for getting started

Can build e-commerce websites

Supports nested components and lists

Unique interactive abilities (transitions, transforms, animations)

Best plugin management

Cons