Figma (Design and prototyping)
Created by: Dylan Field and team (acquired by Adobe attempt blocked; remains independent)

Figma's per-editor pricing converts viewers into a viral acquisition channel and editors into the paid revenue.

TL;DR: Figma prices on a sharp split: viewers and commenters are free forever; editors pay per seat. This makes every design file shared with developers, PMs, and clients an acquisition asset, while keeping the revenue contained to actual designers. The lesson: when your product has high-multiplier viewers per editor, price the editor and free the viewer.

What they sell: Collaborative design and prototyping in the browser, plus FigJam whiteboard and Slides.
Who it's for: Designers, product teams, agencies, and developers who collaborate on design.
Pricing model: Per-editor freemium with viewer-free model and tiered team plans
Payment frequency: Monthly or annual, with substantial annual discount
Free trial behavior: Free tier is the trial for individuals. Teams can start on the paid tier with limited free seats; full evaluation usually happens via the free tier.
Number of tiers: 4

Anchor pattern: Enterprise tier as anchor
Enterprise at approximately $75/editor/mo anchors the page. Organization at approximately $45 reads as the reasonable mid-tier for growing companies. Professional at approximately $15 reads as cheap by comparison even though it is the most-purchased tier. Triple anchoring at the top is doing the heavy lifting throughout the page.

Upgrade trigger: Viewer-to-editor role change
The trigger fires when someone with view-only access (developer, PM, client) needs to make a real edit. Most teams pay because someone on the team transitioned from observer to editor, not because a free editor hit a limit. This is a behavioral trigger driven by org structure changes, not feature gates.

What's working:
Viewer-free model makes every shared file a viral acquisition asset: developers, PMs, and clients all encounter Figma at zero cost.|Per-editor pricing aligns revenue with the role that gets the most value (designers) and frees the role that drives the most discovery (viewers).|Enterprise anchor at approximately $75/editor/mo makes the Professional tier feel small even at $15/seat/mo.|FigJam priced separately within tiers allows expansion into a new use case (whiteboarding) without disturbing the core design pricing.|Annual discount is large enough to materially shift the buyer toward annual commitment, lowering churn.

What to adapt:
If your product has high viewer-to-editor multiplier, free the viewer and price the editor. The viewers become your acquisition channel.|Use Enterprise tier pricing as the anchor even if few buyers reach that tier. Anchoring works on visible price, not on revenue mix.|Sell adjacent use cases (FigJam, Slides) within existing tiers, not as separate products. Bundle expansion captures incremental revenue without churning existing accounts.

What to avoid:
Do not free viewers if your viewer role is the actual buyer. Per-editor pricing fails when buyers are evaluators rather than producers.|Do not price Enterprise at an anchor level if you have no real Enterprise customers. The page-credibility cost of an empty anchor is high.|Do not assume per-editor pricing works for non-collaborative tools. The multiplier model requires shared output.

Brunson lens:
Stack: Tiered stack with progressive collaboration features; Enterprise tier is the visual anchor.
Value ladder: Four-rung ladder with viewer-free entry rung that does not count toward seat revenue.
Decoy/anchor: Triple anchor: Enterprise at the top, Organization as the visible 'mid-market', Professional as the indie tier that looks cheap by comparison.
Payment mechanics: Per-editor (not per-user) pricing decouples value-capture from acquisition volume.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-17