Figma or Sketch: the question a team should answer first

The first question is not which one draws better. It is where the file lives: a browser tab several people open at once, or a document on a Mac that one person saves. Figma built its product around the first answer and Sketch around the second, and what a team feels a year later — how review runs, what a developer receives, how versions are kept — follows from that. The answer flips for a small studio that works on Macs and trusts its own naming discipline.

Where does the design file actually live?

In Figma the design is a document in a hosted workspace, and what you share is a link with permissions attached. Nothing sits on your disk; a copy saved locally is an export. Open it elsewhere and you see the current state; there is only one.

In Sketch the design is a .sketch document on a Mac, held in a folder and synced by whatever you already use. Two people editing at once is a conflict, not a session.

What changes when a reviewer has no software?

A reviewer with a browser and a link opens a Figma file and comments on the exact spot without installing anything. The client, the operations manager, the person who signs off — none needs a licence to look, and the comment stays on the mockup instead of arriving as a screenshot on WhatsApp.

Sketch review needs the app on a Mac or an export: a PNG, a PDF, a prototype link from an add-on. Everybody else reads a flattened copy, and the feedback loop drifts back to images.

If half your reviewers sit outside the design team, this decides the purchase.

What does a local file give you, and what does it cost?

A Sketch file is an artefact you possess. It opens offline, it opens in five years if you keep the app version, and it can be archived and handed to another studio. A subscription that lapses does not take it.

The cost is a platform floor: Sketch is a macOS application, so a Windows contractor works through exports or not at all. Versioning is manual — homepage-v3-final-approved.sketch is the honest state of most teams — and a shared drive eventually produces a conflicted copy nobody reconciles.

A browser file inverts both. No platform floor and history kept for you, but the artefact is a service, so export on a schedule if the work has to outlive the account.

How does the licence differ, as a mechanism?

Figma is sold as seats in a workspace, and the seat type decides what a person may do: edit, or only view and comment. Access ends when the subscription does.

Sketch is sold as a licence tied to a machine, with an update window: while it is open you receive new versions, and when it closes the app you have keeps working at the version it reached. A fifth designer is another licence, not another seat.

Neither shape is cheaper in the abstract, and both have changed terms before. Read the vendor's page.

Where do three people and fifteen land differently?

Three people with one Mac each and a shared folder: local files are workable and often simpler. The naming convention is a conversation rather than a policy, and no permissions model is needed.

Fifteen people, two contractors and a product manager who only comments: the browser model earns its place. Viewer access stops being a licence negotiation, and a new hire gets a link on their first morning instead of a folder dump.

The middle case is the interesting one: eight designers who rarely share a file suit either, and the tie breaks on who outside the team needs to look.

Why does Arabic type belong in this decision?

A tool that renders Arabic badly makes every review about the wrong thing. Arabic is joined script: letters take different shapes by position, so a text layer needs a shaping engine that handles that, a line height with room for diacritics, and alignment that follows a right-to-left frame.

Both products can set Arabic. What differs is the workflow: whether direction belongs to the frame or to every text layer, whether a copy between files keeps the shaping, and whether the exported PDF breaks lines where the designer approved.

Test it with a real paragraph at two sizes: the failure is quiet, plausible-looking text that breaks in development.

What does the whole choice look like side by side?

Dimension	Figma	Sketch
Where the file lives	A workspace document, shared by link	A .sketch file in a folder on a Mac
Review by a non-designer	Open the link, comment in place	Needs the app, or an exported image
Platform	Any browser	macOS only
Version history	Kept by the service	Manual; conflicted copies happen
Licence mechanism	Seats in a workspace, editor or viewer	Per-machine licence with an update window
What to verify yourself	Which seat type each reviewer needs	Whether your app version opens old files

How should a team decide?

1. List everyone who will open the file, and mark who edits and who only looks.
2. Count the Windows and Linux machines among them. One changes the answer.
3. Write the version-naming rule before the first file exists, then follow it for a week.
4. Set one Arabic paragraph in the tool, export it, compare the export with the screen.
5. Compare the offers last, using the vendor's terms rather than this page.

Where this goes wrong

• Buying seats for reviewers. A team pays for editors it does not have, because nobody audited who edits.
• A shared folder used as version control. Two people save the same file on the same afternoon and the approved version is the one nobody kept.
• Handoff by screenshot. A developer measures spacing from a compressed image and ships the picture rather than the design.
• Arabic checked at the end. Strings arrive late, shaping breaks, and the fix lands in CSS rather than the design file.

What this advice leaves out

No prices appear here, deliberately. Both are sold on terms that move, and a figure would be wrong before this page ranked. The last row of the table is the one to open in another tab.

This also leaves out design systems versioned alongside code, plugin ecosystems, and procurement rules that forbid a hosted workspace — the last can settle the question before design is discussed. We build interfaces and design systems around both tools, resell neither and take no commission, so the comparison above carries no commercial interest.

We build the handoff so that what the designer approved is what ships, on a Mac and in a browser.