Hi @VTechnology, Thanks for getting in touch about collaboration in Figma, I totally understand where you’re coming from.

In Figma, you might already know but our plans are team-based, they apply to teams( /organizations), rather than individual user accounts. This means that billing is based on the total number of editors within a team - including both team members and those invited to specific files or projects.

For more details, please check out these articles:

• Manage seats in Figma - Manage seats on the Professional plan


• Manage billing on the Professional plan

Does your designer friend currently have editor access to files/projects in your team, or are they a member of your team?

If not, you might need to either invite them to your team or share a file/project with them. And if you invite/share them with “can edit (editors)” permission, it would then count them as an editor within your team.

If you’re an admin, you can see who’s being billed from the “Members” tab on your team page. Just set the “Design seat” or “FigJam seat” filter to “Full” or “All” to see billed users. From there, you can downgrade any editor to “Viewer - restricted” on the Design or FigJam to remove that user from billing.

Here are a couple more guides for further information:

• Manage team permissions


• Manage a Starter or Professional team

I hope this helps clear things up a bit. Let us know if something was unclear.

Thanks,

The answer above seems to be intentionally vague (just like all the Figma’s pricing full of dark patterns), let me clear things up. You have three options:

1. 
   

   If you invite your friend to your team to edit files together, you will have to pay for them.

   
   


2. 
   

   You can create a new free team and collaborate there with some functionality limited.

   
   


3. 
   

   You can invite your friend as an editor to your files that are placed in the drafts folder. This will be free too and there are less limitations compared to a free team. This is no longer possible after the drafts update this summer.

   
   

I personally usually choose the third option unless I need to work on a component library file together, in which case option 1 is the only way.