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Pooka_Co
Pooka_Co
September 10, 2024

Make Collaboration (editing) between paid accounts free

  • September 10, 2024
  • 6 replies
  • 1207 views

PROBLEM: Currently, if you and a user outside of your team both have paid Figma accounts, and you need the other person to be able to edit your file, you need to pay for A THIRD account. i.e. For TWO freelancers to edit the same Figma file, you need to pay for THREE Figma accounts.

This is clearly a terrible customer service experience and I suspect it’s a common issue as you’ll see from Figma’s own Product Support team response below.

SOLUTION: The ideal workaround would be to offer free editing when both accounts are paid. Alternatively, if it’s an expensive service to provide, it seems reasonable for Figma to charge a clear fee (e.g. Editing collaboration: $2 per file per month, or $5 per project per month).

Please upvote and add to the discussion. For reference, here’s my last message from Figma’s Customer Support, who are clearly trying to help solve this problem:

Hey there Paul,

Thanks for reaching back out.

Again, all editors in your team space are billable to you. Even if Robin has a Pro plan separately, collaborating together on the same file at the same time on your team space is billable to you. I understand this is not ideal for you.

At this time, the only work around we have is to have users make a copy as a viewer and edit the copy in their own space.

I went ahead and created a feature request ticket to pass back to our Product team. While I can’t guarantee an ETA, I can create a bit of discussion around it at the very least to give it some visibility.

I’d also suggest flagging this on our Support Forum where other users can up-vote feature requests and add their support (our Product Managers also check this feedback channel regularly).

Thanks again for your thoughts and patience in the interim! Let me know if I can help with something else.

Best,

    6 replies

    Celine_
    Figmate
    Celine_
    Community Support
    September 10, 2024

    Hey @Pooka_Co , thanks for sharing your feedback! I’ve gone ahead to switch your topic as ‘Share an idea’ so others in the community can vote your idea. 🙂

      Pete Stam
      Pete Stam
      New Member
      June 16, 2025

      Co-signing this entirely. As an agency, we hire designers and developers on a per-project basis—and we’re all paying Figma users. It makes zero sense that I need to pay again to add them to my team just so we can collaborate on a file.

       

      This setup discourages the exact kind of flexible, freelance-based workflows that the design industry runs on. If someone already has a paid Figma account, we should be able to work together without jumping through hoops or stacking redundant costs.

       

      Figma’s strength has always been collaborative design—don’t let the billing model undermine that.

        Nellya
        Nellya
        Power Member
        June 16, 2025

        If someone already has a paid Figma account, we should be able to work together without jumping through hoops or stacking redundant costs.

        You can use Connected Projects now

          James_Garnham
          James_Garnham
          New Participant
          September 18, 2025

          This is exactly my current problem right now. (Using connected projects)

          Three teams: Client and two freelance designers; all with paid monthly professional plans. Why do we need to pay more to collaborate?

          We want to share one file and co-collaborate together to build out the design system.

          Why do we need to pay more when the three of us are already all paying monthly/yearly subscriptions?

          If you could explain Figma, why you have set the limit of co-collaboration to two teams max, I would greatly appreciate that.

            Kaspars_Kursiss
            Kaspars_Kursiss
            New Member
            July 4, 2026

            Why is this not moving along? As other have noted, this system makes collaboration between separate entities explicitly impossible. No, we are not paying ^n more just to collaborate. If there are three parties working together, that would mean that across the board we would be billed nine times instead of three. Make it make sense, Figma.

              Marco S.
              Marco S.
              New Member
              August 29, 2026

              Fully supporting this request and echoing the points made by ​@Pooka_Co, ​@Pete Stam, and ​@James_Garnham .

              ​@James_Garnham accurately highlighted the primary constraint with Connected Projects: while it is a step forward, the two-team limit presents a clear challenge for multi-freelancer workflows.

              As an independent designer collaborating with networks of clients and freelancers, here is the core friction we face:

              • The Multi-Party Constraint: When a project involves a client and two or more independent freelancers—all holding active Pro subscriptions—Connected Projects reaches its cap. Any contributor beyond the second team is assigned Guest status, requiring the host account to cover additional seat fees.

              • Redundant Costs: Having multiple paying Pro subscribers working in one shared file currently leads to cumulative seat charges, despite everyone already maintaining their own individual plans.

              • Operational Overhead: To navigate these seat restrictions, teams often revert to creating temporary Starter teams or managing manual .fig file transfers, which introduces unnecessary friction into an otherwise seamless design process.

              A more flexible framework—such as Cross-Subscription Editing between active Pro accounts or project-based guest passes—would better align with how modern, decentralized teams operate.

              We hope the Product team considers this use case to make multi-party collaboration smoother for independent professionals.

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