We want to use it to link design variables to the design tokens in our application.
Our company runs on a Professional plan. There are only 10 users that need access, so we don’t have any need to go to an Organization or Enterprise.
I saw the same question here, but it wasn’t answered and just pointed to the Plugin API which has an entirely different use case.
This really needs to change. The Variables API should be available to plans other than just the enterprise plan. It’s way to expensive to get just the variables. Yes, there’s lots of other stuff in the enterprise API’s, but clearly most people need the Variables API and none of the other stuff. Figma is really failing their customers here.
I really hope Figma reconsiders this choice.
In my current project, I also wanted to set up a pipeline to sync Figma Variables to our codebase automatically.
But yeah my company only has the organisation license, not enterprise (since we’re way to small for that).
The plugin API isn’t really a good alternative for it; ideally you don’t want to do manual copy/paste actions to sync variables.
Perhaps the most inexplicable part of all of this is that the Figma API doesn’t allow you to fetch variables, such a simple action, outside the Enterprise plan, but the Figma MCP for AI does. Would the Figma team like to explain their reasoning?
This may provide a temporary solution to some people, but for me, I need the ability to edit the variables programmatically as well, so it’s abit dissapointing that I need my relatively small company to be a whole enterprise because...I want to use variables?
The pricing/feature structure and information available for it seem designed to get teams invested in building towards the promise of CI/CD design→dev pipelines without realizing that it’s going to require the top tier plan.
Having looked through the plans, the “REST API” was seemingly available for our pro plan. I then spent a couple dozen hours getting CI/CD set up to then find that the variables call kept returning empty. It didn’t even seem have a clear error message about the needed plan upgrade. I was only sure about what was happening after finding this forum.
Everybody has to make money but that experience was... not good.
I bet there are some Figma team members pushing to have this at least be a bit less opaque and then some that figure that can be pushed out until a few more bucks are made. I guess we know who has been winning the debate last couple years.
This is a disgusting pricing model. Hopefully, new and more convenient Figma competitors will emerge to address such growing pains.
We’re on the Pro plan, and we’re not allowed to access our design variables without an Enterprise plan?
What a dirty business model.
Rude. Dishonest. Extremely unprofessional.
Now I finally understand why every workflow description I could find is an absolute circus of third-party plugins and manual steps - when it should be as simple as a flat 100-line script that fetches the variables and generates a CSS file.
Because third-party plugins are allowed to access our design variables. But we aren’t.
It’s no wonder PenPot is winning ground. 🥲
Hey!
I might have the solution for you… check out PRISM Tokens: https://console.prismtokens.app/
It’s a SaaS tool designed to bridge the gap between Designers and Devs… and the best part… IT’S FREE!
How it works:
- Designer manage and update styles in Figma
- PRISM syncs the Figma file and transforms the data (aliasing, rem unit conversion, rgba conversion, sync diffing and WCAG accessibility report)
- Developers get fresh, production-ready code instantly (different CI/CD workflows baked-in).
P.S. There is also a Figma plugin: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1582392311915034049/prism-sync that you can use to sync Variables…
Give it a try and let me know what you also. I’m also opened to feedback and adding more improvements/features into the product.
Thanks!
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.