This limit seems completely arbitrary. Independent designers/freelancers want more modes. I have breakpoints > 4 and for each I want to define variables for each of my site type items. But I can’t, so this feature is now useless to me.
Very disappointed at this limit. Feels very Adobe.
We need more than 4 modes, you’ve heard Figma, everyone needs more flexibility in the system. This can be the beginning of the Figma’s end because is charging too much if you want to use it to its full capacity, like Dev Mode too…we all need to start looking outside of Figma… maybe Penpot is the more convenient future tool? Is open source and getting better continuously…
Totally agree, just thinking in “normal” breakpoints is always 5 to 6. And as mentioned before, I do understand you philosophy of having an enterprise edition, but while I’m working as freelance senior UX designer / head of design for 2 agencies, I have my own biz apart for other clients. That said, Adobe already earns already triple on one user, all with organisation license. While I might somehow accept this, I can’t justify these extra costs to none of my clients, and neither the agencies can. So I always have to communicate to my dev team “Hey guys, it’s all great now, all put into variables, and therefore way more consistent. But watch out both xs and xxl, they behave different.” This is not just only really unprofessional, beside of this it really kills workflows, needs more time and communication and therefore again ending up in higher costs for the client (our a loss for me, unacceptable in times there’s already a heavy drop in budgets)
To keep this discussion alive, I just wanted to quickly reiterate that, as a full-service agency, we currently can only offer our clients websites with a maximum of 4 breakpoints. The Enterprise Plan is absolutely not a financial option though. This incentive to upgrade to a higher plan seems very contrived.
Absolutely, @Konrad_Lottenbach — let’s keep this conversation active. Being limited to just four modes significantly hampers creativity, forcing us to find workarounds for features locked behind an overpriced paywall. This issue is exacerbated by a subscription model that limits accessibility. @figma, it’s vital to engage with your customers at their level, not just tailor your revenue strategies to please shareholders. Prioritising your customers is key - otherwise, you risk losing them, or pissing them off at the very least. 
Yup - that was me who asked the question - nothing as a reply ;-(
This feels exactly like a terrible “excel sheet” decision that had zero user experience sense, and now they are not backing perhaps because of internal politics.
Every giant who thinks they are irreplaceable is usually replaced by someone who gets angry. I truly hope Figma is not going there. So far… eh.
Even a bump to 6 would help replicate popular design systems like Tailwind, Material, etc.
Upgrading to Organization was a tough investment for us, due to the higher cost and annual requirement, so the decision for Professional and Organization to have the same amount is really disappointing for us.
Figma - we’d be much more willing (and able) to pay for more Edit and Dev Mode seats if you didn’t keep locking and restricting key features like this behind arbitrary paywalls. Your business strategies are not aligned with the mission and values you are continually promoting. You’re building something great, please show more consideration for the customers who want to grow their business with you.
Prepare to be ignored…
I am designing a mobile app to align with iOS and Android device accessibility settings that scale text to seven different sizes. Extending the variable mode limit to seven instead of four for the Organization plan would be very helpful in creating mockups to show how text scales for the different accessibility settings.
It shouldn’t cost extra to design for accessibility.
Hey Savannah,
Thanks for your feedback. I’ve switched your topic from ‘Ask the community’ to ‘Share an Idea’ so you and others in the community can vote up your idea and share feedback!
I’d even love to see 10-12 modes in the Organization plan. If it’s going to cost three times as much as Pro, how about three times the modes?
Maybe instead of 4-4-40, it’s something like 4-12-36?
Here is a new plugin that allows you to have pretty much infinite modes: it helps you swap variables between different collections, even between libraries. Basically works like Swap Library for variables.
https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1334258818515407420/swap-variables
As predicted, cue the hacks plugins to get around this arbitrary limit.
Thanks for the resources @Gleb
Hello, our organization is also running into the issue. We have 1 product that needs to scale across 30 brands, each brand has a light, dark, and accent mode. So in total we need 90+ modes in one design system file.
Are there any current work arounds for this? if I create 3 separate variable library files with 30 modes in each- can those libraries still apply to one design system file?
Is there any future updates that will expand the amount of modes?
My suggestion:
Professional: 5
Organization: 10
Enterprise: 40
That would be fair.
The whole concept of these limitations make no sense to me.
Jumping in here, we’re in the same situation as Haleigh, as even with an Enterprise plan the limitation of 40 modes is too restrictive for our use cases, with multiple clients and themes/modes.
Really the “40” modes limit for variables should be for organization tier and variables should not be limited in any version since there is SO much out there you can’t even try if you don’t have at least one of the higher tier licenses.
Enterprise should be much larger and designed to flex to work with massive databases you’d expect massive enterprises to have needs for.
I don’t agree that any limitations would be fair.