Why's the "Variables API" only available on enterprise plans?

Why the Variables API is only available on enterprise plans?

cause money 🙂

It’s strange because all of the other REST API endpoints are available cross-plans.

Thanks @Gleb 🙃

not all, on enterprise plan they also have rest apis for managing access (not sure if it’s public or not yet but this was announced)

I also agree it should be at least an organisation endpoint. It makes the full variables feature pointless when it comes to communicate with developers as it’s not even visible in Dev mode…

Is there any intention to change this once this gets out of Beta?

I’m also curious to know. Restricting this API to Enterprise customers only (not even Organization!) diminishes significantly the value of this feature for small/mid-size teams.

Not to mention that it completely alienates solo Design Ops consultants like me from building CI/CD pipelines for my small/mid-size clients.

I honestly don’t know what Figma are playing at with locking key variables features behind enterprise plans 🤨 It’s the same with the 4 modes restriction… Variables is available to everyone, yet if you want to actually make use it of in the relationship between designer → developer → product, you have to pay Figma for enterprise?! We’re 4 designers in a company of 25, we are not an enterprise company…

To make variables useful to the mid-tier companies, modes needs to be bumped up to at least 8 in org and allow variables REST API in org too. Otherwise, it’s useless to most medium-sized companies. Greedy on Figma’s part…

I’m 1000% with @jackbrind on this one

Same here! Small product agency but we love using design tokens as a bridge between design and dev.
I’m kind of hoping this comes to all plans once variables are out of beta…

I’m not

Yeah this is super disappointing.

We’re a small team of 4 and we can’t sync variables between design and code without using some sort of clunky export workflow or build our own plugin, just to grab the variables.

I would like to add my voice to this. I don’t see how this is helping Figmas goals. By constraining Figmas ability to integrate deeply into delivery pipelines it is impeding Figmas stickiness. Its creating a situation where customers must first become big enough to be enterprise before they are able to integrate Figma into their CI. Surely it is better for Figma to get deeply embedded into product delivery as early as possible. This, in turn, will help their customers be successful, grow and ultimately become enterprise customers.

Also chiming in that this seems to make more sense on organization level - I think this would be hugely useful and still very separate to our needs across organization and enterprise plans.

This really needs to be implemented. Managing the transition & syncing of variables from Figma to Dev is clunky without this API. Doesn’t feel like this should be gated for smaller teams - if anything it would encourage Figma use and embed the dev team more within the product. Really hope they change this.

So, I understand why they would want to lock down the ability to write variables, as that is a pretty juicy feature and genuinely solves a difficult problem.

but really?? I can’t even make a simple GET request to read my variables from remote. Absolutely wild

I was excited to see that I could build a dynamic component documentation with the file api, this turned into sadness after realizing that a crucial part of our design system was hidden behind the enterprise plan for arbitrary reasons.

I guess the “solution” for non-enterprise folks is to create copies of every component for every variable mode, exponentially increasing the load of the file api.

@m.trenker I just had the same experience and I am going throught the coping stages right now: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

Discovering that this feature is enterprise only was also very frustrating for our team because we explored to shift our design system towards variables, but without the REST API it lost almost all it’s usefulness and thus design variables didn’t get adopted at all.

I also wanted to share my disappointment this and other features (like more modes) are locked behind enterprise.

I can appreciate that sometimes things can be trickier/resources intensive behind the scenes and that comes with a cost too. So I’m not suggesting that these are just included in Organisation - I’d be happy to pay for these additional features in some form but the jump to Enterprise is expensive and not viable.

I would love to see a handful of features be paid-for bolt-ons if you want them. For example:

Need more modes?+$4/user/month
Dev mode? +$5/user/month
Variables scope on the API? +$x/user/month

Let us add on and pay for the things we need on top of any plan 🙏

If Dev mode was available as a stand-alone paid add-on, all of our developers would have it instead of just getting by with a free account 🤷

It’s really frustrating that Figma has chosen to lock the Variables API behind the enterprise plan.

As a small team pushing forward with a new design system, this feels like a major setback. I was really hoping we could leverage this feature to keep the design and development processes tightly aligned.

Having tools like this available should be a no-brainer for all teams, not just those that can afford enterprise-level pricing.

It would have significantly streamlined our workflow and improved collaboration between design and development. Instead, it feels like we’re being forced to navigate unnecessary barriers.

I understand that there is surely expensive infrastructure costs behind it but solutions are possibles like what was proposed by @Adam_Tomat with paid-for features.

Not more than the regular Figma file API which is available for free. 😆 It’s purely a poor sales attempt.

I’ve been learning variables and token systems for the last month with absolute confidence that they can be exported and built into a regular workflow.

The first warning bell was today when I watched an official video on design systems here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCmacSyDY4 and haven’t seen a part about sharing variables with the team. Why?

Then I started looking for this information in the official documentation but found nothing.

Finally I’ve run accros another official video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gMOTX4f4rc which shows exactly what I was looking for. But it wouldn’t work for me, because I’m not an Enterprise!

And then this thread…

Very frustrating, I wouldn’t give a dime for this business model, looks like an awkward mockery of common sense.

The “Variables API” is often limited to enterprise plans because it provides advanced features that require higher infrastructure support, enhanced security, and customizability—key needs for larger organizations. These offerings align with the premium pricing and targeted use cases of enterprise plans.