Figma vs LottieFiles
Both are design tools. Here is what separates them.
| Figma | LottieFiles | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Design | Design |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Price from | Freemium | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 14 | 18 |
| What it does | Interface design in the browser, with everyone in the file at once. | Vector animations that ship as JSON and stay sharp at any size. |
What Figma is
Figma is a design tool that runs in the browser. The product family covers Figma Design, Figma Make, Figma Weave, Dev Mode, Figma Motion, FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Draw, Figma Sites and Figma Buzz, so interface work, whiteboarding, slides, websites and marketing assets sit inside one account. Figma Design carries auto layout, variables, components, slots, brushes, textures, grid layout, multi-edit, and branching and merging. Prototyping on top of it supports Smart Animate, interactive components, conditional logic and mathematical expressions, which is enough to demonstrate state changes rather than only screen-to-screen transitions. Files auto-save a version every 30 minutes. Dev Mode handles the handoff. Selecting a layer exposes code snippets, component properties and structured layer data, and a compare changes view shows two versions of a design side by side. Code Connect maps Figma components to their counterparts in production code, dev resources link a layer out to GitHub files, Jira tickets and Storybook stories, and a Figma MCP server pulls design system components into a codebase. The rest of the family covers adjacent work. FigJam ships more than 300 ready-made templates, integrates with Asana, Jira and GitHub, and offers 24 hour guest access without a login. Figma Slides imports PowerPoint files and supports live audience polls and an alignment scale. Figma Buzz generates images through OpenAI and Gemini models, removes image backgrounds, and imports, trims and exports video. Figma Make accepts text prompts, voice input, and attached designs, images, videos, audio, PDFs and text files. Figma Sites includes a CMS view for adding, editing and publishing page content. FigJam and Figma Slides are included with every seat on every plan. Seats come in three kinds, and the gap between them is the main budgeting lever. On Professional a Full seat is $16 per month, a Dev seat $12 and a Collab seat $3. On Organization those become $55, $25 and $5, and on Enterprise $90, $35 and $5. Organization and Enterprise are sold on annual billing only. The free Starter plan gives a single team with one folder and three files, while Professional gives a single team with unlimited folders. AI usage is metered in credits. A Professional Full seat carries 3,000 per month, Organization 3,500 and Enterprise 4,250, while Dev and Collab seats carry 500 each. Starter allows 150 a day up to 500 a month. Enterprise plans can allocate credits across teams, departments or cost centres and read usage through an AI credit usage API. Variable modes are capped at 10 on Starter and Professional and 20 on Organization, and are unlimited on Enterprise through extended collections.
What LottieFiles is
LottieFiles is a set of tools for creating, storing and shipping Lottie animations. A Lottie is a JSON based animation file format that can be delivered to any platform as easily as a static asset, and because it is vector based it scales across device sizes without pixelation. The format itself is open source under the MIT licence and not tied to a single vendor. dotLottie is a packaging layer over Lottie JSON, and the documentation covers when to choose each of the two. Lottie Creator is the browser based editor for building and editing these files. It supports keyframes with easing and interpolation, layers, imported assets, nested scenes, trim path, gradient fills, segments and mattes, animates imported SVG files, and handles kinetic typography for text. Its plugins include Duplicator, AI Prompt to Vector and Motion Copilot. For designers working elsewhere, there are plugins for Figma, After Effects and Canva, with the Figma plugin adding raster to vector conversion and an AI prompt to vector tool. Playback is handled by published runtimes for JavaScript, React, Vue, Svelte, React Native, Flutter, iOS and Android. The core web player is on npm, renders both dotLottie and Lottie JSON, and has dedicated wrapper packages for React, Vue, Svelte and Web Components around a framework agnostic core. The dotLottie runtime APIs are TypeScript first, and the web player exposes control over playback, layout, theming, multi animation files and interactive state machines, with documentation covering web worker and GPU rendering options. dotLottie rendering uses the ThorVG graphics library. One caveat is worth knowing before a complex animation is committed to: Lottie does not support every Adobe After Effects feature, and per platform compatibility tables list the gaps. Expressions, images, text glyphs, masks, interpolation, strokes and fills are among the properties supported across platforms. Four plan tiers are sold: Free, Individual, Team and Enterprise. Individual adds private projects and private uploads for solo users. Team is positioned for commercial work by teams of fewer than ten, with a shared workspace and shared team assets. Enterprise is aimed at teams of ten or more and adds SSO, custom permissions, priority support, custom integrations and audit features. Subscriptions are billed annually and there is no standard monthly payment plan. Adding a team member part way through a term triggers an immediate pro rated charge equal to the monthly rate multiplied by the months remaining, though a seat freed by a departing member can be reassigned to a replacement at no extra charge. Premium animations come only with a paid subscription and cannot be bought one at a time. Students and educators over 13 at institutions in 15 supported countries can apply for the Education Plan, a free workspace that runs for a year and renews by repeating the verification. It excludes premium animations and the file optimiser, and forbids commercial use such as advertising, monetised content and paid client work.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.