Figma vs Miro in 2026: whiteboards, seats and real team costs

The short verdict: if your team already designs in Figma, add FigJam through Figma's low-cost Collab seats before you buy a separate whiteboard. If whiteboarding is the main job, and the people on the board are product managers, engineers, consultants and clients rather than designers, Miro is the more complete and more widely integrated choice. Many companies end up paying for both, and that is a reasonable outcome only when each tool has a clear owner.

This is a desk comparison. It is based on Figma's and Miro's pricing pages and Figma's help centre, all checked on 9 October 2026. We did not run hands-on trials or benchmarks, and nothing below describes performance we measured. Prices are in US dollars, exclude tax and are quoted at the time of writing (October 2026); confirm them on each vendor's pricing page before you buy.

Two different products that overlap on the whiteboard

Figma is a design platform. Its pricing page lists several products under one account: Figma Design for interface design, Dev Mode for developer handoff, FigJam for whiteboarding, Figma Slides for presentations, and newer products such as Figma Make, Figma Draw, Figma Sites and Figma Buzz. Some of these are labelled beta on the pricing page.

Miro is a visual collaboration workspace built around an infinite board. Its plans are priced per member and are organised around editable boards, integrations, AI credits and admin controls rather than around design work.

The overlap is FigJam versus a Miro board: sticky-note workshops, retrospectives, user-journey maps, flowcharts and planning sessions. The rest of this comparison focuses on that overlap, while noting where Figma's design tooling changes the maths.

Pricing at a glance (October 2026)

Plan	Figma (per seat per month)	Miro (per member per month)
Free	Starter: $0, with unlimited drafts and a single team limited to one folder and three files	Free: $0, unlimited team members, three editable boards
Entry paid	Professional: Full seat $16, Dev seat $12, Collab seat $3	Starter: $8, billed yearly
Mid tier	Organization (billed annually): Full $55, Dev $25, Collab $5	Business: $20, billed yearly
Top tier	Enterprise (billed annually): Full $90, Dev $35, Collab $5	Enterprise: custom pricing, from 30 members

Figma's Professional plan has a monthly and annual toggle on the pricing page, so check which billing period the price you see applies to. Miro's pricing FAQ says annual billing saves 20% compared with monthly billing, and its Starter and Business plans can be paid by card monthly or annually with no licence minimum; invoiced billing is annual only and needs at least 10 licences on Starter or 5 on Business.

How Figma's seats change the whiteboard cost

Figma charges by seat type rather than by a single per-user price. According to Figma's help centre:

• Full seat: access to every Figma product, including Figma Design, Dev Mode, FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Make and Figma Draw.
• Dev seat: Dev Mode, FigJam and Figma Slides, with view and comment access to design files.
• Collab seat: FigJam and Figma Slides, with view and comment access to design files and basic inspection only.
• View seat: free; view and comment only.

The pricing page also says viewers can view and comment on files on any paid plan without buying a seat. That matters for workshops: a stakeholder who only reads and comments costs nothing, and a product manager who actively runs FigJam sessions needs a Collab seat at $3 per month on Professional.

Compare a ten-person product team with two designers and eight people who only whiteboard. On Figma Professional that is two Full seats ($32) plus eight Collab seats ($24), or $56 per month in total, and everyone shares one tool. The same eight people on Miro Starter would cost $64 per month on yearly billing, on top of the designers' Figma seats. For a design-led team, FigJam is the cheaper route on list price.

Free plans compared

Figma Starter

Figma's free plan includes unlimited drafts, UI kits and templates, and 150 AI credits per day up to 500 per month. The help centre limits Starter to a single team with one folder and three files, and to 30 days of version history. The free plan is enough to learn Figma or to run a small personal project, but a team that wants shared files quickly hits the three-file limit.

Miro Free

Miro's free plan allows unlimited team members and three editable boards. Its FAQ says the plan includes 10 AI credits per month to try AI for generating diagrams, tables and summaries. The pricing table lists more than 250 app integrations on Free, but no private boards, no guests and no SAML single sign-on.

Both free plans cap the same thing in practice: the number of active files or boards. Three boards is enough for a recurring retrospective and a planning board; it is not enough for a team that creates a board per workshop.

Features that decide the choice

Need	Figma	Miro
Interface design and prototyping	Core product (Figma Design, Full seat)	Not the main purpose of the product
Developer handoff	Dev Mode on Dev and Full seats; Professional lists advanced Dev Mode inspection and an MCP server	Not listed as a core feature
Whiteboarding	FigJam on Collab, Dev and Full seats	Core product on every plan
Issue-tracker integrations	Not compared on the pricing page	Jira and Asana from Starter; Azure DevOps from Business
Private boards or files	Unlimited files and projects from Professional	Private boards from Starter
Guests	Guest access controls on Enterprise (help centre)	Guests from Business; Starter allows visitors only
SSO	Organization and Enterprise (help centre)	SAML SSO from Business
AI allowance	Credits per seat, from 500 per month on Dev and Collab seats to 3,000 on a Professional Full seat	25 credits per member on Starter, 50 on Business, pooled credits from 2,500 per month on Enterprise

The AI numbers are not directly comparable. Each vendor defines its own credit, and neither credit maps to a fixed number of actions. Read both as a budget that resets monthly rather than a feature to compare.

Figma: strengths and limitations

Strengths

• One tool from sketch to handoff. Design, whiteboarding, slides and developer inspection share one account and one set of files.
• Cheap whiteboard seats. A Collab seat costs $3 per month on Professional, and commenters and viewers are free on paid plans.
• Developer features. Dev Mode and the Figma MCP server give developers structured access to designs, with limits that rise by plan.

Limitations

• Admin and SSO cost a big jump. Moving from Professional to Organization raises a Full seat from $16 to $55 per month, billed annually.
• Seat types take planning. An admin must decide who gets Full, Dev or Collab seats, and the pricing FAQ notes that seats added mid-term on an annual plan are billed separately at the monthly price.
• FigJam is one product among many. Teams that only want a whiteboard pay for an account built around design.

Miro: strengths and limitations

Strengths

• Built for cross-functional work. Integrations with Jira and Asana from Starter, and Azure DevOps from Business, suit planning that feeds an engineering backlog.
• Simple pricing. One price per member on each plan, with no seat types to manage.
• Guests and SSO on Business. At $20 per member per month on yearly billing, Business adds guests and SAML SSO, which consultants running client workshops will want.

Limitations

• No real design tool. Designers will still need Figma or another design product.
• Every editor pays the same. There is no cheaper seat for people who only add sticky notes, apart from visitors on Starter and guests on Business.
• Small AI allowances. 25 credits per member on Starter is a trial-sized budget for teams that plan to use AI heavily, and Miro's FAQ says unused credits do not roll over.

Who should choose which

• Design-led product teams: choose Figma Professional and give non-designers Collab seats for FigJam. It is the lowest list-price route to a shared design and whiteboard workspace.
• Engineering and product teams with few designers: Miro Starter or Business fits better, especially if planning boards need to link to Jira or Azure DevOps.
• Agencies and consultants running client workshops: Miro Business, for guests and SSO, plus Figma seats for whoever produces design work.
• Companies that need SSO across a large team: price Figma Organization against Miro Business carefully; the seat mix decides which is cheaper.
• Individuals and students: start on either free plan and upgrade only when the three-file or three-board limit gets in the way.

Alternatives worth a look

If neither fits, consider the whiteboard already included in tools you pay for. Microsoft Whiteboard comes with many Microsoft 365 plans, Zoom Workplace includes whiteboards, and Notion and Confluence offer lighter visual planning features. Open-source Excalidraw is a good fit for quick technical diagrams. For design work specifically, Penpot is an open-source alternative to Figma that can be self-hosted.

Summary

Figma and Miro overlap on the whiteboard but are bought for different reasons. Figma wins when design is the centre of the work, because its Collab seat makes FigJam inexpensive for everyone around the designers. Miro wins when the board itself is the centre of the work and the team is broader than design. Before you add a second tool, check whether the one you already pay for covers the job.