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Figma AI (Make / First Draft) vs Base44
Figma AI drafts screens inside a design system for teams that design; Base44 generates a running app with no design team and no backend to manage.
A designer's accelerant and a non-technical builder's whole factory: Figma's AI drafts screens and prototypes inside a design system, Base44 generates running full-stack apps with the backend hidden. Pick Figma AI when the team designs professionally and fidelity matters, First Draft laying out from Figma-built libraries, Make prototyping your own designs for testing, output accumulating in real Figma files engineering can work from. Pick Base44 when there is no design team and no wish to meet a backend, a described app arriving with database, authentication, storage and hosting built in, refined visually afterwards.
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Side by side
- Summary
Figma's AI turns the design tool into a generator: First Draft produces editable screens from a prompt using Figma-built libraries, with generation on your own design system not yet available, Make converts designs and descriptions into interactive prototypes and working front-end code, and smaller assists handle content replacement, image cleanup and smart search across files.
The output is the point: not pictures of interfaces but real Figma files and structured code, editable by designers and usable by engineers. That keeps AI work inside the team's existing system rather than beside it.
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It accelerates drafts and mechanical revisions; finished production design still comes from designers refining what it starts.
- Best for
- Editable first-draft screens generated from Figma-built libraries
- Prompts to interactive prototypes without leaving Figma
- Design-to-code handoff as an engineering starting point
- Mechanical revisions executed by prompt
- AI that lands in real files, not flat mockups
- Cost
- Freemium (Free tier + paid plans)
- Ease
- Openness
- Hosted service
- Data
- Designs and prompts stay within Figma's platform terms, with admin controls on AI features for enterprise plans. Make output is a prototype starting point, not production code, so review before anything ships.
- Summary
Base44 is an AI app builder that generates full-stack applications from plain-language prompts. What sets it apart from the other prompt-to-app tools is where it draws the line for the user: the database, authentication, file storage and hosting are built in rather than connected as external services, so a non-technical builder never has to configure a server or a database at all.
After a prompt produces the first version, editing carries on visually rather than in code, and on higher tiers the underlying code-generation model can be switched. The pitch is the vendor's own framing: backend and storage, built in, with hosting and authentication included, so the app runs without any separate infrastructure to stand up.
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There is a free tier plus paid monthly tiers, published first-party, with a discount on annual billing. Base44 has been acquired by Wix.
- Best for
- Non-technical builders who never want to meet a backend
- Full-stack apps generated from plain-language prompts
- Built-in database, authentication, file storage and hosting
- Visual editing after the first version is generated
- Switching the code-generation model on higher tiers
- Cost
- Freemium (Free tier + paid plans)
- Ease
- Openness
- Hosted service
- Data
- The backend, authentication, data and business logic live on Base44's servers behind its SDK, and export is frontend-only, with ZIP or GitHub export itself a paid-tier feature. Treat the platform as where the application and its data live, and weigh that against any obligation to hold data elsewhere. Base44 has been acquired by Wix.
Pricing
- Figma AI (Make / First Draft)
Free$16/user·$55/user·$90/user
Prices as of August 2026.
- Starter
- Free
- Professional
- $16per user, per monthbilled annually; $20 per user per month if billed monthly
- Organization
- $55per user, per monthbilled annually
- Enterprise
- $90per user, per monthbilled annually
- Base44
Free·$16·$40·$80·$160·Custom
Prices as of August 2026.
- Free
- Free
- Starter
- $16per monthbilled annually; $20 per month if billed monthly
- Builder
- $40per monthbilled annually; $50 per month if billed monthly
- Pro
- $80per monthbilled annually; $100 per month if billed monthly
- Elite
- $160per monthbilled annually; $200 per month if billed monthly
- Enterprise
- Price on applicationno list price published
By area
Where each one pulls ahead, area by area.
| Area | Figma AI (Make / First Draft) | Base44 |
|---|---|---|
| By task | ||
| Design, UI & prototyping | Figma AI (Make / First Draft) has no backend, no data persistence and no auth, so a prototype that must behave like a product graduates to a full-stack builder | Base44 lets stakeholders log in and exercise real flows instead of clicking through a static mockup |
Common questions
Prototype or product: which does each yield?
Figma Make yields prototypes, and a backend is a step you add rather than something the file starts with: Figma documents a Supabase integration supplying a Postgres database, login screens and secret storage. Base44 yields the running product itself, people can log in and exercise real flows, at the price of the app living on Base44's platform rather than in a portable codebase.
What does each hand a future engineer?
Figma hands design truth: real files, tokens and components, with generated code as a starting point that needs engineering review. Base44 hands markedly less, by honest design: export is frontend-only, the backend, data and logic staying behind its SDK on its servers, so a prototype meant to graduate into a maintained product will need rebuilding. Choose with the hand-off in mind.
Which fits a non-designer founder validating an idea?
Base44, usually: it assumes no technical or design literacy and produces something stakeholders can genuinely use, which beats a static mock for validation. Figma's generation leans on an existing design system and rewards people who already think in design tools. The reverse holds once a designer joins, because accumulated Figma files compound and platform-bound apps do not.
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Tool facts last checked August 2026