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Figma AI (Make / First Draft) vs Microsoft Designer
A plain-English comparison to help you choose between them.
A professional design tool with AI against a consumer design app with AI, and the audience decides before the features do. Figma AI assumes a design practice: files, libraries, prototypes, engineering handoff, with generation accelerating drafts and mechanical revisions inside that system. Microsoft Designer assumes none of it: describe a design and complete layouts come back, backgrounds swap in a click, and monthly credits meter the generation, with more for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Pick Figma AI when design is a discipline in the building; pick Designer for personal work inside the Microsoft world, which Microsoft's terms describe.
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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
Microsoft Designer is the free, fast design app of the Microsoft world: describe a design and it generates complete layouts with imagery, text and colour handled; generate images from prompts; restyle photos; and remove or replace backgrounds. Monthly AI credits meter the generation, with more for Microsoft 365 subscribers.
Its natural habitat is quick graphics for documents, posts and invitations, integrated with the Microsoft 365 surround rather than sold as a creative suite. Templates and depth trail the dedicated design platforms deliberately.
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As a free on-ramp to AI design inside the Microsoft ecosystem, it is exactly what it looks like: convenient, capable enough, and bounded.
- Best for
- Free quick graphics from a described concept
- Image generation metered by monthly credits
- Restyling photos and replacing backgrounds
- Social posts, cards and invitations in minutes
- Microsoft 365 users wanting design inside the ecosystem
- Cost
- Freemium (Free tier + paid plans)
- Ease
- Openness
- Hosted service
- Data
- Content processes under Microsoft's consumer or commercial terms depending on the account, worth knowing which one you are on.
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
- Microsoft Designer
- Free, inside Microsoft
By area
Where each one pulls ahead, area by area.
| Area | Figma AI (Make / First Draft) | Microsoft Designer |
|---|---|---|
| By job | ||
| Design & creative | Figma AI (Make / First Draft) absorbs the mechanical revisions by prompt instead of by hand, so the tedious stretches compress and the taste stays yours | Microsoft Designer generates a quick layout from a described concept rather than from a system of components you already maintain |
| By task | ||
| Image editing | Figma AI (Make / First Draft) generates quick image fills to test a layout and replaces stock placeholders with generated stand-ins, which is editing in service of a design in progress | Microsoft Designer meters credits, so heavy use graduates to a paid tool on its own schedule |
Common questions
Is Designer ever right for a team with designers?
At the edges, yes: the quick social graphic, the internal invitation, the one-off card that should not interrupt a designer's week. Template breadth, brand kits and team workflows all favour the dedicated platforms, and it does not pretend otherwise. The moment output must match a design system, it is outside its depth by design.
What does the credit metering mean for each?
Designer's monthly AI credits cap free ambition, with more for Microsoft 365 subscribers, so sustained generation belongs on a subscription or a different tool. Figma AI's generation ships inside the platform seat, so the constraint is less a meter than what the team's plan already covers.
Do they ever meet in one organisation?
Less than the pairing suggests. The design team lives in Figma, where drafts, prototypes and code handoff belong. Microsoft's consumer terms state that use of Designer is for personal use and not in the course of trade or commerce, which is worth reading before the company's own quick graphics are routed there, and the boundary is drawn by those terms rather than by either tool's ambition.
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Tool facts last checked August 2026