Send a Figma Prototype or a Live Website? What Clients See
Send a prototype link for a design review, and a published website once the client needs to actually use, share, or bookmark it. A prototype link opens inside Figma's own presentation view — it can prompt a login depending on your share settings, it isn't indexed by search engines, and on a free Starter plan a client can accidentally click through into your editable source file. A published website is a normal URL: no Figma account, no presentation chrome, and it behaves however you actually built it to respond on different screens.
What does a client see when you send a Figma prototype link?
Figma's own sharing article describes the "prototype-only" link as exactly that: a way to "share designs for clients, stakeholders, or usability testing without giving access to the full design file." To create one, you open Present, then Share prototype from inside presentation view. What loads is Figma's presentation UI wrapped around your frames — comment pins, a Figma toolbar, and navigation driven by whatever hotspots and transitions you wired up in the file, not a browser rendering your actual HTML.
What does a client see when you send a published website?
A URL that opens like any other website, in any browser, on any device, with no Figma UI around it. What's actually there depends on what publishing method put it there: Figma Sites renders your design as a real page, and a plugin publisher does the same from a Figma Design file's frames. Either way, the client is looking at your site, not a viewer showing your site.
Do clients need a Figma account to open a prototype link?
Sometimes, and this trips people up. Per Figma's search-verified guidance, a prototype set to "anyone with the link can view" (or "anyone with the link plus password") loads without an account. Any stricter sharing setting requires the viewer to have — or create — a Figma account first. There's also a plan-specific gotcha worth knowing before you send a client anything: Figma's own sharing article notes that prototype-only links are a paid-plan feature. On the free Starter plan, a viewer can still back out of the prototype into the full editable file via a dropdown next to the filename — so "prototype-only" isn't fully locked down unless you're on a paid plan.
Is a Figma prototype indexed by Google?
No. A prototype link lives on Figma's own domain, routed through Figma's servers, not yours — there's no page on your domain for a search engine to find or index. If any part of the reason you're sending a link is so it can eventually be found in search, that requirement is only met by a published website with its own URL, and even then only if it isn't blocked by a noindex tag.
Side-by-side: prototype link vs published website
| Prototype link | Published website | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | On Figma's domain, inside Figma's viewer | On your own domain or subdomain |
| Account needed | Sometimes — depends on your share setting | No |
| What renders | Your frames, inside Figma's presentation UI (toolbar, comments) | Your actual page |
| Screen behavior | Follows the frame(s) you designed — usually one fixed layout per breakpoint you built | Responsive if you designed it that way; see our responsive design guide |
| Search engines | Not indexed | Indexable, unless you block it |
| Editing after sending | Republish the prototype from Figma | Republish the site from Figma, or edit code directly, depending on how it was published |
| Best for | Design review, internal feedback, usability testing | Anything the client will use, share, bookmark, or open outside a review session |
When to send which
Send the prototype link while the design is still moving — reviews, feedback rounds, usability tests, anything where the point is "look at this and tell me what you think." Send a published URL the moment the client needs to actually use it: forwarding it to their own team, putting it in an email signature, opening it on their phone without a hiccup, or having Google find it at all. If you're at the point of publishing, Figma to Website: How to Publish Your Design covers the plugin route, and the Figma-to-website checklist is worth running through first so the published version doesn't have surprises the prototype hid.
Sources: Figma Help: Share files and prototypes (checked 2026-09-23); Figma Help: Guide to sharing and permissions (checked 2026-09-23); Figma Help: Publish, update, or unpublish a site (checked 2026-09-23).
