Can You Publish a Figma Site on the Free Plan?
No, not yet. On Figma's free Starter plan you can design a site in Figma Sites, but publishing it to a live URL needs a paid plan and a Full seat. Figma's own pricing FAQ (checked 2026-09-23) says it plainly: "Sites is available on the Full seat for paid plans. Limited Sites experience on Starter is coming soon." That limited free experience hasn't shipped, and Figma hasn't given it a date.
If you want a Figma design live today without paying Figma for a seat, three routes work right now: publish with a free Figma-to-website plugin, export the design as code and host it yourself, or hand-code from the design. This guide covers what each Figma plan actually gets you in Sites, and walks through the free options.
Can you publish a Figma Sites website for free?
Not on the Starter plan. You can open Figma Sites, drag in Sites layout tools, and build a page — the editor itself isn't gated. What's gated is the Publish button: it needs a Full seat on a paid Figma plan (Professional, Organization, or Enterprise). Starter accounts hit an upgrade prompt at that step.
What does each plan actually get you?
| Plan | Build a site | Publish it live | Custom domains | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (free) | Yes | No | No | "Limited Sites experience on Starter" is promised, undated |
| Professional | Yes | Yes (Full seat) | Up to 10 | |
| Organization | Yes | Yes (Full seat) | As many as needed | |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes (Full seat) | As many as needed | |
| Education | Yes | Yes, 1 site | Not available | Bandwidth-limited; a Figma staff reply in the community forum confirms custom domains aren't offered on Education accounts |
A Full seat is Figma's editor license — the one that can create and edit design files. It's also the only seat type that can publish Figma Make apps, per Figma's own seat-management article. Dev, Collab, and View seats can open and comment on a Sites file but can't publish one.
Figma's pricing FAQ also notes that during Sites' beta, custom domains, bandwidth, and storage were offered free of charge through 2025 — worth re-checking on the pricing FAQ directly, since beta terms like that are exactly the kind of thing that changes without a blog post announcing it.
Is Figma ever bringing free publishing to Starter?
They say so, without a date. The same FAQ line above is the entirety of what's public: "Limited Sites experience on Starter is coming soon." No scope, no timeline. If you're deciding what to do this week, treat it as not available rather than waiting on it.
Free ways to publish a Figma design as a website today
| Method | Cost | What you get | Where it's limited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma-to-website plugin (e.g. Figment) | Free tier | A live URL on a subdomain, generated straight from your Figma frames, no code | Free tier is a shared subdomain with a badge; custom domains are a paid step |
| Export code from Figma, host it yourself | Free (plus hosting) | Full HTML/CSS you control | You own the hosting, the deploy, and every future update |
| Hand-code from the design | Free (your time) | Full control over the output | Slowest option, and only as good as the time you put in |
The plugin route is the closest match to what Figma Sites does — publish straight from the file you already designed, no separate rebuild. Figma to Website: How to Publish Your Design walks through that flow end to end, including the free-tier publish steps.
Which free route should you use?
If the site is a portfolio, landing page, or something you want live today without waiting on a Figma seat upgrade, a plugin publisher gets you a real URL in minutes. If you specifically need the site to live in a codebase you already host, export the code instead. For a closer look at how a plugin's free tier stacks up against paying for Figma Sites once you're ready to compare the two properly, see Figma Sites vs Figment and the Figma-to-website checklist before you publish either way.
Our own plans, including what unlocks a custom domain, are at /plans.
Sources: Figma pricing FAQ (checked 2026-09-23); Figma Help: Publish, update, or unpublish a site (checked 2026-09-23); Figma Help: Manage seats in Figma (checked 2026-09-23); Figma community forum: custom domain blocked on Starter plan (checked 2026-09-23).
