I’ve been working with Figma for some time now and keep seeing more and more plugins that cost money or have premium features. Most of these seem to be helpful tools like document exporters, palette generators, asset optimizers, and similar utilities.
I’m wondering:
Has anyone here actually purchased a Figma plugin?
If you did buy one, which plugins were worth the money and what made you decide to pay?
If you haven’t bought any, what holds you back - too expensive, not enough benefit, or other reasons?
Also curious about free alternatives - if you avoid paid plugins, what free tools or methods do you use instead that help speed up your workflow?
yeah i bought one plugin last year - some icon generator thing. honestly wasnt worth it tho, kept using the free version of iconify instead which has way more options. think most premium plugins are overpriced for what they do tbh
Never pulled the trigger on any premium plugins myself, but came close several times. The main thing holding me back is that my workflow tends to change pretty frequently - I’ll find a plugin super useful for one project type, then barely touch it for months. Hard to justify ongoing subscriptions when usage is so inconsistent. I’ve found that combining free plugins with some external tools usually gets me 90% of what I need. For instance, instead of paying for premium color palette generators, I use Coolors or Adobe Color online, then import the palettes manually. Takes a bit longer but works fine for my needs. That said, if I was working on larger teams or had more predictable project requirements, I’d probably be more willing to invest in premium tools. The value proposition really depends on how consistently you’ll use the features.
I’ve purchased three premium Figma plugins over the past two years and can say the investment was justified for my workflow. The deciding factor was always time savings versus cost - if a plugin could save me even 30 minutes per week, the subscription usually paid for itself within a month considering my hourly rate. The most valuable purchase was an advanced prototyping plugin that handled complex interactions I couldn’t achieve with native Figma tools. Another worthwhile investment was a content management plugin that automated text and image updates across multiple artboards. What convinced me to pay was trying the free tiers first and realizing I was constantly hitting limitations during actual client work. The free versions gave me enough of a taste to understand the value proposition, but when deadlines were tight, those premium features became essential rather than nice-to-have.