Licensing

Figma plan renewals: how seats are billed, why they only come off at renewal and what cancellation does to your files

21 October 202611 min read

A Figma subscription keeps going until someone stops it. Figma's Terms of Service say seat subscriptions renew automatically on a monthly or annual basis, at the rate and seat quantity in effect on the renewal date, and that quantities purchased cannot be decreased during the subscription term. So the seats you pay for next year are, by default, the seats you have on the day the plan renews, including any added along the way.

This guide covers how Figma bills seats, what happens when you add or remove them, how the annual renewal works, how to cancel and what cancelling does to your files. It is based on Figma's Terms of Service effective 11 March 2026 and on Figma help centre articles as they stood in October 2026. The Terms of Service cover the Starter and Professional plans; Figma says the Organization and Enterprise plans are governed by its Software Services Agreement instead, so on those plans read your agreement and any order form alongside this guide.

What you pay for: every seat on the plan

Seat types: Figma's article on managing seats says a person's seat type, Full, Dev, Collab or View, decides which Figma products they can use. View seats are free and can only view and comment.
Assigned or not: the same article says you are billed for all seats on your plan, whether they are available (unassigned) or assigned to someone. An empty seat still costs money.
Seats last the term: it also says seats are purchased for the duration of your billing term.
No refunds: the Terms say fees paid are non-refundable unless the Terms say otherwise, and Figma's article on upgrading or downgrading says payments for Figma subscriptions are non-refundable.

Monthly or annual on the Professional plan

Figma's article on billing for the Professional plan says that on the monthly plan you buy a number of seats for the month and are invoiced each month, and on the annual plan you buy a number of seats for the year. The two behave differently when you want fewer seats:

Monthly: the help centre says there is no renewal period for monthly subscriptions, that you can change seats at any time, and that unassigned seats are not renewed for the next month. They are removed automatically at the next monthly invoice.
Annual: you can remove available (unassigned) seats at your next plan renewal, not before. The article's advice for a seat you no longer need is to make that adjustment at the next renewal.
Switching to annual: the billing article says you can add an annual plan from Admin, then Settings, then Add an annual plan in the Plan section, and that Figma charges for the annual subscription on your next monthly billing date.

Adding seats mid-term

Adding is straightforward and, depending on your settings, can happen without anyone in finance noticing. The Terms say seats added during the term are charged from the date of approval, prorated at a daily rate to the end of the term, and added to the next invoice.

Annual Professional: the help centre says new seats are billed on a separate monthly subscription for just those seats. Its billing article says that when you add annual seats, Figma charges a prorated fee for each seat at your next monthly invoice, covering the seat for the rest of the annual billing period.
Organization and Enterprise: Figma's article on billing for these plans says they have an annual subscription with quarterly invoices, and that a new paid seat is billed at a prorated amount from the date it is assigned through the end of the annual term, on the next quarterly invoice. It adds that Figma changed its billing model in March 2025, and that organisations on older multi-year agreements may still have seat changes handled through a quarterly true-up instead. If you are not sure which applies, it says to ask your Figma account team or Figma Support.
Approval settings: under Admin, then Dashboard, admins can choose to manually approve seats, manually approve unless a seat is available, or auto-approve seats. Figma's article on additional charges says that with auto-approval, if no seats are available, a new seat is purchased.

If you want every new paid seat to be a deliberate decision, set seat requests to manual approval and make sure the admins approving them know each one adds to the bill until at least the next renewal.

Removing seats: people now, money at renewal

You can take a paid seat away from a person at any time, but that does not reduce what you pay. Figma's help centre says you can move people to a free View seat at any time during the billing cycle, that Figma will not issue a prorated refund when you downgrade a user to a View seat or remove the seat, and that the seat they held stays available for the rest of the subscription period. On the Organization and Enterprise plans, the billing article says unassigned seats remain available for reuse until your next renewal.

Moving someone to View has a side effect worth planning for. The seats article says a user moved to a View seat can no longer edit files, and that draft files they own lose access for collaborators unless they are moved to a shared folder or transferred before the downgrade. Ask leavers to move their drafts first, and add it to your offboarding checklist.

The renewal window

Professional, annual: Figma's billing article says that thirty days before the annual plan renews, a banner appears at the top of your Figma admin, and that the seat review is available from 30 days before the renewal up until the renewal date. You can reach it from the banner or from Admin, then Billing. It also says that if you renew fewer annual seats than you currently have, the remaining seats are billed monthly, so move those people to View or remove them too, or you will keep paying for them month by month.
Organization and Enterprise: the billing article says these subscriptions renew automatically each year, that a Review seats banner appears in the admin dashboard thirty days before the renewal date, and that seat adjustments made in that period are included in the renewal.
Bought through an order form: the seats article says your renewal experience may differ. You get the banner 60 days before renewal, but may not be able to reduce seats directly in Figma admin, and reducing them may mean working with your Figma account team and issuing a new order form. Start that conversation early rather than in the final weeks.

The Terms do not set a separate notice period for cutting seats on the Professional plan, but the window above is the only time the help centre describes for doing it, and it closes on the renewal date. Treat the opening of that window as the start of a deadline, not a reminder you can leave until later.

How to cancel a Figma Professional plan

The Terms say you can give notice of cancellation through your Figma account settings, that it must be given before the end of the current term, and that it takes effect at the end of that term. Figma's article on upgrading or downgrading says admins can cancel a Professional plan, and gives these steps:

In the browser or the Figma desktop app, find the Professional team in the file browser sidebar.
Click Admin, then select the Settings tab.
In the Plan section, click Cancel plan.
Select the most appropriate reason and click Cancel plan.

For the Organization and Enterprise plans, the same article says organisation admins can cancel an Organization plan, and that to downgrade from Organization or Enterprise you contact Figma's support team. Whichever route you use, keep a record of when you did it; see how to serve a notice of non-renewal for keeping proof of the date.

What cancelling does to the team and its files

Cancelling a Professional plan does not delete the team. Figma's article says it downgrades the team to the free Starter plan at the end of the billing period, that you keep all Professional features until then, and that cancelling does not automatically delete your account. The Starter plan's limits are what bite:

Files: Starter allows 3 Figma Design and Figma Sites files in a folder, and 3 files each for FigJam and Figma Slides. If you are over those limits, Figma will prevent you from editing your files. To keep editing, the article says to move them to another team or to your team drafts.
Folders: a Starter team has one folder. If you have more than one, Figma will lock your team and prevent you from editing your files.
Sites: published sites in Figma Sites are unpublished automatically when you downgrade.
Figma Make: published apps stay published at their figma.site subdomain, but any connected custom domain is removed.
Invoices: the article recommends downloading copies of your account invoices before you downgrade.

If you want to delete the team altogether, the article says you have to cancel the Professional plan first. And if the agreement itself ends, the Terms say that, to the extent the law allows, Figma will make your content available for electronic retrieval for 30 days, after which it may delete it. Do the tidying, consolidating and exporting while the paid plan is still running, not after the team has been locked.

Price changes

The Terms say Figma may change its fees at any time, that changes to an existing recurring subscription take effect at the next order or renewal unless Figma says otherwise, and that notice of pricing changes may come by email or through the Figma platform. Where Figma makes a change during the term and you object, the Terms give you 30 days from the notice to end the rest of the term, with a refund of prepaid fees for the unused portion. Because renewal is at the rate in effect on the renewal date, read any pricing email from Figma as soon as it arrives and decide before the renewal whether to cut seats or leave. For a contract you are negotiating, see how to cap a renewal uplift.

A routine for the Figma renewal

For each Figma team or organisation, write down the plan, monthly or annual billing, the number of Full, Dev and Collab seats, the renewal date, who the admins are, the seat approval setting, and anything in an order form that changes the defaults.
Set seat requests to manual approval if you do not want seats bought automatically.
Before the review window opens, find the paid seats nobody needs: leavers, people who only view and comment, and unassigned seats. Move people to View once their drafts are moved or transferred. See reclaiming unused seats for the wider process.
When the Review seats banner appears, 30 days before renewal (or 60 days on an order form), set the seat count for the next term and keep a record of what you chose.
If you are leaving, consolidate or move files to fit Starter's limits, download invoices, and cancel before the term ends.

Each vendor in this series handles seats and renewals its own way. If you also run Dropbox or Zoom, read those guides too rather than applying one rule to every tool.

Tracking Figma in StackTrackr

Record each Figma team or organisation as its own tool. On annual billing, enter the cost of the full year with an annual billing cycle; on monthly billing, enter the monthly cost with a monthly billing cycle. Tick Auto-renews, set the renewal date to the end of the current term, and under License key and seats enter the number of paid seats, updating it when seats are added mid-term. Make the tool's owner a Figma admin who decides on seats, so the reminders reach someone who can act on them.

Figma's terms let you cancel right up to the end of the term, but the seat review window opens 30 days before an annual renewal, or 60 days on an order form. Entering that number as the notice period makes StackTrackr's cancellation deadline land on the day the window opens, so the Cancel by column shows when the seat review should start, and you are reminded ahead of it and again on the day. StackTrackr's Starter plan alerts at 30 and 7 days; Team and up use a cadence you set, 90, 60, 30 and 7 days by default. On a monthly Figma plan, leave the notice period blank and review seats before each billing date. Once you have cancelled, switch auto-renew off, so the reminders count down to the day the plan ends.

If Figma gives notice of a price change, schedule the price change with the date it takes effect so your forecasts include it. Keep any order form, renewal confirmation and cancellation record in the tool's document vault. Have a look at what it tracks, or start a free trial and add your Figma plan first.