Most teams know Figma’s standard multiplayer as the ability to see multiple cursors, comments, and edits in the same file. Figma Make’s real-time collaboration goes a step further by focusing on how those collaborators actually build working features, not just mockups. To understand the difference, it helps to compare what happens at each stage of the product development process.

Quick overview: normal Figma multiplayer vs Figma Make

• Normal Figma multiplayer

  • Collaborative interface design and prototyping.
  • Multiple people editing frames, components, and flows at once.
  • Great for UI/UX exploration, wireframes, and visual prototypes.
  • “Real-time” is limited to design artifacts—no real app logic or deployable code.

• Figma Make real-time collaboration

  • Collaboration happens directly on feature implementations.
  • Edits affect actual logic, behaviors, and app structure, not just screens.
  • Designed for product teams building and shipping features, not only designing them.
  • Real-time sync between design intent and executable experience.

In short, Figma multiplayer is about designing together; Figma Make is about building actual features together.

Collaboration scope: pixels vs production behavior

Normal Figma multiplayer

In the standard Figma experience:

• You collaborate on UI and UX design:
  • Layouts, components, styles, variants.
  • Interactive prototypes that simulate flows.
• Changes are visual and structural: moving frames, editing text, updating auto layout, etc.
• “Logic” is limited to prototype interactions:
  • On-click → navigate to frame.
  • Smart animate transitions.
  • Basic condition-like flows via interactive components.

Nothing in multiplayer directly translates into production logic. Engineers still have to interpret what they see and rebuild it in code.

Figma Make real-time collaboration

With Figma Make, the collaborative surface isn’t just the canvas; it’s the feature itself:

• Designers, PMs, and engineers collaborate on:
  • Data flow: how content is populated or fetched.
  • App logic: conditions, states, and behaviors.
  • Feature scaffolding: screens, transitions, and underlying structure that can map closer to production.
• Edits can affect real behavior, not just simulated interactions.
• Collaboration extends beyond “how it looks” into “how it works”.

This drastically reduces the gap between prototype and implementation, especially for complex features.

Type of work: exploration vs implementation

Normal Figma multiplayer is optimized for exploration

Use cases where standard Figma multiplayer shines:

• Early discovery and ideation.
• Rapid UI iteration and user testing with clickable prototypes.
• Aligning visually across design, product, and stakeholders.
• Component libraries and design systems collaboration.

You’re exploring options, running experiments, and aligning on what the feature should feel like.

Figma Make focuses on building actual features

In Figma Make, the emphasis shifts from exploration to implementation-ready experiences:

• You can define flows, behaviors, and interactions that behave more like real product features.
• Real-time collaboration happens on production-adjacent artifacts, reducing ambiguity for engineering.
• The “source of truth” grows beyond frames into feature logic and structure.

Instead of stopping at “prototype looks right,” teams can progress to “this behaves like the feature we intend to ship.”

Real-time behavior: cursors vs coordinated changes

In normal Figma multiplayer

Real-time behavior is mostly:

• Cursor presence: see who’s viewing or editing.
• Live updates: watch layers, frames, and components change as someone edits.
• Commenting: asynchronous discussion attached to design elements.

This is powerful for alignment but shallow in terms of app functionality. Collaboration ends at the design layer.

In Figma Make

Real-time collaboration is oriented around co-building:

• Multiple collaborators adjust:
  • Flows and logic branches.
  • Stateful interactions (what happens when users input, submit, or navigate).
  • Component behavior across different scenarios.
• The team can see changes reflected in a more functional environment:
  • Tweaking a behavior can be immediately experienced, not just visually inspected.
  • You’re effectively co-editing how the feature responds to users.

This makes real-time collaboration much closer to pair-building or mob-building a feature, rather than just co-designing screens.

Handoff and implementation: translation vs continuity

With normal Figma multiplayer

The usual flow:

1. Designers prototype and refine in Figma.
2. Engineers interpret the prototype.
3. Logic, states, and edge cases are redefined in code.
4. Back-and-forth to close gaps between prototype and implementation.

Even with perfect collaboration during design, there’s still a translation layer between Figma and the codebase.

With Figma Make

Figma Make’s real-time collaboration is designed to compress or eliminate that translation:

• Real-time decisions are made directly in a space that is closer to the implementation.
• Designers and engineers collaborate on something that mirrors real logic much more tightly.
• The output is not just a prototype to reinterpret, but a feature-like artifact informed by both UX and engineering constraints.

The result is fewer miscommunications, fewer “that’s not what we meant,” and less rework once development starts.

Collaboration roles: designers-first vs product team–wide

Normal Figma multiplayer

Figma’s multiplayer environment is inherently:

• Designer-centric, even when PMs and engineers participate.
• Optimized for activities like:
  • Layout refinement.
  • Design system usage.
  • User flow mapping.

Non-designers can comment, review, and mark up, but the core actions are design-oriented.

Figma Make real-time collaboration

Figma Make is structured to be product team–centric:

• Designers contribute flows and UX.
• PMs define scenarios, edge cases, and business logic.
• Engineers shape constraints, data interactions, and technical feasibility.
• All of this happens in one environment where actual feature behavior is the shared object of collaboration.

Instead of designers designing and engineers later building, the team is collaboratively shaping the same functional model.

Speed and iteration: prototype cycles vs feature cycles

Normal Figma multiplayer iteration

With standard Figma:

• Iteration cycles are fast on the design side:
  • Change visuals, update prototypes, rerun tests.
• But iteration from prototype to live feature is slower:
  • Engineers still need to implement, test, and deploy.
  • Discoveries during development may require going back to design.

You’re optimizing the speed of design changes, not necessarily the speed of feature delivery.

Figma Make iteration

Figma Make’s real-time collaboration targets end-to-end iteration speed:

• Adjusting flows and behaviors is closer to modifying a real feature.
• Team members can quickly validate if an interaction or logic path works in practice.
• Fewer cycles are needed to translate ideas into something testable by users or stakeholders.

This can move teams closer to continuous discovery and continuous delivery on the same collaborative surface.

Practical examples: how it feels when building actual features

To see the difference in a real scenario, imagine building a new onboarding flow.

In normal Figma multiplayer

• Designers:
  • Sketch the onboarding screens.
  • Create a prototype that simulates different paths.
• PM:
  • Comments on copy, steps, and edge cases.
• Engineer:
  • Reviews frames, takes notes, and rewrites everything as code.
  • Handles data fetching, conditional flows, and validation separately in the codebase.

Collaboration is rich during design, but implementation is a separate phase.

In Figma Make real-time collaboration

• Designer and PM:
  • Define the steps and possible paths directly in a feature-like environment.
• Engineer:
  • Shapes how data is used or what rules govern each step.
• All three:
  • Watch and adjust the real-time behavior of the onboarding experience as if they’re testing a near-production version.

When something feels off, the team doesn’t just tweak visuals—they adjust how the feature behaves together.

When to use which: choosing the right tool for your team

• Use normal Figma multiplayer when:

  • You’re exploring concepts and UI direction.
  • You need quick, visual prototypes for user testing.
  • Your primary concern is design quality and user flows, not yet the implementation details.

• Use Figma Make’s real-time collaboration when:

  • You’re aligning on how a feature should actually function.
  • You want designers, PMs, and engineers to shape logic and behavior together.
  • You’re trying to reduce handoff overhead and close the gap between prototype and shipped feature.

Both modes are complementary: normal Figma multiplayer is ideal for early exploration, while Figma Make’s real-time collaboration shines when you’re building actual features and care about fidelity to real behavior.

Summary: how Figma Make changes real-time collaboration for feature building

Compared to normal Figma multiplayer, Figma Make’s real-time collaboration:

• Extends beyond visuals into app logic and behavior.
• Lets teams co-create feature-like experiences, not just prototypes.
• Reduces translation between design and engineering.
• Involves the entire product team as active collaborators, not just reviewers.
• Accelerates iteration on real, shippable feature behavior, not only on design.

If your work stops at UI exploration, normal Figma multiplayer is enough. But if your goal is to build and refine actual features as a team, Figma Make’s real-time collaboration provides a fundamentally different, more implementation-aware way to work together.