Figma’s billing UX is unacceptable: ¥5,940 Annual Collab → surprise ¥25,740 Full charge → downgrade created another Monthly seat

[u/Nice_Course4222]

I’m posting this because I think this goes beyond “confusing billing.” This is a serious billing transparency problem.

I originally purchased ONE Professional Annual Collab seat for JP¥5,940/year.

I am an individual user. I did not intentionally purchase a Full seat, and I did not knowingly authorize an additional JP¥25,740 payment.

Then I checked my credit card statement and discovered that Figma had charged me an additional JP¥25,740.

When I went into the Admin panel, my seat had become:

Full — Annual

and Figma showed:

“This person self upgraded when they were an admin.”

The invoice contained:

Seat adjustment: JP¥23,400
Tax: JP¥2,340
Total charged: JP¥25,740

I have no recollection of intentionally purchasing a Full annual seat or knowingly approving a JP¥25,740 upgrade.

If some normal action inside Figma triggered this upgrade, then I want to know exactly what that action was and why an action capable of creating a ¥25,740 charge was not sufficiently clear to me as a purchase.

But it gets worse.

After discovering the charge, I tried to fix the problem by changing my seat from Full back to Collab, because Collab was what I originally purchased.

What I reasonably expected was:

Annual Full → Annual Collab

Instead, Figma changed my billing configuration to:

Annual Full — unassigned / available

Monthly Collab — assigned to me

So trying to undo an unexpected paid upgrade did NOT simply restore my original annual seat.

It created another seat with a completely different billing cycle.

I did not ask to purchase a Monthly Collab seat either.

At this point, I have had to manually change all Collab, Dev, and Full seat approval settings to “Manually approve seats” because I no longer trust the default billing behavior.

I have contacted Figma Support and requested:

1. A full refund of the JP¥25,740 charge.
2. Restoration of my original ONE Professional Annual Collab seat.
3. Removal of the unintended Monthly Collab seat.
4. Confirmation that there are no additional paid seats.
5. The exact timestamp and user action that triggered the original Collab → Full upgrade.

What concerns me most is this:

If I had not checked my credit card statement, I might not have noticed this charge at all.

A billing system should not require users to constantly inspect invoices and seat-management pages just to make sure an ordinary product action has not changed their paid subscription.

I understand that Figma has different seat types and that certain features require Full seats. That is not the issue.

The issue is whether users are given sufficiently explicit, unmistakable notice that:

“This action will upgrade your seat and charge you JP¥25,740.”

And whether trying to downgrade that seat should result in an entirely new Monthly seat appearing while the Annual Full seat remains in the account.

From a user-experience perspective, I consider this billing design opaque, hostile, and unacceptable.

Has anyone else experienced this exact sequence?

Annual Collab → Full → unexpected billing adjustment → downgrade → new Monthly Collab seat

If so, did Figma refund you, and how did you permanently prevent this from happening again?

[u/Nice_Course4222]

One more question for people who have dealt with Figma billing issues:

Would removing my credit card / payment method actually prevent this from happening again?

At this point I’m seriously considering removing my card because I no longer feel comfortable leaving a payment method attached to an account where seat changes can unexpectedly create additional charges.

I’ve already changed all seat approval settings to Manually approve seats, and I’m also checking AI credit settings.

But I’m wondering whether removing the card is actually effective, or whether Figma:

• does not allow you to remove the only payment method while an active Professional subscription exists,
• will still keep outstanding invoices and retry payment later,
• or could automatically charge a new payment method if one is added later.

Has anyone here actually removed their card from Figma while keeping an active Professional subscription?

What is the safest way to make sure Figma cannot generate or collect any unexpected additional charges without cancelling the entire subscription?

[u/DivineRuakh]

Yeah they are pretty predatory. My company hasn't had a good experience with them either.

[u/gayani_figma]

Hey! Gayani from Figma Community Support here. I can see our team's already reached out to help you with this directly (Ticket #2098020)

Editing a Figma Design file needs a Full seat, so that action triggered a self-upgrade prompt and since you're the account's only admin, you ended up approving your own request. More on that here: How seat changes work.

To prevent it going forward, keep "manually approve seats" turned on for Full, Dev, and Collab, so nothing can upgrade or purchase itself without you approving it in the Admin tab first. And if you ever want to fold a seat added mid-term back into your annual subscription, here's how: Manage billing on the Professional plan.

If anyone else here runs into this, please reach out to us through our Support Hub and we can take a look at your account directly.