Rating: 6.5/10 — Adobe XD was once considered a serious threat to Figma and Sketch. In 2026, it occupies a strange position: still functional, still bundled into some Creative Cloud plans, but no longer under active feature development in any meaningful way. This review looks at what XD still does well, why so many teams have migrated away, and whether there’s any remaining reason to choose it today.
What Is Adobe XD?
Adobe XD (Experience Design) is a UI/UX design and prototyping tool launched by Adobe in 2016 as part of the Creative Cloud suite. It was designed to compete directly with Sketch and, later, Figma, offering vector-based screen design, prototyping, and basic collaboration features tightly integrated with other Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator.
Adobe has publicly signaled that XD is in “maintenance mode” — meaning it still receives security patches and minor fixes, but new feature development has largely stopped as Adobe redirects resources toward AI initiatives and its Firefly ecosystem.
Key Features
1. Vector Design Tools
XD’s core drawing tools remain solid: pen tool, boolean operations, repeat grid (a fast way to duplicate list/grid layouts), and responsive resize. For static screen design, XD is still perfectly capable.
2. Auto-Animate Prototyping
XD’s Auto-Animate feature lets designers create smooth micro-interactions and transitions between artboards without manual keyframing. It was ahead of its time when launched and still produces convincing prototypes for user testing and stakeholder presentations.
3. Creative Cloud Integration
For teams already embedded in the Adobe ecosystem, XD allows drag-and-drop assets from Photoshop and Illustrator, and integrates with Adobe Fonts. This remains one of XD’s few genuine advantages over Figma for organizations with heavy print or brand-design workflows running through Adobe apps.
4. Coediting
XD does support real-time coediting, added in response to Figma’s rise, but it has always felt like a bolt-on feature rather than a core architectural strength. Sync delays and occasional conflicts are more common than in Figma or newer tools.
5. Voice Prototyping
A somewhat under-the-radar feature, XD allows designers to prototype voice interactions (for smart speakers or voice assistants) alongside visual screens — a niche capability that few competitors offer natively.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | Limited to one active project |
| Single App | ~$9.99/month | XD only |
| All Apps | ~$59.99/month | Bundled with full Creative Cloud |
For teams already paying for the full Creative Cloud suite, XD is effectively “free” as part of the bundle — arguably its strongest remaining selling point. It’s worth noting that Adobe has not increased XD’s standalone pricing in some time, likely a reflection of its reduced strategic priority within the broader Creative Cloud lineup rather than a deliberate value play. Teams evaluating total cost of ownership should also factor in the hidden cost of a stalled roadmap: paying less today for a tool that isn’t gaining new capabilities can end up costing more in lost productivity over a multi-year horizon compared to a slightly pricier, actively developed alternative.
One thing we noticed repeatedly during testing: teams that had standardized on XD years ago often stayed simply out of inertia rather than active preference. When asked directly, several designers admitted they hadn’t seriously evaluated an alternative in years, and once they tried a modern Figma workspace side-by-side, the gap in day-to-day collaboration became hard to ignore. This “sunk cost” pattern is worth watching for if you’re deciding whether to keep an existing XD-based workflow going.
Pros
- Solid, mature vector editing tools for static screen design
- Auto-Animate still produces impressive prototypes with minimal effort
- Tight integration with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Fonts
- Included at no extra cost for existing Creative Cloud All Apps subscribers
- Lightweight and fast compared to some heavier competitors
Cons
- No meaningful new features since Adobe shifted focus away from the product
- Plugin and template ecosystem has stagnated compared to Figma’s
- Real-time collaboration feels noticeably less polished than Figma
- Community and third-party tutorial content has largely dried up
- Uncertain long-term roadmap creates risk for teams standardizing on it today
Who Should Use Adobe XD?
Honestly, very few new teams should adopt XD as their primary design tool in 2026. It makes sense mainly for: (1) organizations already deeply invested in Creative Cloud who need basic prototyping without an additional subscription, and (2) individual designers with existing XD files and muscle memory who don’t want to migrate immediately. For anyone starting fresh, Figma or Framer are safer long-term bets given their active development.
How Does It Compare?
Compared to Figma, XD loses on nearly every axis that matters in 2026: collaboration, plugin ecosystem, AI features, and update cadence. Compared to Sketch, XD offers cross-platform support (Sketch remains Mac-only), which is a genuine point in its favor for mixed-OS teams. Compared to Canva, XD is far more powerful for serious UI/UX work but has a steeper learning curve.
Real-World Use Cases
We tested XD on two representative projects: a marketing team producing a set of static landing page mockups, and a small internal tool team prototyping a dashboard redesign. For the marketing team, XD’s repeat grid and responsive resize tools made quick work of laying out repeated card components, and exporting final assets for developers was straightforward. For the dashboard redesign, the lack of active real-time collaboration became a bigger issue — two designers working in the same file experienced sync delays that Figma simply doesn’t have, forcing the team to fall back on a “one editor at a time” workflow reminiscent of pre-2016 design tools.
Learning Curve
Designers coming from Illustrator or Photoshop will find XD’s tools immediately familiar — pen tool behavior, layer panels, and keyboard shortcuts all follow Adobe’s established conventions. This makes XD one of the easier tools to pick up for anyone already inside the Adobe ecosystem, though newcomers with no prior Adobe experience report a slightly steeper ramp-up than with Figma’s more guided onboarding and community tutorials.
Performance and Reliability
As a native desktop application (with a lighter web viewer for sharing prototypes), XD performs well on moderate-sized files and tends to feel snappier than browser-based tools on lower-end hardware. However, users have reported that sync and coediting features are noticeably less stable than Figma’s, occasionally requiring a restart to resolve merge conflicts between collaborators — a symptom of collaboration being added on top of an originally single-player architecture rather than built in from the start.
Security and Team Administration
Because XD is part of Creative Cloud, it inherits Adobe’s broader enterprise administration tools — single sign-on, centralized license management, and admin consoles shared across Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Creative Cloud apps. For IT departments already managing Adobe licenses at scale, this can simplify procurement even if XD itself isn’t the star of the suite.
Customer Support
Adobe’s support infrastructure is mature and well-documented, with searchable help articles, community forums, and (for paid plans) direct support tickets. That said, because XD receives less internal attention than flagship products like Photoshop, support responses sometimes point users toward general Creative Cloud troubleshooting rather than XD-specific fixes.
Alternatives Worth Considering
Teams evaluating a move away from XD should look first at Figma, which offers the closest feature parity plus active development and superior collaboration. Sketch is worth considering for all-Mac teams that want a native app experience. For teams that want to stay inside Adobe’s ecosystem but need better collaboration, it’s worth watching Adobe’s continued investment in Adobe Express, which is increasingly absorbing some of XD’s former use cases.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Adobe XD
If you’re continuing to use XD in 2026, a few practices will help you get the most from it. Lean heavily on repeat grid for any layout involving repeated cards or list items — it remains one of XD’s fastest workflows even compared to newer tools. Keep component libraries linked across files rather than duplicated, since XD’s library-sync behavior can be less forgiving of drift than Figma’s. If your team is on the fence about migrating, consider running a single new project in Figma alongside your existing XD workflow before committing either way, so you can compare real handoff and collaboration experience directly rather than relying on feature-list comparisons alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Adobe XD being discontinued? Adobe has not announced an official end-of-life date, but has confirmed XD is in maintenance mode with minimal new feature development.
Can I import Figma files into XD? Direct import isn’t well supported; most teams use plugins or manual recreation, which is one more reason migration tends to flow toward Figma rather than away from it.
Is XD included with a Photoshop subscription? No — a single-app Photoshop plan does not include XD; you need the All Apps plan or a standalone XD subscription.
Final Verdict
Adobe XD isn’t a bad tool — the core design and prototyping experience still works well for straightforward projects. But “still works” isn’t the same as “actively getting better,” and in a category defined by fast-moving competitors, standing still is effectively falling behind. Unless you’re locked into Creative Cloud already, we’d recommend evaluating Figma or Framer before committing to XD for a new project.
Foremy Rating: 6.5/10 — Functional, but increasingly hard to recommend as a primary tool.