Something changed in this Figma design.Here is exactly what.

Open the file here, pick two points from its version history, and every layer that was added, removed or modified is listed frame by frame and property by property: size, color, text, auto layout, styles and tokens. There is nothing to install and no snapshot to configure first, because it reads the version history Figma already keeps for the file.

Not for comparing. Figma saves a version history and can restore or duplicate an older version, but it will not tell you what is different between two of them. You get a list of save points and two canvases to check with your eyes. That gap is what this fills.

Yes. Every save point in the file is listed with its label, who saved it and when. Compare a version against the one before it and you get the change list for that save alone: which frames it touched, and every property that moved inside each one, old value beside new. Widen the range to a version from last month and you get everything since, in the same shape.

The same way, and it is where property-level detail earns itself. A swapped instance, a re-bound variable and a corner radius nudged by two pixels look identical on a canvas at arm's length. Changes come back grouped per frame with a rollup of the styles and tokens that moved, so a library update reads as a list you can check off instead of a hunt.

No, comparisons run between two versions of the same file, because a file's version history is what defines the before and the after. A duplicate starts a fresh history with no shared point to compare against, so a copy made to try an idea is better kept as a branch or a saved version in the original.

No, a free Figma account can sign in and compare. What a free plan limits is how far back you can look: Figma keeps roughly 30 days of version history on the Starter plan and the full history on paid plans, and you can only compare versions Figma still holds.

Yes, and it is the reason the share links exist. A link serves the comparison that was already captured, so the reader does not need access to the Figma file itself. For an audience that will not read a property list, there is a curated version: pick the frames worth showing, give it a title and a description, and it goes out as a plain-language summary of the release. Either way they sign in with Figma once, which is how a review knows who has read it, and a free account covers that.

Compare the version you built from with the one you have been handed. What comes back is only the layers that are not the same, and for each of them the old value next to the new one. A redesign that looks like a rewrite usually turns out to be a dozen edits, and this is the list of them.

Exact values, on both sides. Fills and strokes as hex with alpha, sizes to half a pixel, position relative to the parent, padding on all four sides, item spacing, line height, letter spacing, font weight, stroke weight, corner radius, and shadow color, offset, blur and spread. Text is compared word by word, so a copy edit highlights the words that changed instead of handing you two paragraphs to read twice.

No, and that is deliberate. A layer set to hug or fill is sized by Figma's layout engine rather than by a person, and a child inside auto layout is positioned by it too, so those axes are skipped. Without that, editing one component reports every instance of it as moved and resized, and the real change is buried in a few hundred rows of noise.

Yes. Variable bindings are compared per property, so re-pointing a fill from one token to another shows up as its own change rather than as nothing at all, and a value moving behind a token is not confused with someone hand-picking a color. Whether those read as names or as raw ids depends on your Figma plan, which the API section below covers.

Not today. A share link is how a comparison leaves the app: it opens for anyone signed in with Figma, without access to the original file, and it keeps working without re-fetching anything. The companion plugin is the other integration point, and it pushes into the app rather than pulling out of it.

No, it is optional and everything works from the site on its own. It adds two things: jumping straight from a frame you have selected in Figma to that frame here, and design variable names, so colors, spacing and type read the way your team named them instead of as raw ids. One run per file covers the whole team.

Read access, and nothing else. The consent screen lists current_user:read, file_content:read, file_versions:read, file_metadata:read and project_metadata:read. There is no write scope in that list, so nothing here can edit, move, comment on, rename or delete anything in your files. Your Figma token is sealed into your own session cookie and is never written to the database, and signing out drops it.

No. The REST API gives you a file's version list and the full document JSON at any one of those versions, and there it stops. Walking both documents, matching layers across them, working out which differences a person actually made and which are the layout engine reflowing, and rolling the result up per frame is all work you do yourself. That work is this app.

Because Figma meters its API per user rather than per app, and downloading a file's full contents is the most expensive call it offers. How much you get depends on your plan and seat type: an editor seat on a paid plan has room to work, while a view or collab seat can be capped at as few as six full file downloads a month. Every app connected to that Figma account draws from the same budget, so the ceiling belongs to your Figma account rather than to this site.

The compare stops and shows you what Figma said, including how long it wants you to wait. A short burst clears in seconds or minutes. A wait measured in hours or days means the budget for that seat is spent and it resets with the next cycle. Nothing already loaded is lost: comparisons fetched earlier still open, and share links keep working for everyone you sent them to.

By never paying for the same comparison twice. A diff between two saved versions can never change, so both files are cached and the result is stored the first time it runs. Re-opening that comparison, sharing it, or having five teammates read the same review costs no further Figma calls. Only a genuinely new pair of versions spends anything, and comparing against the live state of a file is the one thing that always has to be fetched again.

Because the endpoint that returns variable names, and the file_variables:read scope it needs, exist only on Figma Enterprise. On any other plan the REST API hands back a binding to something like VariableID:1:23 and no way to ask what that is. The companion plugin closes the gap from the other side: run it once inside the file and it sends the names, collections and modes over, after which the same diffs read in your team's own words.