# Figma API + MCP vs Kite (slim)

> Figma scores 63.4 (B) to Kite's 47 (D) for design files. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/figma-mcp-vs-kite-new.md (~5,750 tokens) · this version ~3,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/figma-mcp-vs-kite-new.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/figma-mcp-vs-kite-new
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-02
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Figma API + MCP scores 63.4 (B) on agent readiness against Kite's 47 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Kite leads on payments & pricing. Both do design files.

- Figma API + MCP: B 63.4, rank #429 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/figma-mcp.min.md
- Kite: D 47, rank #1039 of 1268 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kite-new.min.md
- Figma API + MCP, good for Design-to-code agents and teams already paying for Dev or Full seats. Ahead on Reliability, 64 against 33; Schema & documentation, 86 against 62; Agent ergonomics, 60 against 44; Security & auth, 71 against 50; Maintenance & community, 84 against 78; Transparency & trust, 67 against 44.
- Kite, good for Agents that make banners, social posts, landing pages and screens for a team that will edit and comment on them in a shared file, drawing in HTML and CSS against the team's design system and picking up changes from @-mention comments, without a desktop app or browser tab kept open. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 30 against 10. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Figma API + MCP | Kite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 64 | 33 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 86 | 62 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 60 | 44 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 71 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 10 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 78 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 67 | 44 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Figma API + MCP | Kite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Platform |
| Vendor | Figma | Kite |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.figma.com/v1` | `https://kite.new/api/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Licence | proprietary | Proprietary hosted service under Kite's terms of use (updated 8 September 2026). No source is published; the only public code is an MIT plugin manifest repository (itsloukman/kite-agent-plugins) that points agents at the hosted server |
| Tools exposed | 41 | 59 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.figma.mcp/mcp` | `new.kite/kite` |
| Last release | 2026-10-22 | 2026-11-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-11 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-10-14 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 456k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Figma API + MCP +31: Figma API + MCP 64 (Statuspage at status.figma.com with history, read from its Atom feed (20). From 3 August to 1 November the feed posts four incidents. The 27 September "Service disruption" ("Figma Services are degraded or unavailable because of failures with AWS and other dependencies", 01:04 to 02:32 UTC) hit every service and reads as a major. The 26 August "Figma MCP Disruption" (10:14 to about 14:03 UTC) kept "some Codex and ChatGPT users" from seeing MCP tools, so it's partial and minor. The 13 October Figma agent and Make errors and the 30 October Sites publishing problem don't touch the REST API or the MCP server. The 27 July file-editing incident left the window. One major (10). Published limits for REST by tier, seat and plan, and for MCP by seat (Full and Dev up to 200 calls a day and 10 a minute on Professional, 15 on Organization, 600 a day and 20 a minute on Enterprise; View and Collab 20 a month on every plan) (15). REST 429s carry `Retry-After`, `X-Figma-Plan-Tier` and `X-Figma-Rate-Limit-Type`. No idempotency guidance for comment or variable writes (12 of 15). No SLA found on the developer pages (0). REST is GA, and writing to the canvas is still "free during the beta period" on the MCP introduction (7 of 10).); Kite 33 (Hosted reading, for the platform and its remote MCP server. No public status page was found. None is linked from the docs or the footer, https://kite.new/status answers 404 and status.kite.new does not resolve (0). No readable incident history, so the floor (5). Limits are published with numbers on the account page, 200 agent actions a day on Free, reset at midnight UTC, unlimited on Pro; 60 new files an hour; 20 comments on one file every 10 minutes; 600 exported layers an hour; 20 keys; file caps of 400 MB and 250,000 layers. auth.md says registration and agent calls are rate-limited without a per-minute figure (12 of 15). 429 is documented in auth.md with 'back off' and no Retry-After, 401 with a refresh-once-then-rediscover rule, and the drawing guide says to edit layers in place rather than redraw; no idempotency key on any write and no safe-retry guidance for layer_draw, so a retried draw adds a second frame (6 of 15). No SLA. The terms (8 September 2026) say Kite is provided as is, uptime is not guaranteed and files may be lost (0). The hosted server carries no beta label and the registry entry is 1.0.0; the product launched on 6 October 2026 and the desktop apps are 0.1.16 (10). 0+5+12+6+0+10 = 33.)
- Schema & documentation, Figma API + MCP +24: Figma API + MCP 86 (Public OpenAPI spec in figma/rest-api-spec, with TypeScript types on npm (25). llms.txt at developers.figma.com (10). The MCP tools page explains each tool and splits read, write and Weave groups, but the server is closed, so we couldn't read its own tool definitions (13 of 20). Typed parameters with enums such as image `format` (png, jpg, svg, pdf) and `depth` limits (13 of 15). Reference examples throughout. We didn't read an error catalogue (10 of 15). A dated REST changelog with deprecation notices and v1 and v2 paths (15).); Kite 62 (MCP reading, since the MCP server is the only surface an outside agent reaches. No tool input schemas were read. The server card at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json declares tools without listing them, and llms-full.txt describes every tool in prose with argument names in the skill, so typed inputs are the vendor's to show and were not seen (10 of 25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt, skill.md, auth.md and pricing.md are served as text and Markdown (10). Descriptions say what each tool does and when to use it, such as file_search over file_list when the user describes a file, layer_edit rather than redrawing, never base64 in HTML, never a picture of a design, guide_read's six topics, and the view-only rule (16 of 20). Inputs named in the docs are typed in prose, with enumerations for audience (link, restricted), export formats (svg, react, tailwind, html), sticky colours, shader bases and guide topics, and bounds for videos (100 MB) and fonts (4 MB), but the main write tool takes one HTML string and layer_edit a free CSS object (8 of 15). Worked HTML examples in skill.md, a prompt per client page, and auth.md's 401, 400 and 429 responses; no example tool call or response and no MCP error shape (8 of 15). A dated changelog with 15 entries from 6 October to 1 November 2026 that names agent-facing changes (page, version, comment and export tools on 25 October), server version 1.0.0; no versioned tool surface or deprecation policy (10 of 15). 10+10+16+8+8+10 = 62.)
- Transparency & trust, Figma API + MCP +23: Figma API + MCP 67 (Closed service. The terms sit on www.figma.com, whose robots.txt disallows our crawler; held at 15 as whatsapp-cloud-api's licence line was with its terms unread (15). The privacy policy and sub-processor list read on 1 October are on the same host and are struck. The help centre's content-training article says training is on by default for Starter and Professional teams and off for Organization and Enterprise, that third-party model providers must delete inputs and outputs after processing, and that Figma upholds its data processing agreements, but it gives no retention period and has no second readable document to agree with (12 of 30). Dated deprecation notices on the developer changelog, such as the v1 projects endpoints on 10 August 2026, but no removal dates (13 of 20). The help article links a sub-processor list for Figma AI that we can't read and mentions data residency commitments without naming locations (5 of 20).); Kite 44 (Closed service. The terms of use (8 September 2026) run to about 200 words on content, prohibited use, links, availability and changes and name no legal entity, address or governing law, so the contracting party is unknown (8 of 30). The privacy policy (14 October 2026) names eight services, says files are not read, trained on or sold, discloses masked session replays and error replays, gives the agent token's 7-day life renewable to 90 days (matching auth.md and the integration page), the 30-day purge of deleted pages and the one-month deletion of a closed account's files, and the Figma token's handling; no DPA and no retention period for logs beyond the providers' own (20 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices; the terms promise email or in-app notice of changes that matter and the changelog dates additions, not removals (4 of 20). Telemetry (PostHog, Sentry) is disclosed with what it excludes and no opt-out beyond product-news emails; service locations are given only for PostHog and Sentry (US) (10 of 20). 8+20+4+10 = 42.)
- Security & auth, Figma API + MCP +21: Figma API + MCP 71 (OAuth 2 with per-resource scopes such as `file_content:read` and `file_comments:write` (the 22 October Teams endpoints add `teams:write`, `folders:write` and `team_members:write`), scoped personal access tokens, and plan access tokens with resource allowlists and expiry of up to a year. The MCP server signs in with OAuth and only catalogue-listed clients can connect (30). Read-only scopes give least privilege on REST. The MCP server has no documented read-only mode, and canvas writes such as `use_figma` run without a confirmation step (13 of 20). File content, layer names and comments written by collaborators reach the model as they are, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (3 of 15). Activity logs and an AI usage API for Enterprise (12 of 15). Figma runs a bug bounty programme on HackerOne (hackerone.com/figma, "Figma - Bug Bounty Program"). www.figma.com's robots.txt disallows our crawler on every path, so the security page's certifications read on 1 October are struck and security.txt stays unread. Graded as meta-marketing-api's 13 (bounty route confirmed elsewhere, the vendor's own security pages unread) (13 of 20).); Kite 50 (OAuth 2.1 with the authorization code flow, PKCE S256, dynamic registration of public clients, 7-day access tokens, 90-day refresh tokens that rotate on every use and revoke the connection if replayed, a revocation endpoint, bearer in the header only, and per-connection disconnect in Settings; one scope, pages, with the agent working under the user's full rights, and API keys that are per tool and revocable but unscoped (24 of 30). Least privilege comes from the file, not the token. A file shared view-only lets an agent read and comment but not draw, comment and download settings apply to agents, an agent cannot delete a file for good or touch the account, workspace or people, and each Mac-run request reaches only its file; no read-only mode on the hosted server and no confirmation for layer_remove, page_remove or version_restore (12 of 20). Comments, skills written by any editor, captured web pages and Figma pastes reach the model. The skill says a file's skills apply to that file only and never to sharing or people, and the Mac docs keep Agents Run Any Tool off by default because an agent reads comments and web pages and one could try to trick it; no guidance for the hosted server's own tools (8 of 15). Settings, Agents lists each connected app and key with when it connected and was last used, the board shows the agent's name while it works, and version history records agent saves; no per-call log for the operator (6 of 15). No security.txt (404), disclosure policy, bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001; SSO and SAML on Team (0 of 20). 24+12+8+6+0 = 50.)
- Payments & pricing, Kite +20: Figma API + MCP 10 (No x402 or other machine payment (0). Seat prices sit on www.figma.com/pricing, whose robots.txt disallows our crawler, so the 30 September reading is struck. MCP calls and the coming usage-based write tools have no per-call price on the developer pages (0 of 20). The help centre says "The Starter plan is a free Figma plan", but no readable page states whether a card is needed, so half the line, as anchor-browser's free tier with no card rule (10 of 20). View and Collab seats get 20 MCP calls a month. A person signs up in a browser and approves OAuth, and only catalogue clients can connect (0).); Kite 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, llms.txt, auth.md, the pricing pages or the terms (0). Plan prices are public and machine-readable at pricing.md, Free, Pro $20 per editor a month or $16 yearly, Team $35 or $28, with no per-call or per-action price since agent actions are counted on Free and unlimited on Pro (10 of 20). Free plan with 3 files and 200 agent actions a day, sign-up by emailed link or Google, no card mentioned anywhere (20). An agent can register itself as an OAuth client, but a person must sign up in a browser and click Allow, or make an API key in Settings (0). 0+10+20+0 = 30.)
- Agent ergonomics, Figma API + MCP +16: Figma API + MCP 60 (REST file reads can be cut down with `ids` and `depth`. The MCP server lists 41 tools (18 read, 14 write, 9 Weave; 35 on 1 October), with some remote-only and others desktop-only, and we found no toolsets or read-only subset (15 of 25). Cursor pagination on comments, versions and folders (16 of 20). REST errors carry a status and message (13 of 20). We couldn't confirm readOnlyHint or destructiveHint on the closed MCP server, and REST writes have no idempotency keys. `weave_run_tool` stops with `cost_confirmation_required` until the caller acknowledges the credit cost (8 of 20). TypeScript types for REST and the Code Connect CLI, but no official REST client in two languages (8 of 15).); Kite 44 (MCP reading. 59 tools (61 through the Mac app) with no toolsets, read-only subset or dynamic loading; guide_read moves the long instructions out of tool descriptions into on-demand reads, but tools/list still carries 59 definitions (5 of 25). Output is sized by asking for one page in file_outline, one node in layer_source and layer_render, layer_search by name, words or type, file_search over content, comment_list with unread_only and include_resolved, request_list per file; file_list is newest-first with no documented paging (14 of 20). OAuth errors are documented with recovery steps, web_capture says when a page was cut short and an unknown shader base is refused, but a picture Kite cannot fetch is left out silently and no tool error shape is documented (9 of 20). No readOnlyHint or destructiveHint documented and no idempotency keys; version_save before a big change and version_restore undoable both ways, file_archive reversible and no permanent delete, layer_draw's replace argument for swapping a node (7 of 20). Few required parameters (file_new takes a title, layer_draw a file and HTML, finish_working a file), defaults in the drawing guide, and an MIT plugin repository for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Grok Bot; no SDK, since the vendor points at the official MCP SDKs (9 of 15). 5+14+9+7+9 = 44.)