How to Inspect Figma Designs Without Dev Mode
Figma Dev Mode costs $25/seat/month and requires a paid Figma plan. For many teams, that's a steep price to pay just to check spacing values and copy CSS. Here's how to get the same information for free.
The $25/seat problem
Before Dev Mode, every Figma user could inspect layers and see properties. When Figma moved inspect features behind Dev Mode in 2024, teams faced a choice: pay $25/seat/month per developer, or go back to manual handoff.
For a team of 5 developers, that's $1,500/year just to view padding values and copy CSS. Most developers only need inspect for 10-15 minutes per task — hardly worth a dedicated seat.
Option 1: Use a Figma inspect plugin
Several Figma plugins can extract design specs without Dev Mode. The approach is simple: the designer runs the plugin on their design, and the specs are exported somewhere developers can access them.
Peezytakes this approach further — it extracts specs into interactive kanban cards. Developers get a full inspect canvas where they can click layers, measure spacing, and copy CSS, Tailwind, or JSX code. The plugin works with Figma's free plan.
How it works:
- Install the Peezy Figma plugin (free)
- Select any frame, component, or screen in Figma
- Click “Extract” — specs appear as a card on your board
- Share the board link with your developers (no account needed to view)
Option 2: Use Figma's free inspect (limited)
Figma still provides basic inspect for free — you can see some properties when you select a layer. However, the free version is limited:
- No code snippets (CSS, iOS, Android)
- No distance measurements between elements
- No component property inspection
- No design token values
For simple designs with obvious spacing, this might be enough. For anything with precise specs, you'll need a better tool.
Option 3: Export and inspect manually
The low-tech approach: designers export annotated screenshots or write specs in a Notion doc. This works but creates problems:
- Specs get outdated when designs change
- No interactive measurement — you trust the annotations
- Specs get buried in Slack threads and Notion pages
- No code output — developers translate visuals to CSS manually
Quick comparison
| Method | Cost | Code output | Interactive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma Dev Mode | $25/seat/mo | CSS | Yes |
| Peezy | Free / $14/mo | CSS + Tailwind + JSX | Yes |
| Figma free inspect | Free | No | Limited |
| Manual export | Free | No | No |
Our recommendation
If your team uses Figma and needs to inspect designs regularly, a dedicated inspect plugin is the best balance of cost and capability. You get interactive measurement, code output, and shareable specs without per-seat licensing.
See how Peezy compares to Figma Dev Mode for a detailed feature breakdown, or read the FAQ for more details.