The short answer
Bolt and Figma do different jobs. Figma is where a designer draws an interface; Bolt writes a working front end from a prompt. Pick Figma if you have designers and need precise, shared design files. Pick Bolt if you are a non-designer who wants a clickable app or demo today.
That is where we are. We still pay for Figma, but since mid-2025 we open it less, because AI builders like Bolt get us to a usable interface faster. We never ran the same design through both tools, so this page is about how our habits changed, not a feature test.
What we built with each
Bolt builds
- Mate: Jordan scaffolded the first version, including the left-hand sidebar, in bolt.new, then finished it in Cursor with Supabase (Episode 5, at 08:57).
- Daily Check-in: Sam built it in Bolt "in between meetings over a few days," with Supabase and a GitHub cron job. The teams were using it the week it went live (Episode 7, at 06:59).
- Solopreneur finance dashboard for Collective: the first version went up in Bolt "really, really quickly," then moved to Cursor and OpenAI Codex to wire up the APIs (Episode 14, at 08:00).
- Make It Rain mini-game: built entirely in Bolt with ThreeJS for Hooman Radfar (Episode 14, at 11:05).
Figma use
We have no Figma builds on the show. Figma is part of how Jordan and Sam's company works: Sam said in Episode 2 we hold about 10 Figma licenses, "if not more," and that he can "whip some things up pretty quickly" in it even though neither host is a designer.
Head-to-head
The key moment is Episode 2, when Sam asked whether tools like Bolt were eating into our Figma habit. Jordan agreed:
I think, like, we've seen our own Figma consumption go down. I don't think it's gone to zero, but it's definitely gone down over the last year or so with the ability to use different AI tools like you mentioned, like Bolt, Lovable, VO, dot dev.
— Jordan Metzner, Episode 2
At 29:16 he described the workflow that replaced it: go into Cursor or Bolt and ask it to "design me a beautiful interface that does this."
Where each one fell short
Bolt. It is a front-end tool first. In Episode 19 Jordan pointed out that adding AI to a Bolt or Lovable app means building a back end, choosing an API and handing over keys. Almost every Bolt build we showed left Bolt for Cursor to get finished. By Episode 38 (April 2026), Sam said the Bolt and Lovable demos were from "back in the day" and we were "not really using" them anymore.
Figma. Our complaint was about AI, not design quality. Jordan noted that Figma's first AI feature got it "in some trouble" because the generated UI looked like other apps. In Episode 11 (September 2025) he guessed Figma was growing in enterprises that were slow to adopt AI, and that it had the capital to buy the kinds of AI tools we talk about each week.
What our guests use
Adir Ben-Yehuda of Autonomy AI saw the same shift across his customers in Episode 43:
They think Figma is not relevant anymore and what we saw across the board, and not what we've intended, is when companies are starting to use us, they're using less and less Figma from that perspective.
— Adir Ben-Yehuda, Episode 43
He was careful to say this was mostly younger companies; enterprise agreements were still holding up Figma's revenue. Back in Episode 14, Hooman Radfar noted that Figma was "starting to get into" app building too, and that everyone will start from a different angle: design first or concept first.
Which one we reach for now
- July 2025: Bolt was a go-to for fast front ends, and our Figma use was already dropping (Episode 2).
- August 2025: Sam, now on Claude Code, said Bolt was still a good first try for "something small" or "just like a landing page" (Episode 9, at 12:38).
- April 2026: Neither one is our first pick. For a quick throwaway demo, Sam goes to Google AI Studio. For design work, Claude Design took Figma's spot for him. Jordan called it "a little bit of a Figma killer," and Sam said his "Figma skills are pretty awful" while Claude Design was "incredibly easy" (Episode 40, at 10:20).
So if you are choosing between these two today: keep Figma if a design team depends on it. If you are a founder or operator who needs a working screen, an AI builder will get you there faster. Our own pick has moved on to Google AI Studio and Claude Design, covered in Bolt vs Google AI Studio and Claude Design vs Figma.
FAQ
Is Bolt a replacement for Figma?
Not fully. In Episode 2 Jordan called Figma the number one web-based design tool, but said our own Figma use had gone down because tools like Bolt, Lovable and v0 can design a working interface faster than doing it by hand.
Should I design in Figma before building in Bolt?
We usually skip that step for prototypes and internal tools. Jordan scaffolded Mate and the Collective dashboard straight in Bolt, then finished them in Cursor.
Is Figma still worth paying for?
We still hold around 10 Figma licenses across the company and Sam calls it a great tool. Our weekly use has dropped, and by April 2026 Sam was redesigning things in Claude Design instead.
What is Bolt good for?
Fast front ends: product demos, landing pages and small prototypes. Adding AI or a real back end takes extra work, which is why we moved builds out of Bolt into Cursor or Replit.