What tech stack does Figma use?

Figma's editor is a C++ codebase compiled to WebAssembly that draws the canvas with a custom renderer via WebGL (moving toward WebGPU) — an approach far closer to a game engine than a typical web app. Moving the engine to WebAssembly cut end-to-end load time by roughly 3× regardless of document size, and the C++/WASM core is what lets Figma manipulate large, complex design files smoothly in a browser tab where a conventional DOM-based app would struggle.

Around the C++ engine, Figma's user interface — panels, menus, and chrome — is built in React and TypeScript, connected to the core through a bindings layer. Real-time collaboration runs on a dedicated multiplayer server that Figma originally wrote in TypeScript and later rewrote in Rust for performance and stability, propagating edits and resolving conflicts over WebSockets so many people can edit the same file at once.

Figma's stack signals an exceptionally deep, opinionated engineering culture that builds core technology in-house — C++, WASM, custom rendering, and a hand-rolled Rust multiplayer service. Vendors selling infrastructure, observability, build tooling, or developer platforms can map to that footprint, but pitches that amount to replacing core engineering choices will face a high bar. Integration and augmentation land better than displacement; confirm specifics during discovery, since the public stack focuses on the editor rather than internal GTM tooling.