Anima

What is Anima?

Anima is an Israeli design-to-code company that has been around since 2016, which makes it one of the older players in the space. It began as a prototyping tool and gradually became a full pipeline that takes designs from Figma, Adobe XD or Sketch and outputs front-end code.

The workflow is familiar: you install the Anima plugin in your design tool, mark up the elements you care about, and Anima generates React, Vue or plain HTML code with CSS. It keeps interactions like hover states and animations in the export, so the result behaves like the design.

Anima's selling point is control. Instead of a black-box conversion, you map design elements to components, set responsive behavior, and preview the final code in the browser before you ever leave your design tool.

Key Features

• Plugins for Figma, Adobe XD and Sketch
• Code export to React, Vue, HTML/CSS and Angular
• Responsive design conversion with breakpoints
• Component mapping so output uses your existing code components
• Interaction support: hover, click, scroll and animation states
• Live browser preview of the generated code
• Integration with Bit for component versioning and reuse

How to get started

Install the Anima plugin in Figma, Adobe XD or Sketch, then open the design you want to convert. Select the frames to export and use Anima's panel to mark elements like buttons, inputs and navigation as components.

Choose your framework, preview the responsive result, and export the project. Anima gives you a folder of code files that you can drop into your app, or a live preview link to share with teammates.

• Install the Anima plugin in your design tool
• Open your design and select the frames to convert
• Map elements to components and set responsive behavior
• Pick React, Vue, HTML or another supported output
• Preview the generated code in the browser
• Export the code and integrate it into your project

Use cases

• Design-to-code handoff without long developer tickets
• Prototyping with real code for user testing
• Email template generation from Figma designs
• Converting marketing landing pages into React or Vue
• Teams adopting a design system by mapping components once

Pricing and licensing

Anima offers a free plan with limited exports and a paid tier for unlimited projects and advanced features. The free plan is popular for trying the workflow on a real design before paying.

Exact pricing and plan boundaries change, so check the official website for current numbers. Anima also has a separate offering for email template design and export.

Pros and cons

Anima's strengths are its maturity and its interaction support. It has been around long enough to handle messy real-world designs, and the ability to map design elements to your own components keeps the output aligned with your design system.

The downsides are that code quality still depends on design organization, and heavy customization of the generated code is sometimes needed for complex layouts. Like all design-to-code tools, it saves the most time on standard UI patterns.

Alternatives

• Locofy: Figma-to-code with React, Next.js and React Native output
• Visual Copilot: Builder.io's Figma-to-code using your own components
• v0: Vercel's prompt-to-UI generator for React and Tailwind
• Zeplin: design handoff and collaboration without code generation