Guides · Updated 1 November 2026

Is it legal to copy a website into Figma?

Importing a page you own, or a client's page with their permission, is ordinary design work. Capturing someone else's site for internal reference is usually lower risk, while shipping their text, photos, logos or fonts in your own product is not. A capture copies content that belongs to the site's right holders, and it gives you no licence to it.

An agency gets a brief on Monday: redesign a mid-sized retailer’s site. By Tuesday afternoon the designer has the current homepage, category page and checkout in Figma, at three widths, as editable layers. Nobody redrew anything. The same tool, pointed at a competitor’s site, would have produced the same result in the same time, and that is the question this article is about. What you are allowed to do with a capture depends much less on the tool than on whose content you captured and what you do with it next.

This is general information, not legal advice. Copyright and trademark law differ between countries, and anything commercial with real money at stake deserves an hour with a lawyer.

What a capture actually copies

A web page is a bundle of separate things, and each has its own owner and its own rules. The text is usually protected by copyright from the moment it is written. Photos and illustrations may belong to the site, or be licensed from a stock library or a photographer for that site only. Logos and brand names are trademarks, which is a different law with a different test. Icons come from sets with their own licences, fonts are licensed software, and the design itself, the arrangement of all of the above, is a question of its own.

When you import a page into Figma, you make a copy of all of these at once. Converting the page into layers doesn’t change who owns them, and the person who captured the page gets no rights in the content.

Layouts versus content

The part people worry about most, the layout, is often the least protected. A header with a logo on the left and navigation on the right, a three-column feature grid, a pricing table with a highlighted middle plan: these are conventions, and conventions are free for everyone to use. In the EU, copyright protects work that is the author’s own intellectual creation, which leaves room for very distinctive designs to be protected, but common arrangements of common elements generally are not.

The content inside the layout is a different matter. Text and photographs are classic copyright works. A competitor’s product photos in your mock-up are their photos, whatever file format they happen to be in. The same goes for illustrations and custom icon sets.

Brand elements are covered by trademark law, which asks whether people could be confused about who is behind something. Putting another company’s logo or name in your shipped product is the clearest way to get that question asked.

Fonts deserve their own warning

Fonts trip up even careful teams. A site’s typeface is usually licensed to the site owner as a webfont, for display on their website. Your design tool needs the font installed on your computer, which most foundries treat as a desktop licence, sold separately.

So even on a client project, the client’s brand font may not be yours to install. Ask the client to share their desktop licence or buy one, or work with a substitute until the licence is sorted.

Personal data in logged-in captures

Capturing a page behind a login copies whatever the page shows you: customer names in a CRM, order histories, internal dashboards with employee data. If that data is about real people and you work in the EU, privacy law applies to the Figma file too.

Before a logged-in capture, switch to a demo account or test data if there is one. If not, replace names and emails in the file right after importing, and don’t share the raw file further than needed.

Four common situations

Your own website. You can import it freely. Check two things before reusing assets elsewhere: stock photos licensed only for the website, and fonts without a desktop licence.

A client’s website, with permission. Standard practice for redesigns and audits. Get the permission in writing, even a line in the contract. Remember the client may not own everything on their own site either, and the same stock-photo and font questions apply.

Someone else’s site, for reference. Capturing a competitor to study their structure, run a UX review or build a mood board stays inside your team. Most risk comes from what leaves the team, so keep these files internal and label them as references.

Someone else’s site, as your product. Taking a competitor’s page, swapping the logo and shipping it is where copyright, trademark and unfair competition claims come from. A capture can be a useful starting point for understanding how something works. What you ship should be your own text, your own images and a design that is recognisably yours.

Practical rules for teams

1. Know whose site it is before you capture, and keep a record of permission for client work.
2. Treat captures of third-party sites as internal references and keep them in a separate project.
3. Replace third-party text, photos, icons and logos before anything leaves the team.
4. Check font licences before installing fonts from a capture.
5. Strip personal data from logged-in captures as soon as they are imported.

Figback’s Terms of Service say the same thing in a shorter way: you decide what to capture and are responsible for having the rights to it, and converting a page gives you no licence to its content. Right holders can report misuse to support@hopin.it.

Questions

Can I use a competitor's website as a template in Figma?

Looking at it for reference is common practice. Rebuilding it with their text, photos, illustrations or logo, or a close copy of a distinctive design, risks copyright and trademark claims. Use your own content and make the design yours.

Can I use the fonts from an imported website?

Only if you hold a licence that covers using them on your computer. A site's webfont licence belongs to the site owner, and many foundries license desktop and web use separately.