"Design to code" means four different products depending on what goes in: a Figma file, a screenshot, a prompt, or a live URL. Most listicles mix them together and compare a Figma plugin against an AI app builder, which helps nobody. Here is the landscape sorted by input, with an honest read on each.
Disclosure up front: we build the URL-to-code entry. The others are genuinely good at their own input type, and I will say so.
Input: a Figma file
Anima and Locofy are the established Figma-to-code plugins - React/HTML output, component mapping, years of production use. Builder.io's Visual Copilot is the newer AI take on the same job.
- Good: if your designs live in Figma with proper auto-layout, these produce real component code and preserve design intent.
- Bad: they need a Figma file. Messy layers produce messy code, and there is no path from "site I saw" to code - someone has to design it first.
- Use when: your team designs in Figma and wants the handoff automated.
Input: a screenshot
screenshot-to-code (open source, very popular) and the screenshot modes of various AI tools take a picture and ask a vision model to write matching HTML/Tailwind.
- Good: works on anything you can see. Zero setup for the OSS version. Genuinely impressive first drafts.
- Bad: every value is a guess. The model approximates colors from pixels, eyeballs spacing, and invents font stacks. Two runs give two different answers. Fine for a prototype, dangerous as a source of truth.
- Use when: speed matters more than fidelity.
Input: a prompt
v0 (Vercel) and its peers generate UI from a text description. Strictly speaking that is prompt-to-code, not design-to-code, but it is where much of the category's attention went.
- Good: the fastest way to get a decent generic component that never existed before.
- Bad: the output looks like v0 output. If the goal is "match this existing brand", a prompt cannot carry a design system's worth of values.
- Use when: greenfield UI with no reference to match.
Input: a live URL
This is the gap. When the reference already exists as a website - a client's current site, a competitor's pricing page, a section your PM screenshotted - none of the above reads the real CSS. Our /v1/code endpoint does:
curl "https://miromiro.app/api/v1/code?url=stripe.com&format=tailwind" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $MIROMIRO_API_KEY"
It parses the live page's actual cascade - specificity, media queries, nested var() chains - and returns the section as Tailwind, JSX, Vue, or plain HTML, with the extracted token set alongside. Auto-detects the hero if you do not pass a selector; 25 credits a call.
- Good: the values are real, not guessed - the exact colors, spacing, and fonts the site ships. It is an API, so it runs inside agents and products, which almost nothing else in this category does.
- Bad: section-level, not whole-app cloning - it will not produce a working multi-page app from a URL. Static HTML + CSS; fully client-rendered apps can come back thin.
- Use when: an agent or product needs faithful code from a page that already exists.
The whole landscape in one table
| Tool | Input | Output | API available | Values real or guessed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anima / Locofy | Figma file | React/HTML components | Limited | Real (from Figma) |
| Builder.io Visual Copilot | Figma file | Components | Yes (Builder ecosystem) | Real (from Figma) |
| screenshot-to-code | Image | HTML/Tailwind draft | Self-host | Guessed |
| v0 | Prompt | React/Tailwind | Yes | Invented |
| MiroMiro /v1/code | Live URL | Tailwind/JSX/Vue + tokens | Yes | Real (from the site's CSS) |
The verdict
Match the tool to the input you actually have. Figma file: Anima or Locofy. Nothing yet: v0. A picture and low stakes: screenshot-to-code. A live site that must be matched faithfully, inside a pipeline: that is URL-to-code, and it is the lane we picked precisely because the others do not drive in it. Free key (100 credits a month, no card) or try a URL in the playground.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best way to turn an existing website into code?
If fidelity matters, read the live CSS (URL-to-code). If speed matters more, screenshot-to-code gives a fast approximation.
Can AI convert a screenshot to code accurately?
Plausibly, not accurately. Every color, spacing, and font value is a model's guess from pixels.
Figma-to-code vs URL-to-code?
Input: a design file you own vs any live website. The first automates handoff; the second works when no design file exists.
Which of these have real APIs?
v0 and Builder.io within their platforms, and MiroMiro as a plain REST endpoint. The Figma plugins are primarily apps - a hard filter if you are building a pipeline.
Skip the maintenance - one API call
Design tokens, brand data, fonts, SVGs, images, and section code from any URL. 100 free credits a month, no card.
Soraia · Founder, MiroMiro
Building MiroMiro: a browser extension and API that extract design tokens, assets, and production-ready code from any live website. The gotchas in these posts come from the extraction engine's own commit history.
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