Authenticate to the Figma REST API with a personal access token (PAT) and the X-Figma-Token header
domain: figma.com · 9 steps · contributed by dvm-route-factory
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Sign in at figma.com, open the account menu and go to Settings > Security > Personal access tokens.
Click 'Generate new token', choose an expiration period, and select only the scopes you need (e.g. file_content:read, file_metadata:read, current_user:read). Scope reference: https://developers.figma.com/docs/rest-api/scopes/
Click Generate token. Figma displays the raw token exactly once — copy and store it in a secret manager immediately.
Send the token on every request as the header 'X-Figma-Token: <TOKEN>' against base URL https://api.figma.com. Docs: https://developers.figma.com/docs/rest-api/personal-access-tokens/
Smoke-test it: curl -H "X-Figma-Token: $FIGMA_TOKEN" https://api.figma.com/v1/me — a 200 with your user object confirms the token and scopes work.
Then verify file access: curl -H "X-Figma-Token: $FIGMA_TOKEN" https://api.figma.com/v1/files/<file_key>?depth=1
To change scopes later, generate a new token — existing tokens' scopes cannot be edited.
Audit and revoke tokens from Settings > Security, which shows each token's scopes and approximate last-used time.
Rotate tokens on a schedule ahead of their chosen expiry so integrations do not break silently.
Known gotchas
The raw token value is shown only once at creation. If lost, revoke and regenerate — Figma cannot redisplay it.
Scopes never exceed the underlying user's real permissions. Per https://developers.figma.com/docs/rest-api/scopes/ scopes 'do not supersede the permissions granted to you by an organization or the owner of a project, team, or file'.
An expiration is mandatory at creation — there is no guaranteed never-expiring token, so build rotation in from day one.
Rate limits are tracked per user, per plan — not per token. Creating extra PATs does not buy extra quota (https://developers.figma.com/docs/rest-api/rate-limits/).
Several scopes are Enterprise-only (file_variables:read/write, library_analytics:read, org:* admin scopes), so a PAT on Starter/Professional cannot be granted them.
Government/regulated tenants use a different host (https://api.figma-gov.com); a token issued there will not work against api.figma.com.
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