Scopic vs FigJam
The whiteboard captures what everyone said. Not what it means.
FigJam is excellent for getting ideas out fast with a team. Scopic is for what comes after: structuring those ideas into a map where every connection carries meaning and nothing is lost.
Join waitlistScopic map view
Screenshot: Scopic map view
Every idea on the map is a record. Every connection between them has a name and a type. Filter, sort, and query the same content.
FigJam whiteboard
Screenshot: FigJam
Sticky notes and connectors on a collaborative board. Built for workshops and brainstorming — not for building lasting structure.
FigJam captures the workshop. Scopic turns the workshop into a map you can work with afterwards.
What it gets right
FigJam is the best collaborative whiteboard for real-time work with a team. The sticky note and connector model is intuitive. Everyone knows how to use it. The integration with Figma makes handoff straightforward for design teams. Voting, reactions, and cursors make remote workshops feel present.
For generating ideas quickly — a brainstorm, a retrospective, a mapping exercise in a meeting — FigJam removes the friction of getting things on a surface together. Its strength is speed and accessibility.
Where it stops
FigJam is built for a session, not a project. The sticky notes have no structured properties. The lines between them carry no data about what the connection means. At the end of a workshop you have a board full of cards and arrows that are correct at the moment of capture and increasingly opaque afterwards.
There is no database underneath the board. You cannot filter the content, query a subset, sort by property, or open a connection to see what it means. FigJam has no way to grow with a project as it becomes more complex — it is a surface for externalising thinking, not a tool for developing it.
The sticky note that stays useful
In Scopic, every element on the map has custom properties — fields you define for the project. A 'risk' has a likelihood and an owner. An 'initiative' has a status and a date. These properties are queryable in the database and visible on the element's page. FigJam sticky notes hold text. That is all.
Screenshot: element with custom properties visible
The connection that records the relationship
After a workshop in Scopic, every line you drew has a name. 'Enables', 'blocks', 'depends on'. The relationship is part of the record, not just the layout. When you return to the map a month later, the connections tell you why things are connected. In FigJam, the arrows tell you that they are.
Screenshot: post-workshop map with typed connections visible
The structure that survives the meeting
A Scopic map built in a workshop is a working document. Filter it, query it, add to it, come back to it. The structure you built holds because every element and every connection is a record with properties. FigJam boards are snapshots of a session. They are hard to edit, impossible to query, and deteriorate as a source of truth.
Screenshot: workshop output visible as a filterable database
What people say
We run workshops in FigJam. We move the output to Scopic. That became the workflow as soon as I tried it once. FigJam for capture, Scopic for structure.
1 month ago
FigJam is what you use when everyone needs to contribute at once. Scopic is what you use when you need that contribution to mean something afterwards. Both, not either.
2 months ago
The FigJam board from our strategy session was great in the meeting and useless by Tuesday. Moved to Scopic. Named every connection. Now it's a working document.
6 weeks ago
I kept exporting FigJam boards and rebuilding them in Notion. Then I found Scopic and stopped rebuilding anything. The map is the database.
3 months ago
FigJam: great for thirty minutes in a meeting. Scopic: great for thirty months on a project. The time horizon is different.
5 weeks ago
Built a stakeholder map in FigJam. Moved it to Scopic so I could name the relationships and filter by type. That filter is a superpower I didn't have before.
2 months ago
At a glance
| Scopic | FigJam | |
|---|---|---|
| Named, typed connections | ✓ | — |
| Custom properties per element | ✓ | — |
| Filter map by connection type | ✓ | — |
| Database view of all elements | ✓ | — |
| Page view per element | ✓ | — |
| Spatial board layout | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-time collaboration | — | ✓ |
| Workshop templates | — | ✓ |
| Figma integration | — | ✓ |
Build maps that hold up after the meeting.
Join waitlistScopic vs FigJam
The whiteboard captures what everyone said. Not what it means.
FigJam is excellent for getting ideas out fast with a team. Scopic is for what comes after: structuring those ideas into a map where every connection carries meaning and nothing is lost.
Join waitlistFigJam captures the workshop. Scopic turns the workshop into a map you can work with afterwards.
At a glance
| Scopic | FigJam | |
|---|---|---|
| Named, typed connections | ✓ | — |
| Custom properties per element | ✓ | — |
| Filter map by connection type | ✓ | — |
| Database view of all elements | ✓ | — |
| Page view per element | ✓ | — |
| Spatial board layout | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-time collaboration | — | ✓ |
| Workshop templates | — | ✓ |
| Figma integration | — | ✓ |
Build maps that hold up after the meeting.
Join waitlist- Named, typed connections ✓ Scopic — FigJam
- Custom properties per element ✓ Scopic — FigJam
- Filter map by connection type ✓ Scopic — FigJam