Penpot

What is Penpot?

Penpot is an open source design and prototyping platform for building digital products — a self-hostable alternative to Figma. You design UIs, wire up interactive prototypes, and manage design systems in the browser, and because Penpot is built on open web standards (SVG, CSS, HTML), designers and developers work from the same source instead of translating between them.

What is Penpot best for?

Teams that want Figma-style collaborative design without per-seat pricing or handing their files to someone else’s cloud — and organizations that need full data control through self-hosting. It fits design-and-development teams who value the open file format and clean developer handoff, and anyone avoiding vendor lock-in.

What can Penpot do?

• Design responsive UIs with native CSS Grid and Flexbox layouts, not simulated ones
• Build interactive, clickable prototypes with page transitions and flows
• Manage design systems with reusable components, variants, and shared libraries
• Define native design tokens as a single source of truth shared with code
• Inspect designs and pull ready-to-use CSS, HTML, and SVG for handoff
• Collaborate in real time, with self-hosting via Docker or Kubernetes for full data control
• Extend it with a plugin system and connect design-to-code workflows through its MCP server

Is Penpot free?

Yes — Penpot is free and open source under the MPL-2.0 license, and self-hosting it is free for unlimited users and projects. There’s also a free cloud tier (up to 8 members), with a paid unlimited plan around $7/user/month and enterprise plans for security and compliance needs. You’re only ever paying for hosting convenience or enterprise support, not the software.

Where does Penpot fall short?

• Performance on large, complex files lags behind Figma — reviewers have measured noticeably slower page transitions on the same file, which matters for big design systems.
• The plugin ecosystem, advanced prototyping features, and AI tooling are less mature than Figma’s, so power users may hit gaps.
• Migrating existing Figma files isn’t lossless, and the pool of designers already fluent in Penpot is much smaller — a real hiring and onboarding cost.

What does Penpot replace?

Penpot is an open source alternative to Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. It covers the same UI design, prototyping, and design-system work, but you can self-host it, own your files in an open format, and skip per-editor subscription fees. Its developer Inspect mode is free, unlike Figma’s paid Dev Mode.

FAQ

Is Penpot open source? Yes — Penpot is genuinely open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The full code is public, and you can self-host it with no usage restrictions.

Can I self-host Penpot for free? Yes. Self-hosting is free for unlimited users, files, and projects; you only pay for the server it runs on. Docker and Kubernetes deployments are officially supported.

Is Penpot a good Figma alternative? For teams that want data control, an open file format, and no per-seat fees, yes. If you depend on Figma’s largest plugin library, most advanced prototyping, or a big pool of experienced hires, Figma is still ahead.

What do I need to run Penpot? A server with Docker (or Kubernetes) and its bundled Postgres and Redis services. It runs in the browser, so end users only need a modern web browser.