Figma
CanvaAbout Penpot
Penpot is the design tool that treats designers and developers as one team. Because everything is native SVG and open web standards, what you design is literally what ships — inspectable, exportable, and free of proprietary formats.
It covers the core Figma workflow: components, auto-layout (Flex/Grid, modeled on real CSS), prototyping, and real-time multiplayer collaboration. Design tokens are first-class, which teams migrating from Figma increasingly demand.
MPL-2.0 licensed and self-hostable with Docker, Penpot boomed after Figma's acquisition drama — it's the serious open option for teams that want design infrastructure they control.
What makes it different
Auto-layout built on actual Flexbox and Grid, so designs translate directly to code.
First-class tokens, shared libraries and components for scalable design systems.
Real-time collaboration, comments and interactive prototypes in the browser.
Run the whole platform on your infrastructure — no vendor holding your design files.
PostgreSQL
DockerThe honest read
- Free and open source with no per-editor seats
- SVG-native — designs map cleanly to code
- Real-time collaboration like Figma
- Design tokens built in
- Self-hostable for full data control
- Plugin ecosystem smaller than Figma's
- Performance dips on very large files
- No native desktop app (browser-based)
- Some advanced Figma features still missing
Quick answers
Yes — Penpot is free and open source under MPL-2.0, with no per-editor pricing. You can use the hosted app or self-host it for nothing.
For most UI/UX work, yes — components, auto-layout, prototyping and multiplayer are all there. Teams deep in Figma plugins or advanced features may still notice gaps.
Yes — official Docker images let you run Penpot on your own servers, which is a key reason teams choose it.
Everything is standard SVG and CSS — developers inspect real code values rather than approximations, which makes handoff notably cleaner than proprietary formats.
Yes — design tokens are a first-class feature, making it a strong pick for design systems work.
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