Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping tool that runs in a browser and can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure. It is built on web standards, so what designers produce maps to CSS rather than requiring translation, and the free tier is the complete product rather than a restricted sample.
Penpot: the short answer
Every line below is drawn from facts verified on 9 August 2026.
- What it is
- Open-source design and prototyping you can host yourself
- Best for
- Organisations that need design files on their own servers
- Starts at
- Free and fully featured; Unlimited $7 per user/month, capped at $175/month
- Free option
- Free plan available, 14 days trial
- Biggest strength
- Free tier is the full product, not a restricted trial
- Biggest drawback
- Less polished than Figma in everyday use
- Closest alternative
- Figma - More polished, far larger ecosystem, and not self-hostable
- True annual cost
- from $11400 a year at the cheapest paid tier
Penpot at a glance
| Best for | Organisations that need design files on their own servers, Teams wanting unlimited designers without per-seat cost, Developer-designer workflows built on CSS and SVG |
|---|---|
| Category | Design, Development |
| Starting price | Free and fully featured; Unlimited $7 per user/month, capped at $175/month |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Pricing model | freemium |
| Company | Kaleidos Open Source S.L. |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Headquarters | Madrid, Spain |
| Founders | Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, Juan de la Cruz |
| Platforms | Web, Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Public API | Yes |
| Browser extension | No |
| Mobile apps | None |
| Self-hosting | Yes |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Data source | Vendor pricing page and public records |
| Last checked | August 2026 |
Penpot pricing
Prices below were read from the vendor's own pricing page on 9 August 2026. Pricing model: freemium. Free trial: 14 days.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | per month | Fully featured. Unlimited teams, files and plugins. Self-host at no cost |
| Unlimited | $7 | per month | per user - Bill capped at $175/month regardless of team size. Extra storage and history |
| Enterprise | $950 | per month | Capped at $950/month regardless of team size. Unlimited storage, 90-day history |
What Penpot actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above multiplied out to twelve months, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way.
| Plan | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimitedper user | $7 | $84 |
| Enterprise | $950 | $11400 |
Which Penpot plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want a capable design tool at no cost | Free | The free tier is the complete product, with unlimited files, teams and plugins. |
| Design files must stay on your own infrastructure | Self-hosted | Open source and free to run yourself. This is the reason Penpot exists. |
| You want longer version history and more storage | Unlimited | $7 per user, and the bill never exceeds $175 a month however many people you add. |
| You have more than 25 designers | Unlimited | The $175 cap means every designer past the twenty-fifth is effectively free, which no competitor matches. |
| You need the largest plugin ecosystem and maximum polish | Consider Figma instead | Penpot is close but not equal on everyday smoothness or community resources. |
Verdict by who you are
Organisation with data residency requirementsYes
Self-hosting means design files never leave your infrastructure. Nothing else here offers that.
Large design team or universityYes
The $175 monthly cap makes cost per designer collapse at scale.
Developer-designer team working in CSSYes
Flex and grid match the CSS box model, so layout decisions survive handoff intact.
Small team wanting maximum polishCompare first
Figma is smoother day to day. Weigh that against price and ownership honestly.
Designer who depends on specific Figma pluginsNo
The plugin ecosystem is much smaller, and a workflow built on plugins will break.
Should you buy Penpot?
Buy Penpot if…
- Organisations that need design files on their own servers
- Teams wanting unlimited designers without per-seat cost
- Developer-designer workflows built on CSS and SVG
Do not buy Penpot if…
- Teams needing the largest plugin ecosystem
- Designers unwilling to leave Figma's polish
- Organisations wanting a vendor to call at 3am
Key features
- Open source, self-hostable on your own infrastructure
- Free tier is the complete product with no feature gates
- Built on SVG and CSS, so output maps to real web code
- Flex and grid layout matching CSS box model behaviour
- Design tokens with import and export
- Real-time multiplayer editing
- Prototyping and interactive flows
- Community plugin system with an open API
Integrations
- Self-hosted deployment via Docker
- Design token exchange with development pipelines
- SVG, PNG and PDF export
- Penpot plugin API
- Figma file import
Penpot screenshots
Captured by us in August 2026 at 1440px, unedited. Interfaces change, so these show the product as it looked on the date we verified this profile. Vendors localise pricing by visitor region, so a pricing screenshot may display a different currency to the USD figures recorded above.
Our assessment
Penpot is the only credible open-source answer to Figma, and for organisations with data residency or sovereignty requirements it is often the only answer at all, since you can run it on your own servers with no vendor involved. The free tier being genuinely complete rather than crippled is unusual and deserves credit, and the CSS-native approach means layout decisions survive handoff instead of needing reinterpretation. The honest gap is polish and ecosystem. Figma is smoother in daily use, has vastly more plugins and community resources, and is what designers already know. The price caps are also worth understanding properly, because they make Penpot unusually cheap for large teams and change the comparison entirely above about 25 people.
What works in Penpot
- Free tier is the full product, not a restricted trial
- Self-hostable, so design files never leave your infrastructure
- Bills are capped, making large teams remarkably cheap
- Built on CSS and SVG, so handoff maps to real web code
What doesn't
- Less polished than Figma in everyday use
- Much smaller plugin and community ecosystem
- Self-hosting means you own uptime and upgrades
- Smaller company, so enterprise support is thinner
EveryAny Decision Score
Scored by dimension rather than averaged into one number, because the trade-offs are the useful part. 3 of these 8 dimensions are calculated from verified facts by published formula; the rest are editorial judgement, labelled as such. How each score is calculated.
- Cost position0/10
derivedentry tier at $950 a month against a category median of $19.99 across 6 comparable tools
- Portability10/10
derivedself-hostable, public API, open source, documented export
- Subscription flexibility9/10
derivedfree plan, free trial, freemium, monthly billing
- Feature depth7/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Ease of learning7/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Collaboration8/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- AI capability3/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Professional adoption5/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
What leaving Penpot would cost
low lock-in
Calculated as 10 minus a portability score of 10, built from four signals (self-hosting, a public API, open-source licensing and a documented export path) . Penpot scores on: self-hostable, public API, open source, documented export. Formula.
Penpot competitors and alternatives
| Alternative | Why you might pick it instead |
|---|---|
| Figma | More polished, far larger ecosystem, and not self-hostable. |
| Sketch | Native Mac app with a one-time licence option. |
| Excalidraw | Free and open source, but for diagrams rather than interface design. |
Figma
Design
Collaborative interface design, prototyping and design systems in the browser.
Sketch
Design
The Mac design tool that Figma overtook, still the best native app.
The bill is capped, which changes the comparison
Penpot’s paid plans have a ceiling, which almost nothing else in this category does:
- Unlimited is $7 per user per month, and never more than $175 per month no matter how many people you add
- Enterprise is a flat $950 per month, again regardless of team size
That cap kicks in at 25 users on Unlimited. Beyond that, every additional designer is free.
Run the comparison at scale and the effect is dramatic. Fifty designers on Penpot Unlimited is $175 a month. Fifty Figma seats is a different order of magnitude. For a large design organisation, or a university, or an agency with fluctuating contractor counts, this is the argument.
Free is actually free, and actually complete
Penpot describes its free tier as “Free and fully featured. No limits, no missing tools,” and as far as we can tell that holds: unlimited teams, unlimited design files, plugins and the full toolset. What the paid plans add is operational rather than creative, namely more storage, longer version history, deleted-file recovery and early access to features.
You can also self-host at no cost. The code is open source, and running it yourself means design files sit on infrastructure you control.
That combination is the reason Penpot exists. If your objection to Figma is that your designs live on someone else’s servers under someone else’s terms, this is the answer, and it is not a compromised one.
Built on CSS, which developers notice
Penpot uses SVG as its native format and implements flex and grid layout matching the CSS box model. In practice that means a designer’s layout decisions describe something a browser can actually do, rather than an approximation a developer has to reinterpret.
Design tokens import and export properly, so a design system can live in the same pipeline as the code that consumes it. For teams where designers and developers work closely, this is a real workflow advantage rather than a marketing line.
Where Figma still wins
Everyday polish and ecosystem. Figma is smoother, faster on very large files, and has thousands of plugins, community templates and tutorials. Designers already know it, and hiring someone who does not need training is worth money.
Penpot is the right choice when self-hosting, cost at scale, or open source matter more than those things. If none of them do, Figma remains the easier decision and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Penpot questions, answered
- Is Penpot worth it?
- Penpot is the only credible open-source answer to Figma, and for organisations with data residency or sovereignty requirements it is often the only answer at all, since you can run it on your own servers with no vendor involved.
- How much does Penpot cost?
- Free and fully featured; Unlimited $7 per user/month, capped at $175/month. The cheapest paid tier we recorded works out at $950 a month, or $11400 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Penpot have a free plan or free trial?
- Penpot has a free plan. A free trial is available: 14 days.
- What is the best Penpot alternative?
- It depends on the job. Figma: More polished, far larger ecosystem, and not self-hostable. Sketch: Native Mac app with a one-time licence option. Excalidraw: Free and open source, but for diagrams rather than interface design.
- Can I self-host Penpot?
- Yes. Penpot can be run on your own infrastructure, so the data stays under your control.
Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Pricing verified, including the monthly bill caps on Unlimited and Enterprise
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Penpot pricing - checked 9 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
