What is Penpot used for?

Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for product teams, built on open web standards, with real-time collaboration, design tokens and self-hosting. It is a good fit for design systems shared between designers and developers, teams needing self-hosted design tools for compliance, and prototyping product interfaces.

Is Penpot open source?

Yes. Penpot is open source under the MPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at penpot/penpot and is written mainly in Clojure.

Yes. Penpot is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $7 per seat per month.

Can I self-host Penpot?

Yes. Penpot can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Penpot an alternative to?

Penpot is an open-source alternative to Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch and Adobe Creative Cloud. Other open-source alternatives to Figma include OpenPencil and Doop.

Is Penpot actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Penpot was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 2.18.1, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 61k stars on GitHub.

Penpot: open-source alternative to Figma, Adobe Illustrator

About Penpot

Penpot is an open-source design platform for teams building digital products. It runs in the browser or on your own servers, and its emphasis is ownership of the design infrastructure, which appeals to organizations with strict compliance or governance needs. It is often considered an open alternative to proprietary design tools such as Figma.

The platform uses open standards including SVG, CSS, HTML and JSON, so design files are closer to the code that implements them. Real-time collaboration lets designers and developers work together, and CSS Grid and Flex Layout let teams build responsive interfaces that behave like real layouts. Native design tokens act as a shared source of truth between design and development, which helps with larger design systems.

Penpot also exposes an open API and plugin system for automation and integrations, plus an MCP server for connecting AI workflows with design and code. It is written in Clojure and ClojureScript under the MPL-2.0 license, and a hosted version is available at penpot.app for teams that do not want to self-host.

Key features

Browser-based design and prototyping
Real-time team collaboration
Native design tokens
CSS Grid and Flex Layout support
Open API and plugin system
MCP server for AI-driven workflows
Self-hosting for full control of design data

Good fit for

→Design systems shared between designers and developers
→Teams needing self-hosted design tools for compliance
→Prototyping product interfaces

Built with: Clojure
Tags: design; prototyping; ui-design; design-tokens; collaboration; svg; self-hosted; figma-alternative

Penpot: questions and answers

What is Penpot used for?: Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for product teams, built on open web standards, with real-time collaboration, design tokens and self-hosting. It is a good fit for design systems shared between designers and developers, teams needing self-hosted design tools for compliance, and prototyping product interfaces.
Is Penpot open source?: Yes. Penpot is open source under the MPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at penpot/penpot and is written mainly in Clojure.
Is Penpot free?: Yes. Penpot is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $7 per seat per month.
Can I self-host Penpot?: Yes. Penpot can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Penpot an alternative to?: Penpot is an open-source alternative to Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch and Adobe Creative Cloud. Other open-source alternatives to Figma include OpenPencil and Doop.
Is Penpot actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Penpot was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 2.18.1, published on 1 October 2026. The project has 61k stars on GitHub.