Figma's Professional plan costs $15 per editor per month. Dev Mode — the feature that lets developers inspect designs and copy CSS specs — is a separate $25/editor/month add-on. A 10-person design team with 5 developers needing Dev Mode is paying $3,900 per year for a design tool.
Penpot charges nothing. Cloud hosting, unlimited files, dev handoff, prototyping, real-time collaboration — all free. Self-hosted via Docker on your own server if you want full data control. No seat minimums, no per-editor fees.
That price gap is why Penpot has 35,000 GitHub stars and is growing steadily in government agencies, regulated industries, and open-source organizations. The question isn't whether the gap exists. It's whether Penpot is actually ready for serious design work.
What Happened to Figma's Pricing
For most of its history, Figma had one of the most generous free tiers in SaaS: unlimited Figma files, unlimited collaborators. Designers loved it. Teams built entire workflows on the free tier.
In early 2023, Figma cut the free plan to 3 Figma files and 3 FigJam files. Teams with existing file libraries had to upgrade or consolidate. Combined with the overall pricing trajectory and the failed $20 billion Adobe acquisition (blocked by regulators in late 2023), Figma's relationship with its user base got complicated.
The pricing structure now:
- ▸Starter: Free — 3 Figma files, 3 FigJam files, unlimited drafts, 150 AI credits/day
- ▸Professional: $15/editor/month, unlimited files, team libraries, advanced prototyping
- ▸Organization: $55/editor/month, unlimited teams, branching and merging, shared libraries
- ▸Enterprise: $90/editor/month. SCIM, design system APIs, advanced analytics
- ▸Dev Mode: $25/editor/month add-on (separate fee for developers using inspect)
That Organization jump from $15 to $55 is where most mid-size teams feel it. Moving from Professional to Organization almost quadruples the per-seat cost.
What Penpot Is
Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping tool built by Kaleidos, a Spanish company. It started as a self-hosted alternative and added its cloud version at penpot.app. Around 35,000 GitHub stars. AGPLv3 licensed.
The interface will be immediately familiar to Figma users: canvas with frames, layers panel on the left, design properties on the right. Components, grids, constraints, auto-layout, and interactive prototypes all work on similar principles. The technical foundation is different: Penpot stores designs as real SVG rather than a proprietary format. More on why that matters below.
Penpot's pricing:
- ▸Free: Everything, all features, unlimited projects, unlimited files, self-hosting available
- ▸Unlimited: $7/editor/month, priority support, additional cloud features
For practical purposes, most teams use the free tier indefinitely. The $7 plan exists mainly for teams that want support SLAs.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Figma Professional | Penpot Free |
|---|---|---|
| Vector editing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Real-time collaboration | ✅ Excellent | ✅ Functional |
| Prototyping | ✅ Advanced | ✅ Basic |
| Components | ✅ Mature (variants, properties) | ✅ Improving |
| Auto-layout | ✅ Polished | ✅ Available, less mature |
| Design system tokens | ✅ Full variables | ⚠️ Partial |
| Dev handoff / inspect | $25/mo add-on | ✅ Included free |
| Plugin marketplace | ✅ 2,000+ plugins | ⚠️ Growing, much smaller |
| Self-hosting | ❌ | ✅ Docker, AGPLv3 |
| SVG-native format | ❌ Proprietary | ✅ |
| AI features | ✅ 3,000 credits/mo (Pro) | ❌ |
| Offline mode | ❌ | ❌ |
| FigJam whiteboard | ✅ | ❌ |
| Cost (10 editors) | $150/month | $0 |
Where Figma Still Wins
Real-time collaboration is genuinely better. Multiple designers editing the same file simultaneously with live cursors, reliable conflict resolution, and inline comments. Penpot's multiplayer works, but Figma's has been refined over a decade. Teams doing intensive collaborative editing, agency work with designers constantly in the same files, will feel the difference.
The plugin ecosystem. Figma has 2,000-plus plugins covering accessibility checking, design token export, icon libraries, data population, and integrations with every major design system tool. Penpot's plugin library is growing but thin by comparison. If your workflow depends on specific plugins (Able for accessibility, LottieFiles, your company's internal design token tool), check whether they exist in Penpot before switching.
Component system maturity. Figma's component variants, nested instances, and component properties have been production-tested across thousands of large design systems. Variable modes and design tokens let you switch between themes, light/dark mode, and breakpoints within a single file. Penpot has components and is adding features, but the depth isn't there yet. Teams maintaining complex component libraries at scale will hit Penpot's ceiling faster.
Auto-layout polish. Both tools have auto-layout now. Figma's implementation is more mature: better handling of fill containers, gap behavior, and responsive layout preview. Penpot's auto-layout covers the basics but the edge cases are rougher.
FigJam and integrated whiteboarding. Figma includes FigJam for whiteboarding, brainstorming, and diagramming. There's no Penpot equivalent. Teams that use whiteboarding as part of their design process need a separate tool alongside Penpot.
AI features. Figma has AI for generating UI mockups, renaming layers, and removing backgrounds. Penpot has nothing comparable. If AI-assisted design is part of your workflow, Figma is the only option here.
Where Penpot Wins
Dev handoff at no extra cost. This is the clearest practical win. Penpot's inspect mode gives developers CSS values, dimensions, and asset exports. Figma charges $25/editor/month for this through Dev Mode. A team with 5 developers needing design specs saves $1,500/year on this line item alone, before counting the base product cost.
SVG-native storage. Figma stores designs in a proprietary binary format. Exporting is possible but the format isn't portable. Penpot stores files as real SVG, meaning your design files are standard, readable, and can be processed by other tools. No vendor lock-in at the file format level. For teams that care about longevity and data portability, this matters.
Self-hosting with actual data control. Penpot deploys via Docker Compose. Your design files, component libraries, and team work stay on your infrastructure. For healthcare organizations, government agencies, regulated financial institutions, and any team where design files might contain sensitive UI mockups or process flows, this is non-negotiable. Figma's data lives in AWS in the US regardless of your compliance requirements.
GDPR and EU data residency. Penpot is developed by a Spanish company and their cloud version is hosted in the EU. The self-hosted option puts data exactly where you need it. Figma is GDPR-compliant by policy but the data is in AWS US-East.
The license. AGPLv3 is a real open-source license. You can audit the code, contribute fixes, and fork it if the company's direction changes. Fair-code and BSL licenses (which other "open source" tools have moved to) are not the same thing. Penpot's license is genuinely open.
The SVG Difference in Practice
Most designers don't care about file formats. The SVG foundation matters for specific reasons:
When you export from Figma and open it in another tool, the SVG is generated from Figma's format. The conversion is usually good but sometimes produces unnecessarily complex paths. Penpot's exports are cleaner because SVG is what's stored, not converted.
For teams building design systems that feed into code, Penpot's SVG-native approach makes it easier to extract precise values programmatically. Some organizations use Penpot as the source of truth for design tokens that pipe into their CSS variables. The open format makes this scripting tractable.
It also means that if Penpot ever disappears (or changes its terms), you have actual SVG files. Figma files become inaccessible if you lose access to Figma.
Self-Hosting Penpot
The Docker Compose setup is documented and takes 30-60 minutes on a fresh server. Penpot needs PostgreSQL and Redis alongside the main application and an asset storage bucket (local filesystem or S3-compatible).
Realistic ongoing maintenance:
- ▸Updates drop monthly, you need to run them, and breaking changes occasionally require migration steps
- ▸PostgreSQL backups are your responsibility. Penpot doesn't manage this
- ▸Performance on large files depends on your server specs; a 4-core/8GB instance handles most teams comfortably
- ▸SMTP setup is required for invites to work
For teams already running self-hosted tools (Gitea, Nextcloud, Mattermost), adding Penpot is familiar work. For teams with no technical staff, penpot.app is the right choice.
Performance Reality
Penpot's cloud version is noticeably slower than Figma for complex files with many components. Opening a large design system file in Figma takes seconds. In Penpot, expect longer load times and occasional lag during real-time collaboration when multiple users are active.
Self-hosted Penpot on adequate hardware performs better than the cloud version, this surprises people. If you're running on a decently-specced VPS, the latency is lower than going through penpot.app's shared infrastructure.
Figma has its own performance issues with very large files, pages with thousands of components slow down in any browser. But Figma's baseline performance is faster than Penpot's at equivalent file complexity.
Who Should Use Penpot
Design teams in regulated industries. Healthcare, government, defense contractors, legal firms. If your design files might contain sensitive information and your data governance requirements specify where data must live, Penpot self-hosted is the only viable open-source option. The data residency conversation with Figma ends at "it's in AWS in the US."
Open-source organizations. If your stack is all open-source and you're philosophically consistent about it, Penpot fits. The license is genuine, the code is auditable, and you're not funding proprietary SaaS with your design budget.
Teams that have hit Figma's pricing ceiling. The Organization tier at $55/editor/month is steep. If you're at that tier primarily because you need shared libraries or branching (not because you need SCIM and enterprise security), the $540/editor/year saving is worth evaluating Penpot seriously.
Developers who need design specs without paying for Dev Mode. If the only thing your engineering team needs is to inspect designs and get CSS values, Penpot's included handoff mode is free. This single use case can justify the evaluation.
Who Should Use Figma
Agency and studio designers doing collaborative client work. The multiplayer collaboration, client sharing, and presentation mode are polished for this workflow. Penpot is workable but Figma is better at this specific thing.
Design systems at scale. If you maintain a design system with hundreds of components, complex token structures, and variants used across multiple products, Figma's component system is more mature and battle-tested.
Teams that depend on specific plugins. Check your plugin list before evaluating Penpot. If you need a plugin that doesn't exist in Penpot's ecosystem, that ends the conversation.
Non-technical teams that need whiteboarding. FigJam is included in Figma and handles brainstorming, user flow mapping, and meeting facilitation. There's no Penpot equivalent. Adding a separate whiteboard tool to your stack has its own cost and friction.
Teams with existing Figma libraries and component systems. Migration has a real cost. Figma files don't export cleanly to Penpot, you'd be rebuilding, not copying. The switching cost is a legitimate factor.
The Verdict
For most commercial design teams, Figma is still the correct answer. The plugin ecosystem, component system maturity, and collaboration polish are ahead of Penpot, and $15/editor/month is defensible for professional use.
Penpot is the correct answer for a specific set of cases that isn't small: regulated industries with data residency requirements, organizations committed to open-source tooling, and teams that have looked at Figma Organization pricing and decided $55/editor/month doesn't pencil out. For any of those teams, Penpot is genuinely production-ready, not just a proof of concept.
The one use case that's straightforward: if you have developers who need CSS specs and dimensions from designs, and you're paying Figma $25/editor/month per developer for Dev Mode, try Penpot. The inspection tool is free, it works, and the migration cost is low if you're only using it for handoff.