Penpot

What Is Penpot?

The numbers tell the story. Over 40,000 community members. More than 30,000 GitHub stars. Funding from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet initiative. And a self-hosted price tag of exactly zero, with a free cloud tier for small teams.

Penpot is the first open-source design and prototyping platform, and its growth trajectory suggests it is filling a genuine gap in the market. It is built by Kaleidos, whose Madrid-based team created the project — though a transparency note belongs up front. Per Penpot's own terms of service, the legal entity is "Kaleidos Inc, Sucursal en España, S.L.", a Spanish-registered branch of the US-incorporated Kaleidos Inc. EuropeanStack therefore lists Penpot under our European Project tier — European-born, MPL-licensed, fully EU-self-hostable — rather than as an EU-headquartered company. Penpot launched with a thesis that the design tool market was ripe for disruption: proprietary formats lock teams into vendor ecosystems, SaaS pricing scales unpredictably, and sending design files to US-hosted servers creates compliance headaches for European organizations.

Penpot's answer is architectural. Every design in Penpot is stored as standard SVG — the open web format that any browser can render. There is no proprietary file format, no vendor lock-in, and no format conversion needed. Your designs are valid web documents from the moment you create them. This SVG-native approach is not just philosophical; it has practical consequences for developer handoff, accessibility, and long-term portability.

The platform offers real-time multiplayer collaboration (like Figma), component and design system libraries, interactive prototyping, CSS Grid and Flexbox layout, and code inspection — all available for free on the cloud-hosted version or via self-hosted Docker deployment. When Adobe attempted to acquire Figma for $20 billion, the design community's anxiety about tool consolidation drove a surge of interest in Penpot. That interest has converted into sustained adoption: organizations from small studios to government agencies now use Penpot as their primary design tool.

For European organizations in particular, Penpot addresses a specific pain point. After the Schrems II ruling complicated EU-US data transfers, sending design files containing client branding, unreleased product screenshots, or sensitive interface mockups to US-hosted servers became a compliance question. Penpot, self-hosted on EU infrastructure, eliminates that question entirely.

Key Features

SVG-Native Design

Penpot's most distinctive technical decision is its use of SVG as the native file format. Every shape, path, and text element you create is stored as valid SVG markup. This means your design files can be opened in any SVG editor or web browser, exported without conversion, and version-controlled with Git like any other code file. For design-development collaboration, this eliminates the "design handoff" friction that plagues teams using proprietary formats.

Real-Time Collaboration

Multiple designers can work on the same file simultaneously with real-time cursor presence, live updates, and commenting. The collaboration model is comparable to Figma's multiplayer experience, though with somewhat fewer participants supported at peak performance. Shared component libraries let teams maintain consistent design systems across projects, and version history tracks changes over time.

CSS Grid and Flexbox Layout

Penpot integrates CSS Grid and Flexbox layout directly into the design canvas. Instead of using auto-layout abstractions that approximate responsive behavior, designers work with the actual CSS layout primitives that developers will implement. This dramatically reduces the gap between design intent and implementation, and it means developers inspecting a Penpot design see the exact CSS properties they need to write.

Interactive Prototyping

The prototyping module supports click-through flows with transitions, overlays, and scroll behavior. While less feature-rich than Figma's prototyping or dedicated tools like ProtoPie, it covers the standard use cases: user flow validation, stakeholder presentations, and usability testing with realistic interactions. Prototypes can be shared via link with no Penpot account required for viewers.

Component and Design System Libraries

Penpot supports components with overrides, shared libraries across projects, and design tokens. Teams can build and maintain design systems that stay synchronized across all projects using those libraries. The component model supports nesting, states, and property overrides — the building blocks needed for scalable design systems.

Self-Hosted Deployment

Penpot provides Docker images and docker-compose configurations for self-hosting. A team can deploy the entire platform on their own infrastructure in under an hour — on a cloud VPS, an on-premise server, or even a developer's workstation for testing. Self-hosted instances include all features available on the cloud version, with the addition of complete data sovereignty, custom domain configuration, and integration into internal authentication systems.

Pricing

Penpot's pricing (verified July 2026, billed in USD) starts with a genuinely free core. The cloud-hosted Professional plan at penpot.app covers teams of up to 8 members with 10 GB storage and the full feature set at zero cost. Larger cloud teams pay for the Unlimited plan at $7 per user per month with 25 GB storage, capped at $175/month regardless of team size. An Enterprise plan at $25 per user per month (starting at $950/month) adds priority support, advanced admin controls, and SSO.

The self-hosted version remains free with no member cap. Download the Docker images, deploy on your infrastructure, and use it without licence fees or usage limits. Your only costs are the compute and storage for running the application.

The paid cloud tiers arrived after years of the platform being entirely free; the open-source codebase itself remains free, and self-hosting sidesteps the cloud pricing completely. The project has been funded through EU grants (notably the NGI initiative) and venture rounds — an $8M Series A in 2022 and a further $12M in 2023. In 2026 it added a public-private investment round involving Spain's Ministry for Digital Transformation.

Compare this to Figma's Professional plan at $15 per editor per month. Penpot's $7 per user with a $175 monthly cap means even a 50-person cloud team pays $2,100 per year. A self-hosted team of any size pays nothing in licence fees. The economic argument is strongest exactly where per-seat costs compound.

EU Compliance & Data Privacy

Penpot's compliance positioning is strong, but it deserves a precise description rather than the usual "EU company" shorthand.

The jurisdiction picture first: the development team sits in Madrid, but the legal entity is a Spanish branch of US-incorporated Kaleidos Inc. Contracting with Penpot's cloud therefore means contracting with a structure ultimately under US jurisdiction, including CLOUD Act reach. The cloud-hosted version processes data within EU infrastructure, which mitigates but does not remove that question. Most critically, the self-hosted option provides complete data sovereignty — your design files never leave infrastructure you control, and no contract with Kaleidos is involved at all.

The open-source licence (MPL 2.0) adds a transparency dimension that proprietary tools cannot match: any organization can audit the code to verify what data is collected, how it is processed, and where it is stored. There is no telemetry, no usage tracking, and no data monetization.

For organizations subject to strict data handling requirements — government agencies, defense contractors, healthcare providers, financial institutions — self-hosted Penpot eliminates third-party data processing entirely. The EU Commission's backing through the NGI initiative further validates Penpot's alignment with European digital sovereignty goals.

Who It's Best For

Organizations requiring data sovereignty — government, healthcare, defense, and financial services where design files may contain sensitive or classified information. Self-hosted Penpot keeps everything on controlled infrastructure.

Large design teams where per-seat SaaS pricing creates significant budget pressure. Penpot's unlimited free model eliminates scaling costs entirely.

Design-development teams that value the SVG-native format for seamless code handoff and Git-based version control of design assets.

Open-source advocates and European organizations seeking to reduce dependence on US-hosted proprietary platforms, particularly post-Schrems II.

The Verdict

Penpot is not just a free Figma clone — it is a fundamentally different approach to design tooling, built on open standards, open source, and the principle that professional design tools should not require vendor lock-in or escalating subscription costs. The feature set is catching up to Figma's, and for many teams it is already sufficient. The SVG-native format, self-hosting capability, and EU backing make it uniquely compelling for European organizations. If your team values transparency, data sovereignty, and sustainable economics alongside design capability, Penpot deserves serious evaluation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Penpot really free with no limits?

Yes. The cloud-hosted version of Penpot is completely free with unlimited projects, files, and collaborators. There are no paywalled features in the current release. Penpot is funded through EU grants and plans to introduce optional premium tiers for enterprise features.

How does Penpot compare to Figma?

Penpot offers comparable core design and prototyping features with the critical advantages of being fully open-source, free, and self-hostable. Figma has a more mature feature set, larger plugin ecosystem, and superior performance. Penpot's SVG-native format and data sovereignty options are its primary differentiators.

Can I import my Figma files into Penpot?

Yes. Penpot supports importing Figma files including layers, components, and basic styles. Some advanced Figma features may not transfer perfectly, but the importer handles most standard design files well. SVG and Sketch imports are also supported.

Can I self-host Penpot?

Yes. Penpot provides Docker images and docker-compose configurations for self-hosting. You can deploy it on your own infrastructure for complete data sovereignty. The self-hosted version includes all features available in the cloud version.

Who is behind Penpot?

Penpot is developed by Kaleidos, a Spanish open-source software company based in Madrid. The project has received funding from the European Commission's NGI (Next Generation Internet) initiative and has a community of over 40,000 members contributing to its development.