Is Penpot really free?

Yes. Penpot is open source and free with unlimited editors. You can also self-host it on your own infrastructure at no licence cost.

Can Penpot open Figma files?

Penpot has offered Figma file import, though complex files with heavy use of Figma-specific features generally require cleanup after import. Treat it as a migration aid rather than a faithful conversion.

Can I self-host Penpot?

Yes. Self-hosting is one of Penpot's main advantages and the reason it is chosen by teams in regulated industries where design files cannot live on a third-party service.

What file format does Penpot use?

Penpot is built on open web standards, storing designs in an SVG-based format rather than a proprietary binary. This means files stay readable by other software long term.

Figma vs Penpot: Can Open Source Replace Figma Yet?

DDezignhunt Editorial6 min readComparisons

Last updated: August 2026

Penpot's pitch is short: unlimited editors, no cost, self-hostable, open file formats. For a team paying for a dozen Figma seats, that's a conversation worth having with finance.

The honest question is what you give up. Having used both on real work, the answer is: less than you'd expect, but not nothing.

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Key takeaways

Penpot is genuinely production-capable for most UI design work
The real gap is plugins and ecosystem, not core features
Penpot files are SVG-based, which means no proprietary lock-in
Self-hosting is the killer feature nobody else offers
Figma still wins on prototyping depth, Dev Mode and hiring

Figma

UX Toolsfree

Collaborative, cloud-based design platform used to create, prototype

Visit site View on Dezignhunt

Penpot

Design Toolsfree

Open-source design platform for teams building digital products at scale

Visit site View on Dezignhunt

Head to head

	Figma	Penpot
Cost	Per editor, monthly	Free, unlimited editors
Self-hosting	No	Yes
Open source	No	Yes
File format	Proprietary (.fig)	SVG-based, open
Components & variants	Industry-leading	Good, improving
Prototyping	Deep	Basic to moderate
Dev handoff	Dev Mode, excellent	Code inspect, decent
Plugins	Thousands	Few
Offline	No	Yes, self-hosted

What Penpot genuinely does well

Unlimited free editors. No seat maths, no upgrade conversation when a sixth person needs edit access, no annual renewal negotiation. For agencies and open-source projects this alone decides it.

Self-hosting. Your design files live on your infrastructure. For teams in regulated industries — health, defence, finance — this moves Penpot from "interesting" to "the only option."

Open file formats. Penpot is built on SVG and CSS rather than a proprietary binary. Your files remain readable by other software, permanently. Anyone who lived through the Adobe XD shutdown understands why this matters.

Flex and grid layout that maps directly to how CSS actually works, which some developers find cleaner than translating auto-layout.

Where Figma is still ahead

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Note

Be honest about which of these you actually use. Most teams use maybe five plugins and basic prototyping — in which case the gap is much smaller than the feature comparison suggests.

Plugins. This is the real gap and it isn't close. Icon insertion, content generation, accessibility checking, design linting, handoff integrations — Figma has thousands, Penpot has a handful.

Prototyping depth. Figma's interactive components, variables and conditional logic go well beyond what Penpot offers. If you build high-fidelity prototypes for user testing, you'll feel this immediately.

Dev Mode. Figma's handoff tooling is more polished, better integrated, and more familiar to the developers receiving it.

Hiring and onboarding. Every designer knows Figma. Penpot means training, and it means being the only company in the interview asking about it.

Performance on huge files. Figma still handles very large files better.

So can it replace Figma?

Yes, if: you're a small team or solo, doing standard UI design, not dependent on plugins, and either cost or data sovereignty matters to you. Penpot will do the work.

Not yet, if: you rely on a plugin workflow, build complex interactive prototypes, run a large design system across many contributors, or need to onboard designers quickly.

The trajectory matters here. Penpot two years ago was not a serious answer. Penpot now is. The gap is closing from one direction only.

A middle path

Nothing forces an all-or-nothing decision. A common arrangement: keep Figma seats for the two or three people who need plugin workflows and deep prototyping, and put everyone else — engineers who need view access, PMs who comment, contractors — on Penpot. That kills most of the seat cost without disrupting the core design team.

More options in our Figma alternatives guide and the full list of open source design tools.

Frequently asked questions

For core UI design work, it is close. Figma remains ahead on plugins, prototyping depth, Dev Mode and performance on very large files. Penpot wins on cost, self-hosting and open file formats.