Penpot

Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform. It covers interface design, components and design systems, interactive prototypes and developer handoff in the browser, and it is the most prominent open-source alternative to Figma. Its defining choices are openness and standards. Penpot is free and open source, can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure, and stores designs using open web standards: shapes are SVG, and its layout system is built on CSS flexbox and grid. That means what designers build maps more directly to what developers implement, and the inspect panel can give code that reflects real layout rules rather than absolute positions. For organisations with data-sovereignty requirements, public sector bodies, and companies wary of depending on a single proprietary design vendor, self-hosting is a significant advantage. It also matters to open-source projects that want their design files to be as open as their code. The product has matured considerably, with components and variants, shared libraries and design tokens, multiplayer editing, comments, prototyping with flows and interactions, and a plugin system. A hosted version is available for teams that do not want to run their own server, with paid plans for larger organisations. The honest comparison with Figma is ecosystem and polish. Figma has a far larger community of templates, plugins, UI kits and hiring familiarity, and some advanced features arrive there first. Teams switching should expect some workflow adjustment, and importing complex Figma files is not always perfect. Other alternatives include Figma itself, the default for most product teams; Sketch, a Mac-native design tool with a long history; Framer, which blends design with publishing live websites; and Lunacy, a free cross-platform editor. For whiteboarding rather than interface design, Excalidraw and Whimsical are lighter. Choose Penpot when openness, self-hosting or standards-based layout matter to your team. Choose Figma when ecosystem size and hiring familiarity matter most.