Penpot Open-Source Design Collaboration Tool: A Complete Review of the Best Free Figma Alternative

Reviewed and verified by FeiYueh · Last verified 2026-06-09

Penpot's global monthly active users surpassed 800,000 in Q1 2026, making it the only design collaboration platform that uses SVG as its native file format, is

Penpot's global monthly active users surpassed 800,000 in Q1 2026, making it the only design collaboration platform that uses SVG as its native file format, is completely free, and can be self-hosted. It has reached 90% parity with Figma in core features such as vector editing, Auto Layout, and Design Tokens. For teams concerned about Figma price increases following Adobe's acquisition attempt, or those needing to integrate design file version control into their Git workflow, Penpot is currently the only option with no feature limitations, no per-seat fees, and full W3C standards compliance. What is Penpot: The Technical Positioning of an Open-Source Design Tool Penpot is a web-based design collaboration platform open-sourced in 2021 by the Spanish company Kaleidos, licensed under Mozilla Public License 2.0. "The Penpot GitHub project has accumulated 36,000 stars with over 280 contributors (April 2026 GitHub statistics)," ranking second in scale only to Inkscape among open-source design tools. Unlike Figma, which uses a proprietary binary format, Penpot uses SVG directly as its native file format. This means any design file can be opened with a text editor, version-controlled with Git, and edited with any tool that supports SVG. This design decision makes Penpot the first design collaboration tool to truly comply with the W3C SVG 2.0 specification . Technical Architecture and Deployment Options Penpot's backend is written in Clojure with a ClojureScript frontend, using PostgreSQL as the database. Teams can choose from three deployment options: the official SaaS version (design.penpot.app, free with no limits), Docker self-hosting, or Kubernetes cluster deployment. The self-hosted version is completely free aside from hardware costs, and its features are identical to the cloud version—there are no "Enterprise add-on features." Feature Comparison Between Penpot and Figma The Penpot 2.5 release in Q1 2026 closed several previously missing feature gaps, including Compon

Reviewed and verified by FeiYueh · Last verified 2026-06-09. Independently maintained — not AI-generated boilerplate.