Penpot
Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for product and UI/UX teams — a realistic, standards-based alternative to proprietary services like Figma, Sketch and Adobe XD. It lets you design responsive interfaces, build interactive prototypes and manage scalable design systems entirely in the browser, while giving you full ownership of your design data and files. Because it works with open web standards (SVG, CSS, HTML and JSON) and an open file format, designs translate directly into code for developers and AI-powered workflows.
Key Features
- Open file format & web standards — Designs are expressed in SVG, CSS, HTML and JSON, exposed through an open API and a built-in MCP server.
- Self-hosting — Runs in the browser or on your own servers via Docker, giving you full control and ownership of design data, ideal for compliance and governance.
- Design systems & design tokens — Reusable components, native design tokens and shared libraries provide a single source of truth between design and development.
- Responsive design — CSS Grid and Flexbox layouts let you design interfaces that behave like real code from the start.
- Real-time collaboration — Multi-user editing lets teams design together at scale, from anywhere.
- Prototyping & handoff — Build interactive prototypes with flows and inspect code output that actually matches the design.
- Programmable workspace — A plugin system, powerful open API and MCP server enable automation, AI-driven workflows and integrations with your existing tooling.
Why Use Penpot?
Penpot is the most credible open-source answer to proprietary design SaaS. If you value data ownership, compliance and open standards, it removes vendor lock-in entirely: your files use open formats, you can self-host the platform, and there is no per-seat subscription. Real-time collaboration and native design tokens keep cross-functional product teams aligned, while developers get standards-based output they can ship without rework.
Use Cases
- Product and UX/UI teams designing responsive interfaces and interactive prototypes collaboratively
- Organisations that need self-hosted design infrastructure to satisfy compliance and governance requirements
- Developers bridging design to code with SVG, CSS and HTML output plus shared design tokens
- Design-system owners maintaining shared libraries, components and tokens across a whole team
Alternatives
- Inkscape — Free vector graphics editor for SVG illustration and design asset creation.
- draw.io — Free, self-hostable diagramming and wireframing tool that runs in the browser.
- Krita — Free, professional digital painting software for illustrations and concept art.
- GIMP — Free, open-source raster image editor for preparing and finishing design assets.
Platform
Web (browser) · Self-hosted via Docker · Linux · macOS · Windows
Licence
MPL-2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0)