Penpot Review

Penpot is an open-source interface design tool that runs in a browser, offered as a hosted cloud service or as software you self-host. Whether it fits you depends on whether a browser-based, self-hostable tool with a genuinely free tier meets your needs, since it has no native desktop app.

What is Penpot?

Penpot is made by Kaleidos, a company based in Madrid, Spain, and its code is published on GitHub under the MPL-2.0 open source licence. It runs entirely in the browser, either through Penpot's own cloud servers or on infrastructure you self-host; there is no installed desktop app, and anyone looking for one is pointed back to the browser-based cloud version.

Its AI features work through an MCP server rather than a model built into Penpot. Connecting an outside agent or LLM of your choice lets that agent drive design work inside Penpot, with token or usage costs sitting with whichever agent you connect rather than with Penpot itself.

Designing interfaces in Penpot

Prototypes support interactions, transitions and flows, shared by link with a view mode and comments on the prototype. Shared Libraries hold colours, typographies and components that can be reused across designs, and a dedicated design tokens and variants system underpins design systems built in the app.

The inspect tab gives instant access to SVG, CSS and HTML code for any design, without a separate export or generation step. Figma files can be brought in through the Penpot Exporter, or migrated via connected Figma and Penpot MCP servers, and a connected outside agent or LLM can generate designs and code from a written prompt.

Working with other people

Multiplayer editing lets more than one person work in the same file at once, and comments can be left on shared prototype previews. Penpot publishes an open REST API, an MCP server, webhooks and a plugin system for building on top of the app, though it does not name a list of specific third-party integrations.

Single sign-on and identity governance are available on the Enterprise plan, on both cloud and self-hosted deployments. Penpot runs only in a browser, with no native desktop or mobile app.

Penpot pricing: what each plan gives

The cloud Professional plan is free, with no limits on tools, up to 8 team members and unlimited viewers, up to 10GB of storage, and 7 days of autosave versions and file recovery. Self-hosting Penpot's open source software is also free, on your own infrastructure, with no purchase price at all.

Unlimited is $7 per editor a month, capped at $175 a month regardless of team size. Enterprise is $25 per member a month on the cloud, or $25 per user a month to add governance features to a self-hosted deployment; a dedicated Private Server is quoted as a flat $50,000 a year. A 14-day free trial applies to the paid Unlimited and Enterprise plans; the free Professional plan needs no trial.

Privacy and support

Self-hosted deployments are described as SOC2 compatible, meaning the architecture can support a SOC 2 programme on infrastructure you control; this is not a SOC 2 report held by Penpot's own cloud service. Penpot is GDPR compliant with a data processing agreement, and its terms leave content ownership with the user. Support runs through email, a community forum and a help centre.

Who Penpot suits

Penpot suits teams who want a fully featured free plan to start on, or who want the option to self-host an open source tool on their own infrastructure rather than depend on a vendor's cloud. Its inspect-mode code and shared libraries also suit teams handing designs to developers without a separate export step.

It suits less well anyone who wants a native desktop app, since Penpot runs only in a browser, or a team that needs single sign-on without moving up to the Enterprise plan.

Frequently Asked Questions