Penpot is an open source design and prototyping platform, and the closest thing to a genuine alternative to the dominant browser-based design tools. It runs in a browser, supports real-time collaboration, and covers the core of interface design: vector editing, layout, components, prototyping and developer handoff. The difference is underneath, where files are built on open web standards rather than a proprietary binary format.
That choice has consequences that matter to particular teams. Penpot can be self-hosted with Docker, which means design files can live inside your own infrastructure rather than on someone else's servers. For organisations in regulated industries, or any company whose designs are the product, that is often the deciding factor and no amount of feature comparison outweighs it. There is also no seat tax on viewers or developers: anyone can open a file.
Because Penpot works in SVG and CSS concepts natively, the handoff to engineering is unusually direct. Layout uses flex and grid the same way the browser does, so what a designer builds maps onto what a developer writes rather than needing translation. Design tokens are a first-class feature and can be exported and version controlled, which suits teams who want their design system in the same repository as their code.
The honest assessment of maturity: Penpot is capable and improving quickly, but it trails the market leader on polish, plugin ecosystem, and the long tail of small conveniences that a designer uses fifty times a day. Performance on very large files is behind. The plugin system is younger and the library of community extensions much smaller. Teams migrating from an established tool should expect to lose some workflow and rebuild some components, and should trial it on a real project rather than a demo.
The project is developed in the open with a visible roadmap and an active community, and it is used by organisations that have made a deliberate choice about where their design work lives. That is a different proposition from a startup betting everything on speed, and it suits a different kind of buyer.
Who it suits: teams with self-hosting or data residency requirements, organisations committed to open source tooling, and anyone tired of per-seat pricing for people who only need to look at a file. Who should be careful: teams with a large existing design system in another tool, where migration cost is the dominant factor.