Penpot

What Is Penpot?

Penpot is an open source design and prototyping tool tailored for product teams in the design-tools category. It operates as a free, web-based platform that enables the creation of user interfaces and prototypes using open web standards like SVG, CSS, and HTML. Penpot fits into design workflows by allowing teams to build, iterate, and hand off designs directly to development without proprietary file formats or vendor lock-in.

What Penpot Does

• Provides reusable components and shared libraries for maintaining design consistency across projects.
• Supports Flex Layout to create flexible interfaces that align with CSS flexbox properties such as direction, alignment, justification, gap, and padding.
• Offers code inspection tools that generate CSS styles, SVG markup, and HTML snippets from designs.
• Includes properties inspection for viewing measurements, spacing, sizes, positions, text styles, and color codes.
• Enables vector editing with SVG-native operations, including boolean functions and precise path manipulation.
• Manages custom fonts, color palettes, and design tokens to support scalable design systems.

How Penpot Can Be Used

• Designers create UI mockups and boards for different screen sizes using vector shapes, text, and components in a browser-based environment.
• Teams build responsive prototypes by linking interactive elements that trigger layout changes based on user actions, simulating web or mobile app behavior.
• Product teams collaborate in real-time, with developers accessing read-only modes to inspect designs and extract code-ready assets like SVG exports or CSS properties.
• Design systems are developed by publishing components and libraries, allowing overrides and swaps for variants while ensuring pixel-perfect alignment with code.
• Workflows integrate with pre-design stages like wireframing and post-design handoffs, exporting assets for implementation in self-hosted or cloud environments.

Who Is Penpot For?

Penpot serves product teams, designers, and developers working on UI design, prototyping, and design systems for web and mobile applications. It suits roles requiring collaboration across design and code, from UI/UX designers building interfaces to front-end developers needing inspectable specs and clean exports. Experience levels range from those familiar with SVG and CSS to teams seeking a free alternative for scalable projects without memory limits in browser rendering. Small to large groups benefit from its open source nature and self-hosting options. Visit Penpot