One tool sells seats by role and bills in dollars per month; the other sells a cloud plan with a hard cap and hands the software away for free.
TL;DR
Figma prices three seat types: Starter free with unlimited drafts and 150 AI credits a day, Professional at $16 per full seat a month with dev seats at $12 and collab seats at $3, Organization at $55 full seat billed annually, Enterprise at $90. Penpot's cloud starts at $0 per user for a fully featured plan, charges $7 per editor a month with a $175 monthly cap, $25 per member for Enterprise, and $50,000 a year for a private server; self-hosting is free. Pick Figma when the team already works there and needs seat types; pick Penpot when the files should be open, portable or self-hosted.
Figma's pricing page runs Starter at $0 with unlimited drafts, UI kits and templates and 150 AI credits a day up to 500 a month. Professional lists a full seat at $16 a month with 3,000 AI credits, a dev seat at $12 with 500 credits and a collab seat at $3 with 500 credits. Organization, billed annually, lists a full seat at $55 with 3,500 credits, a dev seat at $25 and a collab seat at $5. Enterprise, also billed annually, lists $90 for a full seat, $35 for a dev seat and $5 for a collab seat with 4,250 credits. On paid plans, people who only view and comment do not need a paid seat, and add-ons cover extra AI credits and Governance+ on Enterprise.
Penpot is open source and offers two hosting choices on the same pricing page: cloud, where Penpot hosts, or self-host, where the team runs it. The cloud Professional plan is listed at $0 per user, described as free and fully featured with no limits. The Unlimited plan is $7 per editor a month with a cap of $175 per month regardless of team size. Enterprise is $25 per member a month for advanced governance and secure collaboration, and a Private Server is listed at $50,000 a year for dedicated infrastructure. A self-host install is published on the site, and Penpot now exposes an MCP server so agents can work in its files.
| Feature | Figma | Penpot |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Starter at $0: unlimited drafts, UI kits, 150 AI credits a day | Cloud Professional at $0 per user, described as free and fully featured |
| Entry paid plan | Professional full seat at $16 a month | Unlimited at $7 per editor a month |
| Mid tier | Organization full seat at $55 a month, billed annually | Enterprise at $25 per member a month |
| Top tier | Enterprise full seat at $90 a month, billed annually | Private Server at $50,000 a year |
| Cheaper seats | Dev seat $12 and collab seat $3 on Professional | One editor rate for everyone, with viewers free |
| Cost ceiling | Scales linearly with full seats | Unlimited plan caps the monthly bill at $175 |
| Hosting | Files held in Figma's cloud | Penpot-hosted cloud or self-hosted on your own servers |
| AI pricing | Credits bundled per seat and tier | No separate AI line item on the pricing page |
| Platform | Browser-based editor with desktop app | Browser-based editor, self-host install published |
| Offline mode | Not covered on figma.com/pricing | Requires a running Penpot instance, hosted or self-hosted |
Pick Figma if
Figma's seat split is the argument: developers pay $12 and collaborators pay $3 on Professional while designers carry the $16 full seat, so a large review group does not inflate the design budget. The published per-seat rates at Organization and Enterprise level let procurement model cost by headcount before signing.
Pick Penpot if
Penpot answers with an open-source editor whose cloud plan costs nothing at entry, $7 per editor beyond that and never exceeds $175 a month. Teams that need self-hosting for legal reasons, or who want to keep source files outside a vendor's cloud, get the only option in this comparison that can run on their own hardware.
No independent reviews or user ratings were collected for Figma or Penpot on this page; the bullets are each vendor's own plan wording from figma.com/pricing and penpot.app/pricing, and every price here comes from those two pages.
Yes, in two ways. The cloud Professional plan is listed at $0 per user with no feature gate, and the self-host option runs the open-source Penpot code on your own servers at no licence cost. Paid cloud tiers are Unlimited at $7 per editor a month capped at $175, Enterprise at $25 per member and a Private Server at $50,000 a year.
Five full seats on Professional are $80 a month at the listed $16 rate, before any add-ons. Adding a developer as a dev seat costs $12 a month and a stakeholder as a collab seat costs $3, which is where the seat model saves money compared with a single flat rate.
Figma sells a dedicated dev seat at $12 a month on Professional with Dev Mode inspection and an MCP server, and lets viewers comment for free on paid plans. Penpot offers design-to-code workflows and an MCP server for agents in its own editor, at a single editor rate.
Penpot is built on open formats and can be self-hosted, which keeps the source files under your control. Figma stores documents in its own cloud and offers exports and interoperability paths, but the working files live on Figma's infrastructure rather than on your servers.
Figma publishes Organization at $55 and Enterprise at $90 per full seat a month billed annually, with SCIM seat management and an optional Governance+ add-on. Penpot lists Enterprise at $25 per member a month and a Private Server at $50,000 a year for dedicated infrastructure — a very different cost shape for the same headcount.
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