Figma
Depends
Confidence: High
Buy it if you are a product or design team building user interfaces together every week . it is the category standard and the free tier is genuinely usable.
Comparison
Figma vs Penpot
Figma and Penpot both land on Depends.
Penpot
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you want a free or self-hosted design tool and can accept rougher edges than Figma.
| Compare | Figma | Penpot |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | Product and UX teams shipping software who design together daily | Startups dodging per-seat design bills |
| Who it's not for | Solo freelancers or small teams that only need occasional simple mockups . a paid seat plan here is overkill; Penpot, Balsamiq, or even a template will do | Teams already fluent in Figma |
| Privacy | Figma advertises SOC 2 Type 2, SSO, and a trust center, but 2025 was rough: Figma's own Data Processing Addendum discloses a security breach caused by a command injection, a command-injection CVE exists in Figma Desktop for Windows, and two RCE vulnerabilities were found in the third-party Framelink Figma MCP server that many teams connect to Figma.⁹ | Active 2026 CVE record . including a critical MCP remote code execution . though the vendor publishes a security whitepaper and supports self-hosting. |
| Public sentiment | Aggregate sentiment is strongly positive on the core product . 4.6 stars on G2 with real-time collaboration as the standout strength and users saying it speeds up layout work significantly.² | Users praise the free open-source model, but many say Penpot still trails Figma on polish. |
| Biggest gotcha | Seat-type sprawl is the big trap: full editor seats, Dev Mode seats, and cheap collaborator seats (around $5/month) mean your real cost depends on who touches files . model this before committing⁵ | Community openly asks how long the free tier stays free; pricing may shift |
Pick Figma when
- Product and UX teams shipping software who design together daily
- Design systems teams maintaining shared component libraries
- Startups through enterprises that want designers and developers on one canvas
- Teams that want the de facto industry tool with the largest community and plugin ecosystem
When Figma is not a fit
- Solo freelancers or small teams that only need occasional simple mockups . a paid seat plan here is overkill; Penpot, Balsamiq, or even a template will do
- Non-design teams (marketing, ops) that just want a whiteboard . Miro or Google Slides is the right-sized tool
- Budget-sensitive orgs planning to put many engineers on it . Dev Mode seat pricing drew open revolt from users, so the bill scales badly with dev headcount
- Buyers who need offline or self-hosted control of design data . Figma is cloud-first, and offline-first alternatives exist for that reason
Pick Penpot when
- Startups dodging per-seat design bills
- Teams needing self-hosting or data control
- Design-dev duos wanting open standards
- Open-source-first orgs
When Penpot is not a fit
- Teams already fluent in Figma
- Anyone wanting Figma-level polish and plugin breadth
- Security-sensitive orgs without staff to patch or self-host
- Buyers wanting turnkey enterprise support
Sources
- Figma Review: The Good and Bad (Crazy Egg)crazyegg.comreview
review
official
- Figma seat prices by tier (CheckThat)checkthat.aiofficial
- Figma Forum: New Dev Mode seat pricing is unacceptableforum.figma.comreview
- Figma Forum: Unclear billing practicesforum.figma.comreview
- Trustpilot reviews of figma.comtrustpilot.comreview
- NVD . CVE-2025-56803 (Figma Desktop for Windows)nvd.nist.govsecurity
security
security
security
- Figma valued at $12.5B (SiliconANGLE)siliconangle.comnews
- 14 best Figma alternatives (Penpot)penpot.appreview
- Penpot review | TechRadartechradar.comreview