As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Figma 2.5/5 and Penpot 3.5/5 in Design. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Figma and 6 pick Penpot. Figma scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (AI features & rights to the work and Pricing transparency). Penpot scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Files, formats & portability, European sovereignty, Design, prototyping & design systems, plus 2 more). Provenance — Figma: Rest of world; Penpot: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Figma and Penpot split the six-judge bench by criterion. Penpot's widest leads are file ownership and portability, 9.2 to 4.5, and sovereignty, 5.7 to 1.3, both with six leans to Penpot and none back; design and prototyping runs 7.8 to 7.0 with five leans and a tie, and collaboration and handoff 7.0 to 6.5 with three leans and three ties. Figma leads pricing transparency 8.0 to 7.3 with four leans and two ties behind published seat prices — €16/mo at Professional, €55/mo at Organization, €90/mo at Enterprise — and AI and content rights 5.0 to 3.3 with six leans. Brand asset governance is close, 4.2 to 4.0, with two Penpot leans, one Figma lean and three ties. The five weighted totals shown put Penpot ahead — the product-designer bench 7.1 to 6, the skeptic 6.1 to 5 — yet the criterion split, not a single winner, is the result.
Choose Figma if
You need published seat prices before procurement signs — the verdict records €16/mo for a Full seat at Professional, €55/mo at Organization and €90/mo at Enterprise, and pricing transparency leans Figma four judges to none at 8.0 to 7.3
Your budget must show AI costs per plan up front — the verdict records AI credits stated per plan, under the pricing transparency lead with four Figma leans and two ties
Your stakeholders need to inspect files without paid seats — free viewers join paid plans under Figma's published pricing, a documented point in the pricing transparency criterion
Your legal review asks what an AI feature does with your content — AI and content rights leans Figma six judges to none, 5.0 to 3.3, while Penpot's verdict reports a community plugin on a fine-tuned OpenAI model the vendor does not guarantee, and we found no public information on training, admin controls, output rights or indemnity
Choose Penpot if
You need your files to remain yours and exportable — file ownership and portability leans Penpot six judges to none at 9.2 to 4.5; the terms name the customer sole owner of uploaded content, files rest on SVG, CSS and HTML with an open.penpot format, and a Figma exporter is documented
Your compliance mandate is EU control of data — sovereignty leans Penpot six judges to none, 5.7 to 1.3; Penpot's attributes record a Spanish legal-entity jurisdiction, EU venture-capital ownership and EU data residency as an option, while Figma's record United States default data residency and United States Cloud Act subprocessor exposure
Your team must keep working if the cloud service ends — the verdict documents self-hosting from Docker to air-gapped installs that continue running after a cloud cancellation, under the file ownership and portability criterion where six judges lean Penpot
Your design system runs on tokens and shared libraries — design and prototyping leans Penpot with five judges and one tie, 7.8 to 7.0, on built-in design tokens for colour, typography, spacing and themes and components published as shared, synced libraries
You sign off as a data protection officer — the data protection officer's weighted total runs Penpot 6 to Figma's 4.3
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Frontend Engineer
Turns the designs into code and gets the ticket when they disagree. Wants an inspect mode without a paid seat, tokens exported in a documented format, components mapped to the code ones, and an API that reads the whole file rather than a screenshot of it.
Figma
Penpot
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Design, prototyping & design systems
Figma
Team-wide design libraries, resources publishable across teams, shared styles for colour, text, grids and effects, and design system theming and APIs on the top plan are all documented, and the AI generator builds full component sets with "real design tokens" in multiple sizes, states and themes. I still found no public information on versioned library publishing, prototype transitions or conditional logic, or a documented token export format — which is the part I need to wire into code.
Penpot
The design system is managed in the tool: built-in design tokens covering colour, typography, spacing and themes, component variants, libraries published and synced across teams, and prototypes with transitions, overlays and branching paths. I found no public information on token export in a documented format for development, and colour contrast checking is documented through a community plugin rather than an editor feature.
Collaboration, review & developer handoff
Figma
Viewers without a paid seat get real inspection — measurements, copy of CSS, iOS and Android code, asset export and comments — and Dev Mode with a code panel in CSS, Swift and XML is written up. But the panel is visual properties only with "no Javascript or other logic is exported", codegen appears only in a customer testimonial, and I found no public information on version history with restore, branching, or an API that reads full file structure; the MCP Server is named in a plan feature list with no detail.
Penpot
Code inspect is free for developers and outputs real HTML, CSS and SVG built on Flex and Grid, alongside an open API with access tokens, a plugin system, an MCP server, unlimited free viewers, and published autosave and file-recovery windows per tier. I found no public information on branching or change review before the main file, on component properties mapped to code components, on named issue-tracker integrations, or on an audit log.
Brand assets & governance
Figma
The logo-to-brand-kit generator produces colour palettes, typography pairings and brand assets directly on the canvas, packageable into reusable skills, and a thousand-plus community templates exist. This is kit generation, not governance: I found no public information on a central brand library with locking, guidelines published in the tool, or rights and expiry metadata on licensed assets.
Penpot
Shared libraries carry colours, typographies and components for brand-specific designs, third-party fonts can be uploaded and stored, and templates are browsable and reusable from an in-app panel with a review step on submission. Locking of brand elements, published brand guidelines, and rights, usage or expiry metadata on assets are not described on the captured pages.
Files, formats & portability
Figma
Export as documented is asset-level — copy as CSS, SVG or PNG and an export panel for marked assets — and the terms state all customer content is retrievable for 30 days after termination with the customer keeping all rights in that content. I found no public information on a documented file format, whole-file export with structure, import from or export to other named tools, or bulk export for a team.
Penpot
Portability is close to built in: open source under MPL 2.0, an open file format alongside SVG, CSS and HTML standards, import of.penpot,.zip,.svg and.json plus a Figma exporter in the public repository, self-hosting by Docker, Helm chart, OpenShift, Rancher, TrueNAS or air-gapped, sole ownership of content written into the terms, and a stated no-lock-in continuity position for self-hosted deployments. I found no public information on round-trip export without loss of components and prototypes or on bulk export of a team's files.
AI features & rights to the work
Figma
The AI terms settle the two things I ask first: customer content trains Figma's models only when the Content Training toggle is on in admin settings, and the customer "retains all right, title, and interest" in inputs and outputs, with pay-as-you-go switchable and budget-capped from the admin dashboard. I found no public information on model providers or processing locations, content credentials on generated output, stock licences, or any indemnity — the terms instead disclaim responsibility for output accuracy.
Penpot
AI is described as agent and LLM integration across code-to-design, design-to-code and design-to-design workflows plus an MCP server and a community plugin running a fine-tuned OpenAI model, and the terms state that only metadata is analysed, not text and contents. Whether customer files train any model, admin controls over AI features per organisation, and commercial rights to generated output are not described on the captured pages.
European sovereignty
Figma
The terms are between the customer and Figma, Inc., and the privacy policy states all personal information is transferred to, processed and stored in the United States, with no EU residency option shown on the captured pages. A published data processing addendum with Standard Contractual Clauses and the Figma GmbH entity in the Berlin imprint are the European elements I can find; the sub-processor list the policy points to was not among the pages I could read, so hosting, support and other product providers stay unnamed.
Penpot
The captured pages prove a Spanish contracting entity in Madrid with Spanish governing law and Madrid courts, a selectable EU or US hosting region, an offered data processing agreement, GDPR support and Standard Contractual Clauses for international transfers. Named hosting infrastructure, subprocessor locations and where AI features process remain unstated, so I score only the dimensions the pages prove.
Pricing transparency
Figma
A buyer can genuinely compute the bill: Full seats are listed at €16/mo on Professional and €90/mo on Enterprise with Collab and Dev priced too, the billing period is stated, viewers are free on paid plans, mid-term seats are prorated at a daily rate on Professional and invoiced quarterly on Organization and Enterprise, and monthly AI credit allotments per plan are listed with the consumption order and pay-as-you-go controls. The gaps that keep it from full computability: the per-credit price of extra credits and any storage pricing aren't shown, the View seat's price isn't shown, and the plan gate is named as Governance+ on Enterprise rather than stating where single sign-on begins.
Penpot
All four tiers are priced in USD: Professional at $0 user/month described as free and fully featured, Unlimited at $7 editor/month with a cap of $175 per month no matter the team size, Enterprise at $25 member/month, and Private Server at $50k year, with unlimited free viewers, per-tier storage and version windows, SSO and IP whitelisting named on Enterprise, and immediate cancellation. VAT treatment and how and when added seats are trued up are the parts I found no public information on.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Figma
Penpot
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Penpot higher: 3.5/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Figma and 6 pick Penpot. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Figma or Penpot European?
Figma is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Penpot is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do Figma and Penpot have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, both vendors’ own pages state a free plan. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.