Most Figma-vs-Penpot comparisons put two numbers side by side and declare a winner. That’s the error. The two vendors don’t price the same unit.
Figma sells three capability-classed seats — Full, Dev, and Collab — with different prices and different product access. Penpot sells one editor/member class, plus viewers, with a $175/month cap on its Unlimited plan. A price list is not a comparison. The seat mapping is.
So this post does two things: it shows the arithmetic for a stated 10-person team over 60 months, and it gives you the mapping rule as a computable check you can run against any pricing page yourself. The transferable finding is the method, not a vendor ranking. If you’d rather not do the multiplication by hand, the same model runs in the Figma vs Penpot TCO calculator — it takes your headcount and prints the rows below.
This analysis is pricing-page- and documentation-based, verified 2026-11-05. It contains no hands-on testing.
The core finding
Figma’s pricing page renders three seat types on Professional: Full at $16/mo, Dev at $12/mo, Collab at $3/mo — each with its own AI-credit allowance. Organization (billed annually) prices them $55 / $25 / $5; Enterprise (billed annually) prices them $90 / $35 / $5. The page shows a Monthly/Annual toggle; we don’t assert which side of the toggle the Professional figures represent.
Figma’s own seat definitions are the mapping:
- Full — “full access to all Figma products, including Figma Design, Figma Make, Figma Draw, Figma Motion, Figma Sites, Dev Mode, FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Buzz, and Figma Specs.”
- Dev — “full access to Dev Mode, FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Buzz, and Figma Specs,” plus view and comment in Figma Design files.
- Collab — “full access to FigJam, Figma Slides, Figma Buzz, and Figma Specs,” view and comment in Figma Design files, “only includes basic inspection.”
Penpot’s pricing page prices one class: Professional is “$0 user/month” for up to 8 team members and unlimited viewers; Unlimited is “$7 editor/month,” “Capped at $175 per month, no matter your team size”; Enterprise is “$25 member/month.” There is no capability-tiered seat split.
One more Figma line matters: “If you’re on a paid plan, you can let others view and comment on your files without purchasing extra seats.” That’s the escape hatch that keeps the two models reconcilable.
The seat-mapping rule (run this first)
Before comparing any two design-tool price pages, run this check:
- List your people by role, not by title. For each person, answer: do they edit canvases, do they inspect implementation, or do they only view and comment?
- Find the vendor’s seat definitions. Read the vendor’s own wording for each purchasable class. If a vendor doesn’t publish class definitions, it sells one class.
- Map editors. Designers who create and manipulate files → the vendor’s most capable editing seat. On Figma that’s Full; on Penpot that’s an editor/member.
- Map implementers. People who mostly read specs and inspect → the vendor’s inspection/dev seat if one exists. On Figma that’s Dev. On Penpot, no such class exists, so they become an editor.
- Map spectators. People who only view and comment → the cheapest class that permits view-and-comment. On Figma that’s Collab — or, on a paid plan, no seat at all. On Penpot that’s a viewer, which is free and unlimited on Professional.
- Check whether the cheap class actually covers the job. Figma’s Collab seat gives “only basic inspection,” which is fine for a stakeholder and wrong for a developer.
- Write the total as an expression, not a number, so it can be re-run when prices or headcount change.
That last step is what makes the model re-runnable. Here is ours.
The scenario
10 people, 60 months: 6 designers, 2 developers, 2 occasional collaborators.
Mapping: designers → Figma Full / Penpot editor; developers → Figma Dev / Penpot editor; collaborators → Figma Collab / Penpot viewer.
Figma
- Professional: 6×$16 + 2×$12 + 2×$3 = $96 + $24 + $6 = $126/mo → $1,512/yr → $7,560 over 5 years.
- Organization: 6×$55 + 2×$25 + 2×$5 = $330 + $50 + $10 = $390/mo → $4,680/yr → $23,400.
- Enterprise: 6×$90 + 2×$35 + 2×$5 = $540 + $70 + $10 = $620/mo → $7,440/yr → $37,200.
Penpot cloud
- Professional: 8 members × $0 = $0/mo → $0 over 5 years.
- Unlimited: 8 editors × $7 = $56/mo → $672/yr → $3,360.
- Enterprise: 10 × $25 = $250/mo → $3,000/yr → $15,000.
- Private Server: $50,000/yr → $250,000 over 5 years.
- Viewer treatment: both paid Penpot tiers are priced per editor or per member, and the pricing page does not state how viewers are billed on either tier. We bill 8 editors on Unlimited and all 10 people on Enterprise. If Penpot bills Unlimited viewers, or waives Enterprise collaborators, these two rows move; the Figma rows do not.
Penpot self-host
- Professional: the licence is $0; the five-year cost is our infrastructure model, not a quoted price. Modelled: Hetzner Cloud shared-vCPU at €5.99/mo × 60 = €359.40, plus a stated assumption of 2 admin hours/month at €60/hour = €7,200 → ≈€7,559 over five years, excl. VAT. The dedicated-vCPU variant (€43.49/mo) gives €2,609.40 + €7,200 → ≈€9,809. Both figures are outputs of this model.
- Enterprise: modelled as the $950/month base plus 10 members × $25 = $1,200/mo → $14,400/yr → $72,000, plus your own infrastructure. The vendor lists the base and the per-member price separately; combining them is our calculation.
All nine configurations
| Configuration | Monthly | Annual | 5-year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma Professional | $126 | $1,512 | $7,560 |
| Figma Organization | $390 | $4,680 | $23,400 |
| Figma Enterprise | $620 | $7,440 | $37,200 |
| Penpot Professional (cloud) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Penpot Unlimited | $56 | $672 | $3,360 |
| Penpot Enterprise (cloud) | $250 | $3,000 | $15,000 |
| Penpot Private Server | $4,167 | $50,000 | $250,000 |
| Penpot self-host Professional | ≈€126 | ≈€1,512 | ≈€7,559 |
| Penpot self-host Enterprise | $1,200 + infra | $14,400 + infra | $72,000 + infra |
Self-host rows are excl. VAT and include the stated admin assumption.
The $0 result is conditional — read the fine print
Penpot Professional’s $0 holds only because the two collaborators are viewers, not editors. It also carries two constraints from Penpot’s pricing page for the cloud plan: up to 10GB of cloud storage (with a stated typical file size of 10–100MB) and 7 days of file recovery and autosaved versions. If either of those collaborators needs to edit, the account holds 10 members against an 8-member cap, so the team moves to Unlimited.
The same conditional logic applies on Figma’s side: collaborators cost $3/mo on Professional only if you don’t rely on the free view-and-comment provision for paid plans.
Why the $175 cap doesn’t bind at 8 editors
Penpot Unlimited is “$7 editor/month,” “Capped at $175 per month, no matter your team size.” The cap binds when $7 × editors ≥ $175, i.e. at 25 editors: 25 × $7 = $175 → $2,100/yr → $10,500 over five years. At 8 editors you’re paying $56/mo — 32% of the cap. The cap is a ceiling on growth cost, not a discount at small team sizes.
This is where the two models diverge structurally. Figma’s cost scales linearly with seats at whatever plan you’re on. Penpot Unlimited’s cost scales linearly to 25 editors and then goes flat. For a team that expects to grow past 25 editors within five years, the cap changes the shape of the curve, not just its height.
Growth mechanics: seats added mid-term
Headcount rarely stays static for 60 months, and the billing mechanics differ. Per Figma’s billing guide: on Professional, added seats during an annual term bill as “a separate monthly subscription for those seats at the monthly price …”; on Organization and Enterprise, approved seats are “invoiced quarterly.” Plan your mid-year hires accordingly — a quarterly invoice on Organization is a different cash-flow event than a monthly top-up on Professional.
Penpot’s equivalent is the cap: additional editors on Unlimited cost $7/mo each until 25, then nothing extra.
The self-host model, with its assumption exposed
Penpot’s self-host pricing lists Professional as “Free, forever” — unlimited users, teams and files, 100% open-source, community support — with the requirement of “Linux server, Docker knowledge, self-managed deployment.” Enterprise self-host is “$25 member/month” and “Starting at $950 / month.” Our $1,200/mo figure is the modelled calculation (10 × $25 + $950); we don’t state that these two amounts are always additive.
The operations burden is real but unstated by the vendor. Penpot’s Docker guide specifies “Docker and Docker Compose, basic DNS management, and proxy configuration,” a docker compose -p penpot -f docker-compose.yaml up -d start, version pinning via PENPOT_VERSION=2.4.3, and two volumes — “one for the Postgres database and another one for the assets uploaded by your users (images and svg clips).” Penpot’s install guide notes “Docker images are published shortly after the SaaS update,” so self-hosted versions lag new releases.
2 admin hours/month at €60/hour is our assumption, not a sourced fact. Swap in your own rate and hours; the €7,200 admin line moves accordingly, the €359.40 server line does not. Hetzner’s shared-vCPU figures are “starting from … € 5.99 per month, excl. VAT.”
What the model can’t tell you
Everything below is not established by the sources used here. Treat these as open questions, not as facts:
- VAT and sales tax. Hetzner is explicitly “excl. VAT.” We don’t state tax treatment at Figma or Penpot.
- EUR→USD. No exchange rate is applied. The self-host rows stay in euros for that reason.
- Discounts, NPV, renewal uplift. Penpot notes non-profit, education and open-source discounts are available on application; we don’t model any discount, time-value adjustment, or price change over five years.
- Migration effort and import fidelity. We don’t estimate either. For due diligence, the .penpot file format is “a ZIP archive containing JSON metadata and binary media files” with
manifest.json,files/file-data/{pages,colors,components,typographies,tokens.json,media}andobjects/— you can unzip it and read the JSON. Penpot’s design systems docs cover Assets, Libraries, Components, Variants and Design Tokens. - Support SLAs. Not compared. Penpot self-host Professional lists community support.
- AI-credit overage pricing. Figma’s page lists AI credits per seat and AI credits as an add-on; unit overage prices aren’t stated here.
- The $16 toggle ambiguity. We don’t state whether the Professional figures are the monthly or the annual side of Figma’s Monthly/Annual toggle.
- Server sizing, backups, DR, egress. Not modelled. The €5.99 figure is a starting price, not a recommended configuration.
- Inspection depth. Whether a Collab seat’s “basic inspection” suffices for your workflow is a judgement call — Figma’s inspection guide is the reference.
- Governance+ add-on. Listed as “Only available on Enterprise plan”; not priced in our model.
FAQ
Is Penpot cheaper than Figma? Under this mapping, the Penpot tier you pick for this team is cheaper than all three Figma plans: Penpot Unlimited is $3,360 against $7,560 / $23,400 / $37,200 — but that’s a result of the mapping, not a universal truth. Penpot Enterprise (cloud, $15,000) and self-host Enterprise ($72,000) sit between and above those Figma rows. Change the seat mix (more collaborators who need to edit, fewer who only comment) and the ordering shifts. Run the seven-step check against your own headcount.
Why does Figma have three seat types? Because it prices capability classes. Full includes “all Figma products”; Dev covers Dev Mode plus view/comment; Collab covers FigJam, Slides, Buzz, Specs with “only basic inspection.” Penpot prices one editor/member class.
Does Penpot’s $175 cap apply at 10 people? No. 8 editors × $7 = $56/mo. The cap binds at 25 editors.
Can collaborators be free on Figma? On a paid plan, yes: “you can let others view and comment on your files without purchasing extra seats.” On Penpot, viewers are unlimited on Professional.
What’s the cheapest Penpot option for this team? Penpot Professional (cloud) at $0 — conditional on the two collaborators staying viewers, with up to 10GB of storage and 7 days of file recovery.
Does self-hosting save money? Modelled at ≈€7,559 over five years (shared-vCPU server + the stated admin assumption) versus $7,560 for Figma Professional. Coincidentally close — but the currencies differ, VAT is excluded, and you take on deployment, upgrades and backups.
What about the $50k Private Server? $250,000 over five years in this model. It’s a different buying motion, not a like-for-like substitute.
The Bottom Line
The verdict is mapping-dependent, and that’s the point.
For the stated team — 6 designers, 2 developers, 2 occasional collaborators over 60 months — Figma Professional costs $7,560, Penpot Unlimited costs $3,360, and Penpot Professional costs $0 but only if the collaborators remain viewers under an up-to-10GB / 7-day-recovery envelope. Move up Figma’s plan ladder and the gap widens: $23,400 on Organization, $37,200 on Enterprise, against Penpot Enterprise’s $15,000.
But don’t take the ranking as the finding — take the method. Skip the mapping and you’ll compare a Full seat to an editor and get a confident, wrong answer. Do it and any future pricing page becomes re-runnable in minutes.
Neither tool is the correct default. A mapping you can recompute is.
How This Guide Was Built
This guide is pricing-page- and documentation-based. Every figure was taken from vendor pricing pages and vendor help documentation, verified against the live pages on 2026-11-05 (HTTP 200). Sources: Figma’s pricing page, Figma’s billing guide, Figma’s inspection guide, Penpot’s pricing page, Penpot’s self-host pricing, Penpot’s Docker guide, Penpot’s install guide, the .penpot file format, Penpot’s design systems docs, and Hetzner Cloud.
No product was installed, trialled, or tested — the arithmetic is derived from published prices plus the stated scenario (10 people, 60 months) and one flagged assumption (2 admin hours/month at €60/hour). Where a figure is modelled rather than quoted, it is labelled as such. Where a fact was not established by these sources, it appears in the “what the model can’t tell you” section instead of the totals. Re-run the seven-step mapping with your own headcount and the model reproduces.