OpenDesign vs Penpot
OpenDesign and Penpot are both design and whiteboard software. OpenDesign is open source under Apache-2.0, with 106k GitHub stars. Penpot is open source under MPL-2.0, with 62k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick OpenDesign when
- A product team wants an open alternative to Claude Design or Figma Make for AI-generated prototypes.
- Pick Penpot when
- Your team wants a Figma alternative it can self-host or use without per-editor lock-in.
Side by side
A local-first workspace where a team and AI agents create prototypes, websites, dashboards, slides, images and videos, with design systems and bring-your-own-key models or paid credits.
A browser-based design and prototyping tool for product teams, using open standards such as SVG, CSS and HTML, with components and design tokens.
Six months old despite a huge star count, and the company is pushing paid credit plans.
Plugin ecosystem and performance on very large files still trail Figma.
Experimental
Production-ready
Desktop app and cloud service
Self-hosted server and cloud service
TypeScript
Clojure, ClojureScript, Rust and PostgreSQL
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Open source, MPL-2.0 (weak copyleft)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
106k GitHub stars
62k GitHub stars
Young: started 6 months ago, latest release open-design-v0.26.1.
Established: started 11 years ago, latest release 2.18.5.
Other comparisons
More design and whiteboard tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.