Managed hosting from
£45/month equivalent +VAT
Medium resource profile: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage. Typically a design team of a handful of editors. Penpot runs a frontend, a JVM backend and a Playwright exporter, so Medium is the tier we expect most teams to start on. Billed hourly against our rate card with no commitments; deployment, upgrades, daily backups, monitoring, SSL and UK hosting included, with no per-user fees. How our pricing works
Coming soon: we are running this on our own systems and measuring it before we open it to customers. The price above is our standard tier ladder until that sizing is finished.
Stop paying rent on your own drawings.
Figma bills every editor, then bills again if you want SSO and a shared library. Penpot is the open source design tool: boards, components, prototypes and realtime editing in the browser, on hardware you can name. We host it in the UK, wire workspace sign-in, and keep the exporter running. You keep the files.
Figma alternative you can actually host
Penpot is an open source design and prototyping platform published by Kaleidos / Penpot under the Mozilla Public Licence. Designers draw on boards, share component libraries, and hand work to developers without putting the source of record in a US SaaS.
It is a browser app, not a desktop suite you install per laptop. Realtime collaboration is part of the product, not a higher tier. Export to PNG and PDF is part of the stack we run (a Playwright service next to the app), not an add-on you buy later.
What it is not: a lossless Figma clone. Import, plugins and some desktop-app habits differ. Teams that live inside a specific Figma plugin should check that path before they move the library.
What you give up, said first
Not 1:1 with Figma. File import is imperfect. The plugin ecosystem is smaller. There is no official offline desktop app; people who want that use a third-party wrapper or a browser tab. If those are deal-breakers, stay on Figma and we will say so.
It is a heavier stack than a wiki. Frontend nginx, a JVM backend and a Playwright exporter all run for one product. That is why the card on this page starts at Medium, not the 2 GB box. We will not sell a smaller tier until authenticated light use has been measured on a live workspace.
This offer is being staged. We already run it on our own systems. It is not yet a portal Deploy-button product. Chris or Matt stand the first customer ones up.
Why Hosting for Penpot with Node
No per-editor licence. Ten people looking at the same board does not multiply the bill. Figma's Organization seat is $55 a month on an annual contract; that is the number to hold this page against, not a discounted Professional seat that still has no SSO.
The files stay in your tenant. Boards and assets live on UK hardware we own, or in an environment you name. That is the whole point for agencies, regulated teams and anyone tired of a design file that only exists inside Figma.
Workspace sign-in is native. Penpot speaks OpenID Connect in the edition we host. Your team uses the same Keycloak login they use for everything else in the workspace. First successful login creates the account. No local admin password sitting in a wiki.
We run the unglamorous half. The exporter, the websocket path, the database and the asset volume are why self-hosting Penpot is a weekend that never quite ends. That work is ours.
How it sits with the rest of the workspace
Finished art and exports can land in Nextcloud. Specs and decision records live in BookStack or Outline. The build sits in Gitea. Everyone reaches the lot through the same workspace sign-in. We watch it with Zabbix and Grafana and take nightly backups.
Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD: the comparison that matters
| Consideration | Figma / Sketch / Adobe XD | Hosting for Penpot |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Per-editor subscription; SSO lives on a higher Figma plan | No per-editor licence, flat managed platform fee |
| Where the files live | Vendor cloud (Figma) or a Mac (Sketch) | UK infrastructure you control, or your own environment |
| Realtime collaboration | Yes, in the SaaS | Yes, in the edition we host |
| SSO | Figma Organization and above | Native OpenID Connect in community edition |
| Plugin and import fidelity | The default for most teams | Smaller ecosystem; import is not lossless |
| Lock-in | Export within the vendor's terms | Open source, your database and asset volume |
A design file is source code with prettier types. Hosting for Penpot puts that source on UK infrastructure instead of inside a per-seat SaaS. Read the limitations on this page first. If they are acceptable, tell us how many editors you have and we will say what it costs to run.
Open source provenance
Penpot
is
MPL-2.0
software maintained upstream
(source, ref 2.17.2).
Node provides managed hosting, configuration and support. We are not the publisher.
- Hosting for paying customers: permitted under this licence.
- Trademark: "Penpot" is a mark of Kaleidos Inc / Penpot. House naming rule applies: "Hosting for Penpot" / "we host, configure and support Penpot" only, never "Hosted Penpot", "Managed Penpot", "Penpot Hosting" or "Penpot-as-a-Service".
Adoption and community
59.4k+ GitHub stars Penpot is the self-hostable design tool people point at when they want off Figma. The GitHub repo sat around 59,000 stars in August 2026.
“I'm willing to pay the "performance tax" of the web stack/self-hosting if it means my design files aren't held hostage in a proprietary cloud silo.”
Hacker News
“Have been self-hosting this on Docker/Portainer for several weeks for a few people. Works fine so far.”
Hacker News
“Really reminds me of early Sketch and how productive I was with it. Its wild that this is open source.”
Hacker News
Quotes are from public community discussions, linked to their original sources.
Frequently asked questions
Is Penpot a good Figma alternative?
For teams that want design files on infrastructure they control, yes. Penpot covers boards, components, prototyping and realtime collaboration in the browser. It is not a pixel-perfect Figma clone: file import, the plugin ecosystem and some desktop-app workflows differ. If your process depends on a specific Figma plugin or a lossless .fig import, say so before we move anything.
How much does Figma cost compared with Hosting for Penpot?
Figma's Professional Full seat is $16 a month billed yearly, or $20 month to month. Organization is $55 a seat and only sold as an annual contract (Figma's published prices, mid-2026). Ten editors on Organization is $6,600 a year before Dev or Collab seats. Hosting for Penpot is a flat managed platform fee with no per-editor licence. The Medium tier on this page is the starting point until we have measured your team's light use.
Where do the design files live?
On Node's UK infrastructure by default, or in your own environment when that is the engagement. Boards, assets and export jobs stay in your tenant, under an Article 28 data processing agreement. You can export; there is no vendor cloud holding the source of record.
How do people sign in?
With the same node.uk workspace sign-in they already use. Penpot's community edition has native OpenID Connect, so the first successful login creates the account. Someone who is not in your workspace group is refused before they reach the app. We do not turn on Penpot's optional role list; membership is the workspace gate.
Does realtime collaboration work?
Yes, when the websocket path is intact, which is part of how we deploy it. Two people can edit the same board. PNG and PDF export is included: that is a Playwright service we run next to the app, and it is why this stack is heavier than a wiki.
What does a managed deployment include?
A production configuration of the frontend, backend, exporter, database and cache, TLS and your hostname, daily backups, monitoring, security patching and version upgrades. Chris or Matt stand it up; it is not a portal one-click install yet.
Figma alternative, hosted in the UK
How many editors, and which Figma plugins do you actually need? An engineer will say whether Penpot fits and what it costs to run here.