Excalidraw vs Penpot

Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform with vector tools, while Excalidraw provides a lightweight hand-drawn canvas.

Which to pick

Excalidraw offers hand-drawn style diagrams, not full UI design or code export.

What it is: Excalidraw:Excalidraw is an open-source virtual whiteboard for creating hand-drawn style diagrams.; Penpot:Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for collaborative UI, design systems, and AI-enhanced workflows.
Best for: Excalidraw:Hand-drawn style collaborative whiteboarding; Penpot:Open-source full-stack design platform
Who it’s for: Excalidraw:Designers, developers, and teams needing quick sketching and collaborative diagrams.; Penpot:Designers, developers, and AI agents needing scalable, code-friendly design collaboration.
Pricing: Excalidraw:Free; Penpot:Freemium
Plans: Excalidraw:—; Penpot:Professional $0 per user per month · Unlimited $7 per editor per month · Enterprise $25 per member per month · Private Server $50k per year
Open source: Excalidraw:Yes, 133,502 GitHub stars; Penpot:Yes, 60,699 GitHub stars
Works with: Excalidraw:—; Penpot:CSS, HTML, SVG, JSON, design tokens, AI agents

Hand-drawn style canvas. Create diagrams that look hand-sketched with a simple drawing interface.
Live collaboration. Invite others to edit the same canvas in real time after signing up.
Export options. Save your work to a file to avoid loss from browser storage clearing.
Keyboard shortcuts. Quickly open files (Ctrl+O) and access help via the UI.
Canvas navigation. Move the canvas using scroll wheel, space-drag, or the hand tool.

Responsive UI Design. Create wireframes, interactive prototypes, and CSS Grid/Flex layouts.
Design Systems. Manage components, design tokens, and shared libraries at scale.
Code Inspection. Export and inspect CSS, HTML, SVG, JSON and Penpot’s open file format.
AI Workflows. Integrate any LLM or AI tool directly into design-to-code and code-to-design pipelines.
Self-host & Cloud. Choose between Penpot’s hosted cloud or self-hosted deployment.
Unlimited Collaboration. Unlimited teams, projects and file creation across plans.

Is Excalidraw or Penpot free?+

Excalidraw is free. Penpot has a free plan (Professional); paid plans start at $25/month per user (Enterprise).

Which is cheaper, Excalidraw or Penpot?+

Excalidraw is free, so it costs less. Penpot starts at $25/month per user (Enterprise).

Is Excalidraw or Penpot open source?+

Yes, both are open source: Excalidraw (excalidraw/excalidraw on GitHub, MIT license) and Penpot (penpot/penpot on GitHub, MPL-2.0 license).

Excalidraw

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Penpot

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Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.