InVision vs Penpot
This pairing exists because of one sentence in InVision's ending: all documents were deleted, and there was nothing anybody outside the company could do about it. Penpot is the only tool on this site where that outcome is structurally impossible rather than merely unlikely. The axis is custody, and the honest question is what you give up to get it.
Pick Penpot if you want a design tool no vendor can switch off: MPL-2.0, free to self-host with Docker, files stored as native SVG, cloud from $0 for eight members and $7/user above that with total billing capped at $175/month. Pick Figma instead if your prototypes need real interaction logic or your workflow depends on a large plugin ecosystem, both of which are genuinely thinner here.
Side by side
InVision vs Penpot at a glance
| InVision | Penpot | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | ✗ service ended 31 Dec 2024, 23:59 EST | ✓ release 2.17.0 on 22 Jul 2026, repo active daily |
| Licence | ✗ proprietary SaaS | ✓ MPL-2.0, an OSI-approved open-source licence |
| Self-hosting | ✗ never offered | ✓ free with Docker, no seat cap, no licence key |
| File format | Opaque, server-side only | ✓ native SVG, plus a .penpot export |
| Free tier | None | $0 for up to 8 members, unlimited viewers, 10 GB, 7-day history |
| Entry paid tier | None: no longer sold | Unlimited: $7/user/month, billing capped at $175/month total |
| Enterprise | Gone | $25/user/month with a $950/month minimum; managed private server quoted at $50,000/year |
| Design canvas | ✗ none: you uploaded screens from elsewhere | ✓ full vector design, components, shared libraries |
| Prototyping depth | Static screens plus hotspots | Click-through flows and basic interactions; ✗ no conditional logic |
| Plugin ecosystem | Small, and now moot | ✗ a fraction of Figma's catalogue |
| Reviewer cost | ✓ free with a link | ✓ unlimited free viewers on every tier |
| Your files if the vendor vanished | ✗ nothing: all documents deleted | ✓ everything: SVG on infrastructure you control |
| Who carries the operational risk | The vendor, until it stopped | You, if you self-host: backups, upgrades, uptime |
Sources: Penpot pricing · Penpot source and licence · Penpot releases · Figma pricing, for the comparison in the prose. Compiled August 2026.
Where Penpot wins
A shutdown cannot take your work with it
This is the whole argument and it is not a marketing claim, it is a licence. Penpot is published under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, which is OSI-approved, and the deployment is a Docker stack you can run on your own machine. If Kaleidos, the company behind it, disappeared tomorrow, your instance would keep running and your files would keep opening, because both are already on hardware you control. No other pick on this site can make that statement, and InVision's users are the reason it matters.
The billing cap changes the arithmetic at scale
Penpot's paid cloud tier is $7 per user per month with total billing capped at $175 a month. Past twenty-five people that cap is doing real work: a forty-person design and product org pays the same $175 it pays at twenty-five, while the equivalent headcount on Figma Full seats at $16 runs to $640 a month before anyone reaches for Organization. The free tier is also unusually generous for a real design tool at eight members with unlimited viewers.
Native SVG is a boring answer to a serious question
Penpot stores designs as SVG rather than a bespoke binary, which means the files are readable by software that has never heard of Penpot. That is less exciting than any feature comparison and it is the single most useful property a design file can have, as several thousand former DSM libraries would attest if they still existed.
It is genuinely alive
Worth checking rather than assuming, on a page about abandoned tools: release 2.17.0 shipped on 22 July 2026, the repository was pushed on 10 August 2026 and carries about 58,000 stars. Treat star counts as popularity rather than health, but the commit cadence is the real signal and it is steady.
Where Penpot loses, honestly
Prototyping is the clearest gap. Penpot handles click-through flows and simple interactions, which covers review, but there is no conditional logic, no variables driving state and nothing resembling ProtoPie's sensor and hardware input. If your prototypes exist to test whether an interaction feels right rather than to show a stakeholder a sequence of screens, Penpot will frustrate you, and pairing it with a dedicated prototyping tool is the sensible response.
The ecosystem is the second gap, and it is the one that bites unexpectedly. Figma's plugin catalogue has an answer for every niche chore, from accessibility contrast audits to pulling copy out of a spreadsheet. Penpot has plugins, but you will occasionally hit a task where the Figma workflow is a two-click install and the Penpot workflow is an afternoon. Imported Figma files also arrive close but not exact, and complex ones need cleanup.
Self-hosting is a real cost that a licence does not remove. Somebody has to own the Docker host, the Postgres backups, the object storage and the upgrades, and that somebody needs to have tested a restore. Teams that adopt Penpot for continuity and then run it on an unbacked virtual machine have swapped a vendor risk for a worse one. If nobody will own the box, take the hosted plan and keep the open format as your insurance.
Starting on Penpot after InVision
There is no import path, because there is no source data left. The realistic sequence:
1. Start hosted, decide later. Run the free cloud tier for the first project. Nothing you create is trapped, so the self-host decision does not need making in week one.
2. Rebuild only what is referenced. Search your tickets and docs for old invisionapp.com links and re-create just those screens, from the shipped product rather than from memory.
3. Prove the exit before you commit. Export a real file, open the SVG in something that is not Penpot, and confirm you can read it. Doing this on day one is the entire lesson of the last two years.
4. Then choose your hosting. If you self-host, schedule the first restore test in the same sprint as the deployment, not later. An untested backup is a story you tell yourself.
Common questions
FAQ: InVision vs Penpot
Is Penpot actually good enough to replace InVision?
For design, review and handoff, yes. Penpot covers the canvas, components, shared libraries, comment threads pinned to a design and inspection of measurements and code, which is most of what InVision plus a drawing tool used to provide. Where it is still thinner is prototyping depth and ecosystem: interaction logic is simpler than Figma or ProtoPie, and the plugin catalogue is a fraction of the size. If your prototypes are click-through flows for review, Penpot is sufficient. If they need conditional logic or sensor input, pair it with a dedicated prototyping tool.
What does self-hosting Penpot actually take?
A Docker host, a Postgres database, object storage for assets and a reverse proxy with TLS, which the official compose file wires together. A small team can run it on a single modest virtual machine, and the software costs nothing under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. What you take on is ordinary operational work: backups you actually test, upgrades between releases, and someone who owns the box. If nobody owns it, the hosted plans are the honest choice, and they still leave your files in an open format.
Is MPL-2.0 real open source, and what does it protect?
Yes. The Mozilla Public License 2.0 is OSI-approved, which puts Penpot in a different category from source-available licences such as the Business Source Licence, Elastic 2.0 or the various fair-source variants that restrict how you may run the software. What it protects is specific and worth being precise about: it guarantees you can keep running and modifying the version you have, forever, on hardware you control. It does not guarantee the company keeps developing it, and it does not maintain your instance for you.