head to head · open source
Penpot vs Chalk.ist
Penpot has 60,094 GitHub stars, 4,108 forks, 777 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chalk.ist has 1,845 stars, 149 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Penpot leads on adoption by 3,157% (60,094 vs 1,845 stars). Penpot is written in Clojure under MPL-2.0; Chalk.ist is written in Vue under MIT. Penpot has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Chalk.ist 8%. Penpot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Penpot | Chalk.ist | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Clojure | Vue |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-01-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 149 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Penpot if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Chalk.ist if
- You want the Chalk.ist feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and Chalk.ist fits your workflow better
About Penpot
Penpot is an open source design and prototyping platform for product teams that need scalable real time collaboration, self hosting, and full ownership of their design infrastructure.
read the full Penpot overview →
About Chalk.ist
Chalk.ist is a Vue project in the Productivity & Utilities / Design & Visualization category. GitHub description says create beautiful images of source code. Tagline says transform source code into visuals. Homepage is https://chalk.ist. License is MIT. License line names Kasper Mikiewicz 2022. Repository language is Vue. Repository stats include 1845 stars, 149 forks, 0 contributors, and 22 open issues. Repo age is 0 years. Last push is 2026 01 07T17:18:35Z. The excerpt lists no topics.
read the full Chalk.ist overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Penpot or Chalk.ist more popular?
Penpot has 60,094 GitHub stars and Chalk.ist has 1,845. Penpot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Penpot and Chalk.ist free?
Both are open source. Penpot is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Chalk.ist under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Penpot and Chalk.ist?
Penpot is written in Clojure and Chalk.ist in Vue. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Penpot or Chalk.ist?
Choose Penpot if you want the larger community (60,094 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Chalk.ist if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.