head to head · open source
Penpot vs pencil
Penpot has 60,177 GitHub stars, 4,120 forks, 777 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pencil has 9,866 stars, 792 forks, 533 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Penpot leads on adoption by 510% (60,177 vs 9,866 stars). Penpot is written in Clojure under MPL-2.0; pencil is written in JavaScript under GPL-2.0. Penpot has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pencil 8%. Penpot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (prototyping), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | pencil | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Clojure | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-06-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 792 |
| 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 pencil if
- You want the pencil feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and pencil 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 pencil
Pencil is a free and open source diagramming and GUI prototyping tool, licensed under GPL 2.0, that lets designers and developers sketch wireframes, mockups, and diagrams on the desktop without a commercial licence.
read the full pencil overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Penpot or pencil more popular?
Penpot has 60,177 GitHub stars and pencil has 9,866. Penpot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Penpot and pencil free?
Both are open source. Penpot is licensed under MPL-2.0 and pencil under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Penpot and pencil?
Penpot is written in Clojure and pencil in JavaScript. 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 pencil?
Choose Penpot if you want the larger community (60,177 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose pencil if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.