head to head · open source
Penpot vs vectorcraft
Penpot has 60,919 GitHub stars, 4,199 forks, 777 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vectorcraft has 6,960 stars, 3,087 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Penpot leads on adoption by 775% (60,919 vs 6,960 stars). Penpot is written in Clojure under MPL-2.0; vectorcraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Penpot has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, vectorcraft 44%. 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 | vectorcraft | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Clojure | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Penpot if
- You weight community size — 61K 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 vectorcraft if
- You want the vectorcraft feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and vectorcraft 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 vectorcraft
VectorCraft is an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe Illustrator written in pure Rust, aimed at illustrators and designers who want the Illustrator workflow without a proprietary licence.
read the full vectorcraft overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Penpot or vectorcraft more popular?
Penpot has 60,919 GitHub stars and vectorcraft has 6,960. Penpot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Penpot and vectorcraft free?
Both are open source. Penpot is licensed under MPL-2.0 and vectorcraft under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Penpot and vectorcraft?
Penpot is written in Clojure and vectorcraft in Rust. 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 vectorcraft?
Choose Penpot if you want the larger community (60,919 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose vectorcraft if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.