Should you ditch Figma for an open-source design tool?

Figma dominates the UI/UX design industry. Adobe stopped selling XD as a standalone product after the failed acquisition of Figma. InVision discontinued its services. Only Mac users can use the Sketch app to create designs. Apart from XD and Sketch, there are new cloud-based Figma alternatives, but they are just popping up with promises and losing popularity . There is no Figma-like design app yet created to break Figma’s dominance in digital product design. Figma has undoubtedly become every designer’s default choice.

That doesn’t mean Figma is a perfect universal design app that every designer should use. Just like any other software product, Figma has its own issues. It’s a proprietary cloud-based app that uses a closed design file format. Figma is apparently free to use, but you’ll have to pay for some features;  it’s a freemium product, not a free product. Open-source, self-hostable, free Figma alternatives solve these issues and are finally becoming viable by creating an open, free, flexible, extensible, developer-friendly design environment for everyone.

Let’s explore what open-source design tools can offer beyond Figma, why design teams started exploring them, and compare available open-source design tools. Will they ever be able to break Figma’s dominance?

Why teams are exploring open-source design tools

The whole software industry is moving toward open-source due to community involvement and popularity benefits. Even large proprietary software companies have started making their internal software modules open-source. The proprietary model is gradually becoming legacy.

Here is exactly why UI/UX design teams started loving open-source design tools by thinking beyond traditional proprietary design products like Figma:

• Pricing and vendor-lock concerns — Proprietary products aren’t free. Even though they offer free sign-up options, they are freemium or trial-based products. For example, you can design with Figma for free, but you should pay to use Dev Mode. Proprietary products also use vendor-specific, proprietary formats that keep your design vendor-dependent. Modern designers seek free and open design environments that don’t depend on a proprietary vendor
• AI changing expectations — AI built into a traditional product is an old practice now. Modern products are AI-native but let users use AI models they prefer. Design teams seek flexibility to use AI models they like to optimize costs and get the best results, rather than just relying on AI models hidden in the software product black box
• Growing demand for self-hosting, privacy, and ownership — Figma and all cloud-based Figma alternatives are hosted on cloud servers. All your design data and collaboration details are stored on their servers, and you have no direct control over the design software instance and your data. Modern product teams respect the open-source model and like to keep everything within their control by self-hosting their design tool, especially when they should adhere to strict data compliances
• Closer collaboration between design and engineering — Proprietary design tools can’t offer more developer-focused, offline features since the product codebase is closed, but when the whole design tool becomes open and free, many developer-focused features like design file inspection CLIs, automation APIs, low-code shared component libraries, etc. can be introduced. Design teams like to make the design handoff smoother and improve collaboration further with these developer-focused features that the open-source product model can offer

What open-source tools bring to the table

When the design tool’s codebase becomes open, and the product is free, the particular tool can offer impressive features that proprietary tools can’t implement. Here is what open-source design tools bring:

Open file formats and data ownership

Anyone can browse the source code of open-source design tools’ file formats, study their structure, and easily write programs to read or generate them. So, there is no vendor lock-in for design files. Open-source design tools can support each other’s formats to create a tool-migration-friendly environment or can even create a universal design file standard in the future.

Penpot, a popular open-source Figma alternative, uses the standard ZIP archive format and stores design element data in JSON format, so third-party tools can easily parse it without struggling with reverse engineering:

When you use an open file format, the whole design file 100% belongs to you, unlike proprietary file formats, where the file format belongs to the vendor and the design file is usually stored on their cloud infrastructure. Since open-source design tools are usually either self-hosted or locally installed, organizations can adhere to strict compliance such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc., even at the UI/UX design phase.

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Self-hosting and offline capabilities

Open-source design tools let you use the product hosted in the open-source organization’s cloud infrastructure, self-host it on your own cloud infrastructure, or use it locally only on your PC.

Here are the benefits of self-hosting your design tool within the organization’s server infrastructure or designer PCs:

• Works offline — Self-hosted design tools are usable within the same network without internet, and locally installed tools work offline
• Your data never leaves your infrastructure — Design files and all data are stored on the server or PC where you host/install the design tool and are never shared with other vendor-owned servers, even if you enable an internet connection
• No limits and restrictions ever — No one can control your self-hosted design tool instance unless you give server access permissions to someone. Store many design files until you run out of your infrastructure space (since design files are small, technically you have an unlimited design file hosting space). No unexpected terms and conditions changes
• No subscription costs or hidden fees — You don’t have to pay for a company to keep using the design tool or keep using specific features. Open-source design tools use FOSS licenses, so you can use the tool free forever, just by keeping your infrastructure up
• No forced upgrades — You have the freedom to keep using a specific version, and the design tool won’t force you to use new UI changes

Penpot can be easily self-hosted using Docker, and OpenPencil is an offline, local-first app with serverless P2P collaboration support.

Quant UX, an open-source rapid prototyping tool, offers one-click deployments to some cloud providers. You can find one-click deployment links to Elestio and RepoCloud from its GitHub repository. No technical skills required to deploy and start using Quant UX.

BYOK and flexible AI model integrations

Figma and similar proprietary design tools offer MCP (modal context protocol) integration, so developers can generate product designs from their favorite AI developer tools like Claude Code or Windsurf, but they won’t let UI/UX designers use their preferred AI models for built-in AI capabilities. For example, Figma uses its own AI model called Figma AI and won’t let you connect and spend your OpenAI credits.

Open-source design tools don’t embed AI models. Instead, they let you activate AI features using AI models you already pay for. This is known as the BYOK (bring your own key) AI integration.

For example, OpenPencil lets you activate its AI assistant using external AI models of your choice, including OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and more:

The BYOK concept not only lets teams use external AI models they pay for, but also helps bring AI model provider bills to zero by connecting to local AI models or models run within your organization’s cloud infrastructure. Yes, if you use a local AI approach, your data never leaves your organization’s infrastructure, even if you use AI for designing.

Better extensibility and developer-friendly workflows

Proprietary design tools typically limit extensions to traditional plugins, which prevents developers from building deeper, developer-focused features. Because vendors keep the product codebase and design canvas elements closed-source, developers can’t fully access or modify the underlying systems. Open-source tools use the open codebase and FOSS license as an advantage to make the product more extensible and developer-friendly.

Here is how open-source design tools become so extensible and developer-friendly:

• All popular open-source design tools use FOSS licenses (MIT, Apache, etc.), meaning developers can edit their design tool instance’s codebase and add custom features anywhere in the app to improve design handoff and designer-developer collaboration, e.g., adding platform-specific design constraints, so designers can adhere to them while designing to avoid design handoff delays
• All popular open-source design tools natively use standard web layouting (e.g., flexbox, grid, etc.), so developers don’t need to understand vendor-specific closed layout methods that the UI/UX design team uses, e.g., Figma’s auto layout
• Developers can use OpenPencil CLI to write simple, non-AI automation scripts to generate code segments without converting the whole design file to code using AI. The CLI even allows code-to-design, so developers can easily present their ideas or implementation limitations to designers
• Penpot offers webhooks, so design teams can trigger notifications when design elements are updated to improve the productivity of designer-developer collaboration and design handoff

Community-driven innovation

Proprietary design tools let users request features. This generally works, but experts in the user community won’t have a chance to contribute directly to feature enhancements because they don’t have access to the codebase and product architecture. Experts who specialize in both UI/UX design and development (usually senior frontend and full-stack developers) can directly send bug fixes and feature implementations to all open-source design tools.

When a limited internal development team improves a proprietary product based on user feedback, millions of experts who gather around an open-source product improve every bit of it with unique, innovative ideas every day.

Where Figma still has the advantage

The FOSS development model pushes open-source design tools to success, offering many perks for both designers and developers, but Figma-like mature, proprietary design tools still have the advantage in the following aspects:

• Enterprise adoption — About 7 out of 10 product designers say “Share the Figma file,” not just the “design file.”  Figma has become the industry’s standard for UI/UX design. Even though the Figma format is proprietary, many UI/UX design tools implement importing Figma files using either the Figma REST API or the reverse-engineered Figma file format (known as the Kiwi protocol). Figma is every designer’s choice, and every UI/UX design-related platform supports Figma integration
• Rich plugin ecosystem — You’ll find a plugin for every day-to-day design requirement. Creating flow charts, icon packages, design-to-code, AI features (e.g., AI image effects), animating, and more . There is a Figma plugin for literally anything. Open-source design tools are still new, and their plugin ecosystems are still growing
• Overall polish and easy to use — Figma launched more than a decade ago and has continued to evolve to better serve design teams. Over the years, its creators optimized the platform for productivity, making it accessible to both beginners and experienced designers. Figma’s stable, productivity-first UI became a major factor behind its dominance in the enterprise market
• Mature collaboration: Figma implements multiplayer editing mode with various collaboration features, including commenting, team management, instant cursor chats, and audio chats. Not only designers , but  all stakeholders of large enterprises collaborate in real time with Figma. Netflix, GitHub, and Slack-like tech giants’ Figma adoption proves the effectiveness of its mature collaboration features

Comparing Figma and open-source alternatives

Let’s compare Figma with popular open-source alternatives: Penpot, OpenPencil, Quant UX, and Open Design:

Given Figma feature parity and open-source feature implementations, both Penpot and OpenPencil lead the open-source Figma alternative competition. Penpot and OpenPencil competitively offer perks for both designers and developers backed by an open-source model, but they follow two different architectural philosophies, and you can choose one based on the following summary:

• Penpot: Mainly offers a free SaaS design tool and a self-hostable package. A community-maintained desktop app is available. Penpot is a full-stack app like Figma, but it’s open-source. The self-hosted version stores data only within your server infrastructure. Focuses more on designer-focused features than developer-focused features, as Figma does.
• OpenPencil: Mainly offers an offline desktop app and an online demo version. Self-hosting is possible, but not officially documented yet. Focuses more on developer-focused features to create highly productive design handoff workflows while also giving Figma-compatible design capabilities.

Overall, Penpot is a mature Figma alternative, and OpenPencil is a growing design toolkit that offers many developer-focused features along with an offline, local-first, Figma-compatible UI/UX design features.

Are open-source Figma alternatives ready?

Yes, they are ready to use. You can create complete product prototypes using all the popular open-source design tools we compared above. Penpot and OpenPencil offer a Figma-like design experience. Quant UX offers minimal design features with rapid prototyping capabilities. Open Design gives a great agent-native vibe-designing experience, similar to proprietary Lovable and Vercel’s v0.

However, you should move to open-source design tools only if Figma’s proprietary nature doesn’t meet your organization’s expectations and your organization will benefit from open-source tools’ perks (self-hosting, open formats, extensibility, and developer-focused features). Comparing tools based on UI/UX design features isn’t useful for long-term decision-making, since any tool can introduce any feature at any time.

If your organization adheres to strict data compliance, invests heavily in optimized design handoff, builds open-source products, or has concerns about Figma billing, using open-source design tools definitely has remarkable benefits.

On the other hand, if your organization is happy with Figma, it’s not worth leaving your stabilized Figma-oriented design process for open-source tools.

Open-source Figma alternatives are ready for your organization only if you seek something that Figma can’t offer under its proprietary model, such as self-hosting, internal component SDKs, open file formats, offline mode, etc.

Conclusion

Open-source design tools didn’t emerge to replace Figma. Their maintainers know that breaking Figma’s years-long dominance through the open-source model would be nearly impossible, so they didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, open-source design tools offer a different direction for UI/UX design tooling, with open-source benefits that Figma and other proprietary alternatives can’t provide. They prove that a design tool doesn’t have to remain a rigid, subscription-based product owned and controlled by a single vendor.

Open-source UI/UX design tools are completely free, offline, flexible, and highly extensible, and offer impressive developer-focused features for a smooth design handoff. No vendor lock-in, remote sign-up, forced updates, service subscription bills, fear of product discontinuation or pricing/terms changes — just download or self-host and use forever. Open-source Figma alternatives are becoming increasingly viable for product teams that prioritize openness, flexibility, and ownership.

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