Software Alternatives & Reviews

Pencil Project VS Penpot

Compare Pencil Project VS Penpot and see what are their differences

Pencil Project logo Pencil Project

Single-user mockup / wireframing / diagramming tool

Penpot logo Penpot

Design freedom for teams
  • Pencil Project Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Penpot Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19

Pencil Project videos

Pencil Project | Free UI Mockup Design Software

More videos:

  • Demo - Wireframing with Pencil Project Demo

Penpot videos

Penpot: Free and Open Source Design Prototyping Tool - First Impressions

More videos:

  • Review - Penpot: Free Open Source Design Prototyping Tool | Get Started
  • Review - FOSDEM 2021 Talk: Penpot, design freedom for teams

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pencil Project and Penpot)
Diagrams
58 58%
42% 42
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Flowcharts
100 100%
0% 0
Web App
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Pencil Project and Penpot. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Pencil Project and Penpot

Pencil Project Reviews

10 Best Visio Alternatives for Cost Effective Diagramming [2022]
Pencil Project is one of the best Visio alternatives which is open-source GUI prototyping software suitable for developers to create mockups, flow charts, floor designs, etc. It has a rich set of shapes and designed collections that make it easier to draw.

Penpot Reviews

10 Best Figma Alternatives in 2024
Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping tool that enables teams and individual designers to produce design systems, prototypes and user interfaces. It is designed to be collaborative, user-friendly and customizable. It is another best figma alternative.
Top 10 Figma Alternatives for Your Design Needs | ClickUp
Penpot uses scalable vector graphics (SVG), so you can forget about formatting issues. With Penpot, you can:
Source: clickup.com
Figma Alternatives: 12 Prototyping and Design Tools in 2024
Penpot is one of the first open-source design and prototyping platforms for cross-domain teams that are entirely free to use. Penpot is web-based and works with open web standards, so everyone with internet access can use it immediately.
5 Figma Alternatives for UI & UX Designers
Penpot has been in the works since 2021 (though the idea for it seems to go back as far as 2018) and is being built as open-source software for designing, collaboration, and prototyping. It is cross-platform (browser-based), and you can self-host Penpot either with Elestio or Docker.
Source: stackdiary.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Penpot should be more popular than Pencil Project. It has been mentiond 106 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Pencil Project mentions (11)

  • Uizard: Figma alternative with low learning curve
    I am a software developer, so doing UX is never my strength. From time to time though, I would resort to using the open source tool Pencil (https://pencil.evolus.vn/) to get a low fidelity mock-up. Lately I've been encountering bugs where images would come out broken when I re-open my wireframe in Pencil. Frustrated of the issue on Pencil, I tried out uizard yesterday, and have been really happy with it. It's... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Quick UI-design tool for mockups?
    Thanks for your replies. I checked some of them out, but I found one on my own that fits me perfectly: Pencil. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Best practice to draw/describe UIs in plain text?
    I wouldn't use text to illustrate a GUI. We use Pencil with the crayon-styled stencils to make quick mockups. The crayon styling makes it clear that they're just mockups so people don't poke at the style aspects of the design. We've gotten great feedback from our clients that these are effective illustrations too. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Simple tool for network documentation?
    I use MS Visio at work and Pencil (free) at home. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • A blog web design with Inkscape, what do you think about it?
    Thank you ! Of the ones I have tested, the only one that really works is Pencil, unfortunately, it lacks a lot of functionalities, and it is still far from being as practical as Figma, adobe xd etc. I think Inkscape is much more practical and powerful, but maybe it's just because I'm used to it :). Source: over 2 years ago
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Penpot mentions (106)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Pencil Project and Penpot, you can also consider the following products

draw.io - Online diagramming application

Figma - Team-based interface design, Figma lets you collaborate on designs in real time.

SuperNotecard - Introducing SuperNotecard. SuperNotecard is an online writing tool that features virtual notecards to help arrange facts or scenes, track details, organize paragraphs, and clarify your composition process.

Sketch - Professional digital design for Mac.

Linked Ideas - A macOS/iOS apps to treat ideas as links of concepts.

Adobe XD - Adobe XD is an all-in-one UX/UI solution for designing websites, mobile apps and more.