Staxly

Penpot vs Appwrite

Open-source design + prototyping platform — Figma alternative, self-hostable
vs. Open-source BaaS for building full-stack apps

Penpot (OSS) ↗Appwrite website ↗

Pricing tiers

Penpot

Free (Cloud)
$0. Unlimited files, unlimited projects, unlimited users. Full feature set.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
Free forever. MPL 2.0 license. Docker Compose deploy. Full feature parity with cloud.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. Self-hosted support contract, SLA, training.
Custom
Penpot (OSS) ↗

Appwrite

Self-Hosted
Run Appwrite on your own infrastructure. MIT licensed — no usage limits.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud Free
Managed cloud. Hard caps: 1 team member, 1 database per project.
Free
Cloud Pro
From $15/member/month. 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 200k MAU, 3.5M executions, unlimited databases + team members.
$15/mo
Cloud Scale
$599/month flat for the org. Higher included usage + advanced security. Deprecated in some regions — check.
$599/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SOC 2, HIPAA (on request), dedicated infra, SLAs.
Custom
Appwrite website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Penpot vs free on Appwrite.

MetricPenpotAppwrite
bandwidth gb month—5 GB/month
databases per project—1 databases
function duration s—30 seconds
function executions—750000 exec/month
mau—75000 users/month
storage gb—2 GB
team members—1 members

Features

Penpot · 16 features

  • Accessibility Checks — Contrast + color blindness.
  • Animations — Transitions + effects.
  • Auto Layout — Responsive components.
  • Comments — In-file discussion.
  • Components + Variants — Reusable elements.
  • Design Canvas — Vector drawing + layout.
  • Design Tokens (W3C) — Named design variables.
  • Figma File Import — Migrate from Figma.
  • Flex + Grid Layout — Layout constraints.
  • Inspector + Code Export — CSS/HTML/React/Flutter code.
  • Native SVG — Not a proprietary blob.
  • Plugins API — Extend Penpot.
  • Prototyping — Interactive flows.
  • Self-Host (MPL-2.0) — Docker deploy.
  • Shared Libraries — Team asset libraries.
  • Version History — File revisions.

Appwrite · 13 features

  • Account (Auth) — User authentication: email/password, magic URLs, phone OTP, anonymous, 30+ OAuth…
  • Avatars — Generated avatars, country flags, credit-card icons, QR codes, favicons.
  • Databases — NoSQL collections with attribute types, indexes, permissions per document/collec…
  • Events System — Unified event bus: subscribe in Functions, Webhooks, Realtime using event string…
  • Functions — Serverless functions in 13+ runtimes (Node, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Dart, Deno, S…
  • Messaging — Multi-channel messaging: Push (FCM/APNs), SMS (Twilio/Vonage/Msg91), Email (Mail…
  • Migrations — Import from Firebase, Supabase, NHost, or another Appwrite project.
  • Permissions (ACLs) — Per-document / per-collection ACLs: Role.user(), Role.team(), Role.any(), Role.g…
  • Realtime — WebSocket subscriptions to events: database changes, auth, storage, function exe…
  • Sites — Deploy static and SSR frameworks (Next, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Remix) direct fr…
  • Storage — File buckets with access control, auto-transforms (image preview), antivirus, en…
  • Teams — Group users with shared access + roles. Used for row-level permissions on resour…
  • Webhooks — HTTP callbacks on any Appwrite event. Signed with x-appwrite-webhook-signature.

Developer interfaces

KindPenpotAppwrite
CLI—Appwrite CLI
SDKPenpot Plugins APIAndroid SDK (Kotlin), Apple SDK (Swift), Dart Server SDK, Deno SDK, Flutter SDK, Kotlin Server SDK, .NET Server SDK, Node.js Server SDK, PHP Server SDK, Python Server SDK, React Native SDK, Ruby Server SDK, Swift Server SDK, Web SDK (browser)
REST—REST API
GRAPHQL—GraphQL API
MCP—Appwrite MCP Server
OTHERDesktop App, Export + Inspect, Penpot Web, Self-Host (Docker)Realtime WebSocket
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Penpot and Appwrite may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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