Penpot vs Axiom
Open-source design + prototyping platform — Figma alternative, self-hostable
vs. Observability for logs, traces, events — serverless-first, infinite scale
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
Axiom
Personal (Free)
No credit card. 500 GB/month ingest, 10 GB-hr compute, 25 GB storage, 30-day retention max.
Free
Axiom Cloud
$25/month minimum platform fee. Volume-based ingest + query credits. Always-free allowances: 1 TB/mo ingest, 100 GB-hr queries, 100 GB storage.
$25/mo
RBAC Add-on
+$50/month for role-based access control.
$50/mo
Audit Logs Add-on
+$50/month for audit logs.
$50/mo
Directory Sync Add-on
+$100/month for SCIM.
$100/mo
SSO Add-on
+$100/month for SAML SSO.
$100/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated cluster option, private connectivity, SLA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Penpot vs personal on Axiom.
| Metric | Penpot | Axiom |
|---|---|---|
| ingest gb month | — | 500 GB/month |
| query compute gb hr | — | 10 GB-hr/month |
| retention max days | — | 30 days |
| storage gb | — | 25 GB |
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.
Axiom · 15 features
- API Tokens — Scoped tokens for ingest or query.
- APL (query language) — Axiom Processing Language — Kusto-inspired pipes (`|`). Fast + expressive.
- AWS Lambda Extension — Native extension to ship Lambda logs + traces.
- Cloudflare Integration — Workers + Pages log drain. Log pull from any Cloudflare zone.
- Dashboards — Visualizations from APL queries: line/bar/pie/heatmap/table.
- Datasets — Logical partitions of data. Schema-free; fields auto-indexed.
- Elastic Bulk API compat — Elasticsearch Bulk API endpoint — drop-in replacement.
- Field Explorer — Auto-detected field stats, histograms, top-values per dataset.
- Monitors (alerts) — Threshold + anomaly-based alerting on APL queries. Route to Slack/PagerDuty/emai…
- next-axiom — Next.js logger with automatic correlation + Web Vitals capture.
- OpenTelemetry-native — Ingest OTLP/HTTP + gRPC. No proprietary agent.
- Saved Queries — Save + share APL queries as starters.
- Stream (live tail) — Live tail of incoming events with filter bar.
- Traces — OpenTelemetry-native. Distributed tracing across services.
- Vercel Integration — One-click: Vercel logs + Web Vitals → Axiom.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Penpot | Axiom |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | Axiom CLI |
| SDK | Penpot Plugins API | axiom-go, @axiomhq/js, axiom-py, axiom-rs, next-axiom |
| REST | — | Axiom REST API, Ingest HTTP endpoint |
| MCP | — | Axiom MCP |
| OTHER | Desktop App, Export + Inspect, Penpot Web, Self-Host (Docker) | — |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Penpot and Axiom 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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