Penpot vs CircleCI
Open-source design + prototyping platform — Figma alternative, self-hostable
vs. Fast, configurable CI/CD with Docker, ARM, GPU runners and orbs
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
CircleCI
Free
$0. 6,000 build minutes/mo (Linux medium). 30 users. Unlimited projects.
Free
Performance
$15/mo (3 users). Credit-based: 80K-240K credits/mo bundles. More concurrency.
$15/mo
Scale
$2,000/mo+ (custom). High concurrency, self-hosted runner support, SSO.
$2000/mo
CircleCI Server
Custom. On-prem deployment of CircleCI. Enterprise only.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Penpot vs free on CircleCI.
| Metric | Penpot | CircleCI |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
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.
CircleCI · 17 features
- ARM + GPU Runners — ARM64 + T4 GPU resource classes.
- .circleci/config.yml — Single source of truth (YAML 2.1).
- Contexts — Org-scoped shared env vars.
- Deploy Markers — Track deployments + rollback.
- Docker Layer Caching — Reuse Docker layers.
- Dynamic Config — Generate config based on changed paths.
- Manual Approval — Gate workflows with manual step.
- Matrix Jobs — Parameterized parallel jobs.
- Orbs — Packaged reusable jobs + commands.
- Parallelism — Split a job across N parallel containers.
- Rerun with SSH — SSH into failed job.
- Restricted Contexts — RBAC for secrets.
- Scheduled Pipelines — Cron-triggered runs.
- Self-Hosted Runners — On your infra.
- Test Insights — Flaky test detection + trends.
- Test Splitting — By timings, filenames, classnames.
- Workflows (DAG) — Fan out, fan in, conditional.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Penpot | CircleCI |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | circleci CLI |
| SDK | Penpot Plugins API | — |
| REST | — | CircleCI REST API v2 |
| OTHER | Desktop App, Export + Inspect, Penpot Web, Self-Host (Docker) | .circleci/config.yml, CircleCI Orbs Registry, CircleCI Webhooks, CircleCI Web UI, Self-Hosted Runner |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Penpot and CircleCI 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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