Staxly

Penpot vs shadcn/ui

Open-source design + prototyping platform — Figma alternative, self-hostable
vs. Beautifully designed React components you copy-paste into your app

Penpot (OSS) ↗shadcn/ui (OSS) ↗

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) ↗

shadcn/ui

OSS (MIT)
$0. MIT license. Free forever. No signup. Components copy-pasted into your repo and owned by you.
$0 base (usage-based)
shadcn/ui (OSS) ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Penpot vs oss on shadcn/ui.

MetricPenpotshadcn/ui
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.

shadcn/ui · 12 features

  • 50+ Components — Button, dialog, dropdown, form, table, etc.
  • Accessibility — WAI-ARIA compliant.
  • Blocks — Full-page layouts ready to use.
  • Charts — Composable Recharts wrappers.
  • CSS Variables — Themeable via --primary, --background, etc.
  • Custom Registries — Publish your own components via registry spec.
  • Dark Mode — Built-in toggleable theme.
  • Form Components (react-hook-form) — Integrated with react-hook-form + Zod.
  • MCP Server — Query component catalog from AI agents.
  • Radix UI Primitives — Headless accessibility foundation.
  • shadcn CLI — Scaffold + add components.
  • Themes + Theme Editor — CSS vars-based color system.

Developer interfaces

KindPenpotshadcn/ui
CLI—shadcn CLI
SDKPenpot Plugins API—
REST—Component Registry
MCP—shadcn MCP Server
OTHERDesktop App, Export + Inspect, Penpot Web, Self-Host (Docker)Docs + Component Browser, Theme Customizer
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Penpot and shadcn/ui 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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