Affinity Designer vs Penpot
The ultimate side-by-side head-to-head analysis for 2026.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — Affinity Designer is pricing not verified, Penpot is free.
- How to start: Affinity Designer is pricing not verified, Penpot is free.
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. We do not publish a quality score, because we do not have one we can stand behind. They cannot tell you which tool fits your workflow — the sections below are there for that. How we score tools.
Affinity Designer
Penpot
Category
Design
Design
Base Price
Not verified
Free
Public API
No
Yes
Mobile app
Yes
No
Open source / self-hostable
No
Yes
SSO (SAML)
No
No
Choose Affinity Designer if:
Designers who resent subscriptions and do not need Adobe compatibility.
Choose Penpot if:
Teams that need design collaboration without a per-seat contract, or with data residency rules.
Affinity Designer: pros & cons
- One-off price instead of a monthly fee
- Vector and raster in one document
- Fast on modest hardware
- Smaller ecosystem than Adobe
- Some agency workflows still expect Adobe files
- Fewer tutorials and templates
Penpot: pros & cons
- Open source with no seat licence
- Self-hostable, so files stay yours
- Uses open web standards under the hood
- Fewer plugins and integrations
- Performance lags on very large files
- Smaller community for help
Our verdict on Affinity Designer
The strongest case against Creative Cloud on price. Check what file formats your clients demand first.
Our verdict on Penpot
The credible open-source answer to Figma. Judge it on your file sizes before committing a team to it.