EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignDesignHeadquarters: ES

Penpot: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform for teams, positioned as an alternative to Figma. It covers wireframes, interactive prototypes, components, design systems with native design tokens, CSS Grid and Flex layouts, real-time collaboration and a plugin system. It works with open standards such as SVG, CSS, HTML and JSON, and its Inspect tab shows code that matches the designs. Penpot can be used as a hosted web application after signing up, or deployed on your own servers.

Penpot is developed by Kaleidos, an open-source technology company based in Madrid, Spain, and the code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. Self-hosting is supported with Docker and a Helm chart for Kubernetes, and the project says Penpot can run in a private cloud, on-premises or in an air-gapped environment, so the organisation chooses where data is hosted and who has access. For European organisations this combines an EU-based vendor with the option to keep design data entirely under their own control.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Penpot pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
94 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
    Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
    Open source: low switching costs
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-6100
    Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked July 2, 2026
HeadquartersES (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryDesign
TypeProduct
Websitepenpot.app ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Penpot

The European alternatives to Penpot come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

32 European Design vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Penpot one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Penpot

Penpot is headquartered in ES and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Penpot scores best on data residency.

Penpot is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Penpot together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Penpot?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Penpot include ArtFlow, Artweaver and Capture One. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Penpot?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Penpot include darktable and Excalidraw. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Penpot GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Penpot is headquartered in ES (EU) and hosts data in EU. It is also open-source, so you can self-host it. That makes Penpot an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Design

Design: Graphic design — photo editing, illustration, desktop publishing. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Design page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Penpot — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score