Adobe Firefly vs Penpot

Adobe Firefly is Adobe's family of generative AI models and the web and mobile app built on them. It launched in beta in March 2023 and Adobe trained its own models on licensed content such as Adobe Stock and on public domain material, which is why it markets Firefly as safe for commercial use. The same models power Generative Fill in Photoshop and AI features in Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Adobe Express.

The Firefly app covers text to image, image editing, text and image to video, speech generation, sound effects, music and audio or video translation, plus Firefly Boards for moodboarding. Next to Adobe's own models it offers partner models such as OpenAI GPT Image, Google Gemini (Nano Banana), FLUX, Runway, Kling, Luma and ElevenLabs. Everyone gets limited free daily generations; paid plans add monthly generative credits for premium features like video, audio and partner models, while standard image features are unlimited.

Firefly fits designers and marketing teams already in Creative Cloud who need brand-safe output and Content Credentials. For pure artistic image quality, Midjourney still leads many comparisons, and Leonardo AI or Krea give more model choice per dollar. Canva is easier for non-designers who mostly need quick social graphics.

Buying tip: credits only matter for premium generations, so a designer making still images can live on Standard, while video work pushes you to Pro Plus or Premium. Firefly Pro also includes full Photoshop on web and mobile. Adobe often runs first-year discounts on Pro Plus and Premium, so check the plans page.

Penpot is an open-source design and prototyping platform created by Kaleidos, a software company from Spain, and developed as the leading open-source alternative to Figma. It runs in the browser, supports real-time collaboration and stores designs in open standards: shapes are SVG and layouts map directly to CSS flexbox and grid, which makes handoff to developers more predictable.

Penpot 2.0, released in 2024, brought a new component system and CSS grid layout, and later releases added native design tokens, so colours, spacing and typography can be managed as variables shared with code. Prototyping covers interactions, flows and overlays, and inspect mode shows CSS, SVG and code for each element. Migration from Figma is possible through an exporter plugin, although complex files may need cleanup afterwards. The hosted version is free with unlimited projects and collaborators, and the whole platform can be self-hosted under the MPL 2.0 license with Docker or Kubernetes.

Penpot fits teams that want to avoid per-seat design tool costs, organisations that must keep design data on their own servers, open-source projects and developer-heavy teams. Its plugin and template ecosystem is far smaller than Figma's, very large files can feel slower, and developer handoff and advanced prototyping are less mature. Figma remains the industry standard for agencies and client work, Sketch is a macOS-native option, and Framer suits designers who want to publish websites directly from their designs.