BenchRank
#10 in Design ToolsUpdated 2026-08

OpenPencil

by OpenPencil · Open-source design editor that opens Figma files

BenchRank score

39.8 — BenchRank score out of 100

Screenshots of OpenPencil

Homepage · OpenPencil

Homepage of OpenPencil

Overview

OpenPencil is an open-source design editor that opens Figma .fig files natively via a Kiwi binary codec and supports copy and paste with Figma. It runs locally as a ~7 MB desktop app installed through Homebrew, or in the browser, with no account or server. A headless CLI, a Vue SDK and built-in AI chat with 90 tools sit on the same core.

Best for
Designers and developers who want a local, open-source editor that opens Figma .fig files.
Pricing
No prices are shown; the site states the app is free to use under the MIT licence with no account required.
Runs on
WebmacOS

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

  • Opens .fig files and copies/pastes to and from Figma
  • MIT licensed: editor, engine, file codec and CLI
  • Runs locally with no account, server or internet
  • Headless CLI and MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf

Trade-offs

  • Collaboration is P2P via WebRTC, with no server-hosted sessions
  • Custom editing surfaces require the Vue SDK, so Vue only
  • Figma Plugin API support runs via eval, not a native plugin runtime

Pricing

Published plans and prices from OpenPencil’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

  • MCP support

    Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.

  • API quality

    Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.

  • Documentation

    Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.

  • Agent friendliness

    How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.

  • Changelog

    A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.

  • Marketing site structure

    Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.

  • Page speed

    How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.

  • Operational trust

    Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

  • Openness

    Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.

  • Maintenance

    Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

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Where this comes from

The OpenPencil pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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