Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover design & graphics. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Looka | Penpot | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $20 | From $7 |
| Pricing model | One-time purchase | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | One-time purchase | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | 14 days |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | Design & Graphics | Design & Graphics |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | 1 |
A logo and brand kit from a few answers
Looka generates logo options from a business name and a handful of style choices, then sells you the files. Buying the brand kit rather than the logo alone gets business cards, social templates, letterheads and invoices built from the same mark. The one-time packages are the cheaper road if the logo is genuinely all you need. Full ownership is stated either way.
Our note
Take the $65 one-time package rather than the subscription unless you actually want the templates, because vector files are the part you will still need in two years. The generated marks are competent and rarely surprising, which is the honest trade at this price.
Open source design you can host yourself
Penpot does the job Figma does and is open source, which matters if you would rather keep design files on a server you control than on somebody else's. The free plan is fully featured rather than crippled, and paying mostly buys storage, version history and a bill that stops rising past a point. Files are standards-based, so what comes out is SVG and CSS rather than a format only one company reads.
Our note
The capped bill is the quietly good part of this: it removes the sting from adding the ninth person to a team. Take it seriously if you are choosing tools for an organisation that cares about lock-in, and stay on Figma if you just need to draw a thumbnail.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.