Design and diagrams decision

Sketch

A small team or experienced engineer can build a useful, narrower web-based design and handoff tool, but reproducing Sketch’s native macOS polish, enterprise features, plugin ecosystem, and brand presence is infeasible; keeping the hosted product is reasonable for teams needing those capabilities.

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Subscription$12/month ✓ verified

Initial build80 hours

Monthly upkeep8 hours + $0

Evidence3/3 runs agree

Open-source builds that already do this

Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.

penpot/penpot58,205MPL-2.0Web-based open-source vector design and prototyping platform with collaboration and developer handoff features.Open on GitHub

What a replacement has to do

Create and edit vector-based UI screens, organize layers/components, export assets for developers (SVG/PNG), and preview simple click-through prototypes in a browser.

What it still won’t have

Native macOS performance, platform-specific features and offline-first Mac app
Polished enterprise features (SSO, SCIM, BYOK, private-cloud hosting)
Large plugin ecosystem and marketplace
Brand recognition, long-term trust and customer base
Mobile iOS/iPad companion apps and mirroring

What remains hard

Brand trustWe’re an independent company making decisions for our customers and ourselves.
Brand trustDownload Sketch today and join thousands of designers — from freelancers to the Fortune 500.

Read the build prompt

First-year cost

Keep paying

Paying is—cheaper in year one.

On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.

Paid seatsseats

Money you would actually spend

Keep paying

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Subscription price × seats × 12

Build it

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AI build —APIs + hosting —

Time you would spend

—

What you would spend

AI to build it$ onceAPIs + hosting$/mo

What we assumed

Initial buildhrsMonthly upkeephrsYour rate$/hr

The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.

Runnable build prompt

Not run yet

Build a minimal web-based UI design tool using React + TypeScript, SVG for the canvas, Node.js + Express backend, and Postgres for document storage. In scope: (1) a canvas supporting shapes, paths, text, layers and basic transforms; (2) a document model with save/load and versioning; (3) a reusable component/symbol system with instance overrides; (4) asset export endpoints that produce PNG and SVG; (5) a simple prototype mode that maps hotspots to pages and provides shareable preview URLs; (6) an auth system (email/password) and Workspace sharing with viewer/editor roles. Out of scope: native macOS app, SSO/SCIM, BYOK/private cloud, plugin ecosystem, advanced image editing. Include robust error handling, input validation, and unit + integration tests for the document API and canvas serialization. Provide Dockerfiles for local dev and a simple deployment script for a single VPS or managed host (e.g., Vercel for frontend and Render/Heroku for backend).

How we checked4 sources · 3/3 runs agreed · evidence score 67

How the score was reached

Partly verdict base52
An open-source build was found+5
4 cited sources+3
Price verified on pricing page+3
3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
Evidence score67

The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.

How scoring works →

Cited sources · 4

Every page the run actually retrieved.

official productSketch — official product page
official pricingSketch pricing
official docsSketch features
open sourcepenpot/penpot

Integrity checks

What held up, and what did not.

✓ Price read off the page✓ 3 independent runs, one answer✓ Citations limited to fetched pages! 2 moats quoted from the page