Are there any design programs that allow for team collaboration, work without an internet connection, and don't charge a monthly subscription fee?
Are there any design programs for teams that don't need an internet connection and aren't subscription-based?
See where your brand stands in this ranking
One caveat: the collaboration is peer-to-peer, so “offline collaboration” means collaborators need some way to establish a local connection; it isn't the same as several people independently editing the same file with automatic conflict merging while completely disconnected.
🥈 Penpot — best for serious team/UI design
Penpot is probably the strongest Figma alternative overall. It's open source and its self-hosted edition is free, with unlimited users, teams, and files.
The catch is that Penpot isn't a traditional offline desktop app. You'd self-host it on your own server/network. It can be deployed on-premises or even in an air-gapped environment, making it excellent for organizations that need private collaborative design.
🥉 tldraw — best for whiteboarding/diagrams
tldraw offline is a free desktop app with no account, no server, and genuine offline operation. Files are stored locally as .tldraw files.
It also gained LAN multiplayer in 2026, allowing people on the same local network to collaborate without relying on a remote server.
However, it's more of an infinite whiteboard/diagramming tool than a Figma-style UI design application.
Tool
Offline
No subscription
Real-time collaboration
Best for
OpenPencil
✅
✅
✅ P2P
Figma-style design
Penpot
⚠️ Self-hosted
✅
✅
Professional UI/product teams
tldraw
✅
✅
✅ LAN
Whiteboards & diagrams
My pick: OpenPencil if your priority is “Figma, but free, local, offline, and collaborative.”
If you tell me whether you're designing UI/UX, graphics/illustrations, presentations, or engineering diagrams, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 options.
Finding a tool that checks all three of your boxes—collaborative, works offline , and no subscription/free —is tricky because true real-time collaboration inherently relies on network communication (either a cloud server or a local network connection).
However, depending on whether you mean "collaborative by passing files/local sync" or "collaborative via a local server," a few open-source and local-first options fit your needs:
Penpot — The premier open-source, web-based collaborative design tool (the open-source alternative to Figma). Because it is open-source and free, you can self-host it locally via Docker on an internal network or machine. While it isn’t traditionally "offline-first" as a standalone desktop app for multi-user real-time editing, running a local instance via Penpot Self-Hosting Docs allows you and a team on the same local network/Wi-Fi to collaborate completely free and offline without touching external cloud servers.
Graphite — A forever-free, open-source vector graphics and procedural design editor that operates locally. It is built as a web app that can run offline, and the project roadmap includes native multi-user live collaborative editing. It’s lightweight and great if you want a zero-cost vector tool that doesn't lock you into a cloud ecosystem.
Sketch — While not free/subscription-free (it requires a paid license), Sketch does offer a true offline mode allowing you to disconnect, work locally on files, and sync changes later—though it fails the "no subscription" requirement. For a truly free desktop workflow, traditional non-real-time tools like Inkscape allow seamless offline collaboration if you share .svg files locally via a version control system like Git or a local network drive, though it lacks live co-editing.
To help narrow down the best setup:
Do you mean real-time live collaboration (like Google Docs/Figma) with people in the same room/local network, or async collaboration (passing files back and forth)?
Are you comfortable running a local Docker container on a machine to act as a private server, or do you strictly need a stand-alone desktop app?
