Excalidraw
FreeCollaborative virtual whiteboard with a hand-drawn feel. Open-source Miro/Figma FigJam alternative — real-time collaboration, offline support, and end-to-end encrypted rooms.
How to install Excalidraw as a PWA
Why we recommend Excalidraw
Excalidraw is the canonical answer when an engineer says 'let me sketch this real quick.' The hand-drawn aesthetic is intentional — it lowers the perceived investment in any diagram, which makes people willing to throw boxes-and-arrows at problems they'd never bother to formalise in Lucidchart or Figma. The MIT-licensed core has been adopted by Notion (their whiteboard shipped on top of Excalidraw), VS Code (the Excalidraw extension), and Obsidian (excalibrain plugin), which tells you something about the quality of the underlying code. As a PWA, it works fully offline — your boards live in IndexedDB, no cloud account needed. When you do want collaboration, the free public service supports E2E-encrypted rooms (the URL contains the encryption key), and self-hosting via excalidraw-room takes ~10 minutes if you want to keep everything internal. The library of community-built shape libraries (icons, AWS/GCP/Azure assets, mermaid sequence diagrams) means you can go from sketch to publishable architecture diagram in the same canvas.
Best use cases
Best for: software architecture sketches in standups, system-design interview preparation, classroom whiteboarding, async PR reviews where a diagram explains intent faster than text, and quick collaborative brainstorming on a Zoom call (everyone hits a shared link). The Mermaid-to-Excalidraw bridge is excellent for turning text-defined sequence/flow diagrams into editable shapes.
Honest limitations
Not for: high-fidelity UI mockups (Figma owns this — Excalidraw's strength is purposeful imprecision). Not for: massive boards with 1000+ elements — the canvas slows down past a few hundred shapes. Real-time collaboration via the public server has no persistence: when the last participant leaves, the room disappears unless someone exports the file. For team-grade persistence, self-host or use a wrapping product like Excalidraw+.
Frequently asked questions about Excalidraw
Is Excalidraw really open-source?
Yes — the Excalidraw core is MIT-licensed on GitHub (80k+ stars) and can be embedded, modified, or self-hosted with no restrictions. The hosted excalidraw.com service is run by the same team and is free without an account. A commercial product called Excalidraw+ offers team workspaces, persistent rooms, and SSO on top of the open-source core, but everything you see on excalidraw.com is built from the public repository.
Is Excalidraw free?
Excalidraw is free and unlimited on excalidraw.com — no account, no watermark, no export cap. Excalidraw+ is the paid SaaS layer ($6/user/month) that adds team libraries, persistent collaboration rooms, and SSO. Self-hosting is free and supported via the published Docker image; a single 1GB VPS handles small teams comfortably. Most individual users never need the paid tier.
How does Excalidraw compare to Miro?
Excalidraw is faster, free, MIT-licensed and intentionally low-fidelity — its hand-drawn style encourages quick sketches over polished deliverables. Miro is a full collaboration platform with templates, video huddles, agile boards, voting, and enterprise SSO, costing $8-16/user/month. For software architecture diagrams, brainstorming, and ad-hoc whiteboarding, Excalidraw is usually enough. For workshop facilitation, design sprints, or enterprise rollout with thousands of seats, Miro is the safer bet.
Can I use Excalidraw offline?
Yes. Excalidraw is a PWA that caches the full app on first visit, and your drawings are stored locally in IndexedDB by default. You can create, edit, and export boards (PNG, SVG, .excalidraw JSON) without an internet connection. The collaboration mode obviously requires a network, but solo work is fully offline-capable, including the shape libraries you've imported.
Who uses Excalidraw in production?
Excalidraw is embedded in Notion (their whiteboard ships on top of the Excalidraw library), the Obsidian community plugin, the official VS Code extension, and is used internally at Meta, Microsoft, and Stripe per public engineering blog posts. Most software teams use it for system-design diagrams in RFCs, ADRs, and interview pads; educators use it for live classroom sketches; and the Mermaid-to-Excalidraw bridge has become popular for turning text diagrams into editable shapes.
Where Excalidraw is heading (12-24 months)
- →Excalidraw+ is expanding team features (libraries, persistent rooms, audit logs) which the open-source core deliberately keeps minimal.
- →Native AI-to-diagram generation (text prompt to architecture sketch) is shipping incrementally in 2026.
- →Performance work on large boards (1000+ shapes) is ongoing; the canvas engine is being refactored for WebGPU acceleration.
- →Tighter integration with documentation tools (Notion, Obsidian, VS Code) suggests Excalidraw will become the de facto sketch layer of dev tooling.
Related questions
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini usually suggest these next.
- How do I self-host Excalidraw with collaboration on a VPS?
- What is the maximum number of shapes Excalidraw can handle?
- Does Excalidraw support SSO or SAML for enterprise teams?
- How do I import Mermaid diagrams into Excalidraw?
- Can I embed Excalidraw inside my own React application?
More in Productivity
End-to-end encrypted office suite — docs, spreadsheets, kanban, code pads. No account needed for guest use. Hosted in France, GDPR-native. The privacy-first Google Docs alternative.
Open-source office suite with pixel-perfect DOCX/XLSX/PPTX compatibility. Self-hostable or cloud. The best free replacement for Google Docs when you need perfect Microsoft format support.
Open-source spreadsheet-database hybrid — like Airtable but self-hostable and free. Build relational tables with formulas, linked records, and custom views without monthly fees.
Local-first Notion alternative that stores notes as plain Markdown files directly on your disk. No cloud sync required. Your notes are yours forever — open in any editor.
AI-powered workspace for tasks, mind maps, and real-time collaboration. Installs as a PWA with full offline support. Combines the best of Notion, Trello, and a task manager.
Open-source project management for agile teams. Scrum, Kanban, and issues — free forever, self-hostable. The Jira/Trello alternative that respects your data.