Alternatives
Best Excalidraw alternatives in 2026
Five whiteboards worth switching to, what each one is genuinely better at, and exactly where its free tier stops. We make the first one on the list, and we say where the others fit you better.
Prices reviewed · written by the team behind Drawdy, which is first on the list
Why this list exists
Let's start with the uncomfortable part: Excalidraw is very good, and most people looking for an alternative are not unhappy with the drawing. They are unhappy with something specific, such as the paywall in front of cloud boards, the missing team features, or the fact that a rough rectangle stays a rough rectangle.
So this is not a list of tools that beat Excalidraw. It is a list of the five whiteboards worth switching to, what each one is genuinely better at, and exactly where its free tier stops. Full disclosure: we make Drawdy, which is first on the list. You should read the rest anyway, because a couple of them will fit you better than we do.
What Excalidraw already gets right
The bar every alternative has to clear
- It is free and open source. The full editor at excalidraw.com costs nothing, needs no account, and the source is public and self-hostable.
- The hand-drawn feel is the original. Every tool in this category, including ours, is chasing the thing Excalidraw got right first.
- Collaboration is end-to-end encrypted. Free live-collaboration links, with the board encrypted in the browser.
- The ecosystem is enormous. Thousands of community shape libraries, plus a VS Code extension and an Obsidian plugin.
What sends people looking elsewhere
- Keeping more than one saved scene is a Plus feature. Excalidraw's own comparison table lists unlimited scenes under Plus, alongside cloud boards, version history, shared libraries, comments, and presentation export, at $6 per user per month.
- Drawings in the free app live in your browser, which is fine until you want them on your laptop and your phone.
- Rough sketches stay rough. There is no shape recognition to clean up what you drew.
The alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Best for | Free tier | Paid starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drawdy | Excalidraw users who want history, presentation, and an extensible canvas without the bill | Unlimited local boards, 1 cloud board | Pro, starts with 3 months free |
| tldraw | Developers embedding a canvas in their own product | The full app at tldraw.com | SDK production licence, priced on request |
| Miro | Facilitated workshops and enterprise rollout | 3 editable boards | $8 / member / month, billed annually |
| FigJam | Teams already living inside Figma | 3 FigJam files | $3 / editor / month, billed annually |
| Apple Freeform | Solo thinking on Apple hardware, with a pencil | The whole app, Apple devices only | Apple Creator Studio, $12.99 / month, for AI features only |
Prices are each vendor's own list price, checked August 2026. Applying the same standard to ourselves: Drawdy's free tier is unlimited boards on your device plus one cloud board for syncing and sharing, and Pro lifts that cap.
1. Drawdy: the Plus features, free
We built Drawdy because we kept hitting the same wall in Excalidraw: the moment a sketch mattered enough to keep, it needed a cloud board, and that meant a subscription.
Drawdy's answer is that version history, team libraries, presentation mode, and your first cloud board sit in the free tier instead.
Key features
- Infinite canvas with the hand-drawn feel, plus sketched-shape recognition: draw a rough rectangle, pause, and get a clean one, with your original stroke kept.
- Local-first storage. Boards live on your device, are unlimited, and work with no network at all. Cloud sync is opt-in per board; the free plan covers one cloud board and Pro lifts the cap.
- End-to-end encrypted share links. The board is encrypted in your browser with AES-GCM and the key travels in the link fragment, which browsers never send to a server.
- Real-time collaboration with live cursors, and guests who join from a link without an account.
- Built for speed on a crowded board. Elements are indexed spatially, so selecting, erasing, and hit-testing stay quick instead of degrading with every shape added.
- An extension host on the canvas. Presentation mode ships as an extension, alongside Drawdy Hello and a Claude Canvas extension that can read and draw on your board, and the same API is open for building your own.
- Version history, presentation mode, lasso selection, and export to PNG, SVG, or open .drawdy JSON.
Pros
- Version history, team libraries, and presentation mode with no subscription.
- Nothing leaves your machine unless you ask it to.
- No account needed to start drawing.
Cons
- Only one cloud board on the free plan; past that, syncing and sharing needs Pro.
- No community shape-library ecosystem, and no VS Code or Obsidian integration.
- No comments, voice, or screensharing in the canvas.
- You cannot open a saved .excalidraw file yet. Copy-pasting elements from Excalidraw works; opening the file does not.
Pricing. Free to start and free to keep using, with no card: unlimited boards on your device and one cloud board. Pro lifts the cloud-board limit and starts with three months free; the free tier itself does not expire.
| Feature | Excalidraw | Drawdy |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited boards | Paid plan only | Yes |
| Cloud boards | Paid plan only | 1 free, then Pro |
| Version history | Paid plan only | Yes |
| Shared team libraries | Paid plan only | Yes |
| Presentation mode | Paid plan only | Yes |
| Shape recognition | No | Yes |
| Community libraries | Yes | No |
2. tldraw: if you are building, not drawing
tldraw is the best-engineered canvas on this list, and its interaction polish is what the rest of us measure against. The free app at tldraw.com needs no account and feels immediately right.
But tldraw's actual product is the SDK. It exists so you can put a canvas inside your own software, and that is where it has no real competition.
Key features
- An embeddable canvas SDK with real documentation, a sync service, and custom shapes and tools.
- A polished free web app, plus a downloadable offline app.
- Source available to read and fork.
Pros
- The obvious choice if a canvas is a feature of your product.
- Free to use as an app, free while you develop, free hobby licence.
Cons
- Shipping the SDK in production needs a paid licence key, priced on request rather than published.
- As an everyday whiteboard it is thinner on the keep-this-board-forever features: no presentation mode or version history in the free app.
- No end-to-end encrypted sharing advertised.
Pricing. The app is free. SDK production licences are quoted on request, with a 100-day trial and startup discounts.
3. Miro: for workshops, not sketching
Miro is not really an Excalidraw alternative; it is a different job. If your canvas work is facilitated, with sprint retros, workshops with fifteen people, voting, timers and templates, Miro is far ahead of everything else here, and it plugs into Jira, Asana, and the rest of the enterprise stack.
Key features
- Enormous template library, facilitation tools, voting and timers.
- Deep integrations, SSO, admin controls, enterprise governance.
- Comments and async collaboration built for large teams.
Pros
- The strongest option for structured group sessions.
- Unlimited members even on the free plan.
Cons
- The free plan caps you at 3 editable boards, the single most common reason people go looking for a Miro alternative.
- Heavy compared with a sketchpad: slower to load, more UI between you and the drawing.
- No hand-drawn aesthetic to speak of.
Pricing. Free with 3 editable boards; Starter $8 per member per month billed annually; Business $20; Enterprise custom. Monthly billing costs roughly 20% more.
4. FigJam: if your team already lives in Figma
FigJam's advantage is gravity. If your designers are in Figma all day, FigJam is one tab away, shares the same file permissions, and drops straight into design handoff. As a whiteboard it is genuinely pleasant, and the sticky-note-and-arrow work feels good.
Key features
- Native to the Figma workspace: same accounts, same sharing model, same plugins.
- Strong facilitation basics: stickies, stamps, cursor chat, templates.
- Easy to move work from a jam into an actual design file.
Pros
- Zero adoption cost for teams already on Figma.
- Cheap paid tier compared with Miro: collab seats start at $3 per editor per month annually.
Cons
- The free plan caps FigJam files at 3.
- No unlimited version history on free.
- It pulls you into the Figma ecosystem, which is a strange place to be if you are not a design team.
Pricing. Free with 3 FigJam files; from $3 per editor per month billed annually ($5 monthly).
5. Apple Freeform: free, and already installed
If you are on Apple hardware and mostly thinking alone, Freeform is a genuinely good answer that costs nothing and is already on your devices. With an Apple Pencil on an iPad it is the nicest sketching feel on this list.
Key features
- Built into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; syncs over iCloud.
- Excellent Apple Pencil support, native handwriting.
- Sharing and collaboration with other Apple users.
Pros
- Free, no account setup, no new app to adopt.
- The best pencil-and-paper feel if you own an iPad.
Cons
- Apple devices only, with no web version, so a Windows or Linux colleague cannot open your board.
- Weak for diagramming: no real connector or flow primitives.
- No export story worth the name.
Pricing. Free, on Apple devices. Since 2026 four AI features (Image Generation, Shape Generation, Super Resolution, Auto Crop) need an Apple Creator Studio subscription at $12.99 per month or $129 per year; everything else in Freeform stays free.
How to choose, in one pass
- You want version history, team libraries, and presentation mode without a subscription
- Drawdy
- You want a canvas you can extend with your own tools
- Drawdy for extensions that run inside the whiteboard; tldraw if you would rather build the whole app around a canvas yourself
- You need the source, self-hosting, or the library ecosystem
- Stay on Excalidraw
- You are embedding a canvas in your own product
- tldraw
- You run workshops for a dozen people
- Miro
- Your team already lives in Figma
- FigJam
- You sketch alone on an iPad
- Apple Freeform
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Is there a completely free alternative to Excalidraw?+
Yes, several. The tldraw app and Apple Freeform are free outright. Drawdy is free with unlimited boards on your device plus one cloud board, and its free tier includes version history, team libraries, and presentation mode, which Excalidraw keeps behind Plus. Read the free tiers carefully everywhere though: Miro caps you at three editable boards, FigJam at three files, and Drawdy at one cloud board.
What is the best Excalidraw alternative for teams?+
It depends what the team does with the canvas. For facilitated workshops with a dozen people, Miro is the strongest option on this list. For a team already inside Figma, FigJam costs nothing to adopt. For a team that mainly wants shared boards, history, and libraries without a per-seat bill, Drawdy gives you those free.
Is Excalidraw still worth using in 2026?+
Yes, and we would say so even though we compete with it. Excalidraw is free, open source, self-hostable, encrypts collaboration end to end, and has an ecosystem none of the alternatives match. The reasons to leave are specific rather than general: you want cloud boards and history without the $6 per user per month subscription, or you want your rough shapes cleaned up automatically.
Can I move my Excalidraw drawings to another tool?+
Partly, and it depends where you are going. Excalidraw exports PNG, SVG, and its own .excalidraw JSON. Drawdy accepts elements pasted straight out of Excalidraw as editable objects, though opening a saved .excalidraw file is not supported yet. Most other tools will only take the flat image, which means you keep the picture and lose the ability to edit it.
Which Excalidraw alternative works offline?+
Drawdy is local-first: boards live on your device, the canvas works with no network, and cloud sync is opt-in per board. tldraw has a downloadable offline app. Excalidraw itself keeps drawings in your browser and works offline too. Miro and FigJam are cloud-first and expect a connection.
Keep reading
- Drawdy vs Excalidraw, the full head-to-head, feature by feature
- Drawdy vs tldraw, an SDK and a whiteboard, compared honestly
- Drawdy vs Miro, a facilitation platform against a sketchpad
- Drawdy vs draw.io, free forever and open source, but no real-time collaboration in the editor
- Drawdy vs Apple Freeform, free and lovely on an iPad, and closed to everyone outside Apple
- Excalidraw vs Apple Freeform, the two of them head to head
- Excalidraw vs Miro, a sketchpad against a facilitation platform
- Excalidraw vs draw.io, sketching with live collaboration against free-forever diagramming
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