Drawdy vs draw.io: an Honest Comparison (2026)

What draw.io gets right

draw.io makes a promise almost nobody else in this category makes, and then keeps it. The editor is free forever under the Apache 2.0 licence, takes no account and no card, and the project's own words on storage are hard to improve on: store your data wherever you want, we cannot access it, ever. Files go to your Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, GitHub or GitLab, your browser, or straight to disk. There is no vendor sitting in the middle of your diagrams.

For technical diagramming it is deeper than anything here. UML, entity-relationship models, network infrastructure, rack and circuit diagrams, org charts, floorplans, attack trees, dependency graphs, with the shape libraries to match. It ships an offline desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, you can self-host it from an official Docker image or by forking it onto GitHub Pages, and you can embed the editor inside your own application. Its Confluence and Jira integration is the reason a lot of teams have it at all.

The difference that matters is what happens when two people open the same file. draw.io's repository states plainly that it does not support real-time collaborative editing in the editor itself. What its feature documentation describes instead is storage-mediated: put the file in Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or Confluence and those services synchronise changes between editors. That works, and it is not the same thing as a board with live cursors that two people draw on together.

Feature by feature

Drawdy compared with draw.io. The draw.io column reflects the project's published documentation, its drawio.com site, and its own repository as of August 2026.
Feature	draw.io	Drawdy
Free with no board limit	Yes	Yes
No account needed to start	Yes	Yes
Open source and self-hostabledraw.io is Apache 2.0, with an official Docker image; Drawdy is not open source	Yes	No
Hand-drawn lookdraw.io has a sketch style you switch on; in Drawdy the hand-drawn feel is the default	Yes	Yes
Real-time collaboration built into the editordraw.io's repository states it does not support real-time collaborative editing; live co-editing comes from the storage layer instead, via Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or Confluence	No	Yes
Guests can edit from a link without an accountdraw.io sharing is whatever your storage provider offers, so link editing runs on Drive or Confluence permissions rather than on draw.io	No	Yes
Export to PNG, SVG, and JSONdraw.io also exports JPEG, WebP, animated GIF, PDF, HTML and its own .drawio XML	Yes	Yes
Technical shape libraries: UML, ERD, network, rack	Yes	No
Offline desktop appdraw.io ships one for Windows, macOS and Linux	Yes	No
Embeddable editor for your own product	Yes	No
Keep files in your own Drive, OneDrive, or GitHub	Yes	No
End-to-end encrypted share linksdraw.io never hosts your files, which is a strong privacy answer of a different kind; sharing security is your storage provider's, not theirs	No	Yes
Sketched-shape recognitionRough rectangle in, clean rectangle out. draw.io's sketch style restyles shapes you place, it does not read freehand strokes	No	Yes
Presentation mode	Yes	Yes
Version historydraw.io keeps no files of its own, so history is whatever Drive, Confluence or Git gives you	Via storage	Yes
Extensions run inside the app	No	Yes

Which one should you pick?

Choose draw.io if…

You are drawing technical diagrams: UML, entity-relationship models, network topology, rack layouts, or cloud architecture with proper icon sets.
You want your files in your own Google Drive, OneDrive, GitHub or on disk, with the vendor unable to read them at all.
You need an offline desktop app, or you want to self-host the editor from a Docker image behind your own firewall.
Your team works in Confluence or Jira and you want diagrams living inside the page.
You want Apache 2.0 source you can read, fork and keep running regardless of what the project does next.

Choose Drawdy if…

You want people drawing on the same board at the same time, with live cursors, from the app itself rather than through a storage provider.
You want to send one link and have somebody start editing on it, with no account and no Drive permissions to grant.
You are sketching and thinking rather than producing a formal diagram, and you want the hand-drawn feel by default.
You want shape recognition, presentation mode and version history in one place, without wiring up a storage backend to get them.
You want share links that are end-to-end encrypted and that you can hand to someone directly.

What each one costs

draw.io

The editor is free forever, with no account and no card, under the Apache 2.0 licence, and draw.io does not host your files: store your data wherever you want, and they cannot access it. What is sold commercially is the Atlassian side, draw.io for Confluence and Jira, which Atlassian bills through its Marketplace; a Confluence Cloud licence also covers Jira Cloud at no extra cost. draw.io does not publish those prices on its own site, so get a quote from the Marketplace.

Drawdy

Free to start and free to keep using: unlimited boards on your device and one cloud board for syncing and sharing, with no card. Pro lifts the cloud-board limit and starts with three months free; the free tier itself does not expire.

FAQ

Questions people actually ask

Does draw.io have real-time collaboration?+

Not in the editor itself. draw.io's own repository states that it does not support real-time collaborative editing in the current version. What its documentation describes is storage-mediated collaboration: keep the file in Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or Confluence and those services synchronise changes between people editing it. For diagrams that is usually fine. For a board two people are actively drawing on together, with live cursors, it is a different experience, and that is what Drawdy is built around.

Is draw.io really free?+

Yes, and unusually unconditionally. The web editor is free forever, needs no sign-up and no card, and is licensed under Apache 2.0. There is no board cap, no trial clock and no feature held back. The commercial product is the Atlassian integration, draw.io for Confluence and Jira, sold through the Atlassian Marketplace.

Is draw.io the same as diagrams.net?+

They are the same project. draw.io is the editor and the name of the repository, drawio.com is the project's site, and app.diagrams.net is the production deployment the repository points at. You can use either address and get the same editor.

Where does draw.io store my diagrams?+

Wherever you tell it to, and nowhere else. It writes to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, GitHub or GitLab, your browser's storage, or a file on your device, and the project's own claim is that they cannot access your data. That is a genuinely strong privacy position, and it is the reason draw.io has no share links, no history and no live collaboration of its own: it never has your file.

draw.io vs Excalidraw, which should I use?+

Pick by what you are drawing. draw.io is for structured, technical diagrams with real shape libraries: UML, ERD, network, cloud architecture, and it is free forever with your files in your own storage. Excalidraw is a sketchpad with a hand-drawn feel, open source and self-hostable, with live collaboration built in and cloud boards behind its $6 per user per month Plus tier. If the output is a diagram somebody has to maintain, draw.io. If the output is thinking, Excalidraw or Drawdy.

Drawdy vs draw.io