Excalidraw review
Free, open-source online whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn-style diagrams and wireframes together, with Excalidraw+ team workspaces from $6/user/month.
By Noahlast updated pricing verified
Excalidraw screenshots & video
Excalidraw in 20 seconds
Best for: sketching informal system diagrams and wireframes live with others during a meeting or interview
Pricing: Free and open source; Excalidraw+ Plus is $6/user/month billed yearly or $7 monthly, with a 14-day free trial.
- Excalidraw is free and open source under the MIT license, with 134,000+ stars on GitHub.
- Excalidraw+ Plus costs $6 per user per month billed yearly or $7 billed monthly, with a 14-day free trial.
- Excalidraw's free plan includes 10 AI requests a day; Excalidraw+ includes 100 a day or a bring-your-own key.
- Free Excalidraw scenes are stored locally in the browser, and shared sessions are end-to-end encrypted.
- Excalidraw+ is SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 compliant, according to the company.
Limitations: Free work stays in the browser, one scene on the free plan.; Excalidraw+ takes credit cards only, and charges are non-refundable.; MCP and REST API access are in public beta.
Top alternatives: tldraw, Miro, FigJam, draw.io, Mural — full list
What is Excalidraw?
Excalidraw is an online whiteboard built for speed: open excalidraw.com and start drawing on an infinite canvas with rectangles, arrows, text and freehand strokes rendered in a sketchy, hand-drawn style that keeps attention on the idea rather than polish. Reusable shapes come from public libraries, frames turn a canvas into slides, and a command palette and keyboard shortcuts cover most actions. Collaboration works by sharing a link: everyone edits the same scene live, free scenes stay in the browser, and shared sessions are end-to-end encrypted. Generative AI handles text-to-diagram, wireframe-to-code and Mermaid-to-Excalidraw conversion. Excalidraw+, the paid service from Excalidraw s.r.o., adds what teams need around the free editor: unlimited cloud-saved scenes in folders and workspaces, view and edit permissions, read-only links and embeds, comments, live presentations, voice hangouts with screensharing, PDF and PPTX export, a REST API and MCP access in public beta, and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. The editor itself is MIT-licensed open source, available as an npm package for developers.
Excalidraw is a free, open-source whiteboard for sketching diagrams, wireframes and flows with a deliberately hand-drawn look, used straight from excalidraw.com with no account. Anyone with the link can draw on a scene in real time, shared sessions are end-to-end encrypted, scenes export to PNG, SVG or a .excalidraw file, and built-in AI turns text into diagrams, wireframes into code and Mermaid into editable drawings, with 10 free AI requests a day. Excalidraw+ adds cloud-saved scenes and folders, team workspaces, comments, presentations, voice hangouts, PDF and PPTX export, 100 AI requests a day and MCP access for $6/user/month billed yearly ($7 monthly), after a 14-day trial. The MIT-licensed project has 134,000+ GitHub stars and ships as an npm package that developers embed in their own apps.
Standout feature: A free, no-account editor whose hand-drawn style and minimal toolset make it fast to sketch an idea in seconds, with end-to-end encrypted link sharing and the whole editor available as MIT-licensed open source.
Biggest weakness: The free editor keeps work in your browser, one scene at a time, so saving scenes to the cloud, organizing them in folders, commenting and managing team access all require Excalidraw+ at $6-$7 per user per month; Plus is paid by credit card only, and its terms make all charges non-refundable.
Excalidraw: pros and cons
Pros
- Free and open source (MIT), with no account needed to start drawing.
- Link-based real-time collaboration, end-to-end encrypted for free users.
- AI text-to-diagram, wireframe-to-code and Mermaid conversion, with 10 free requests a day.
- Excalidraw+ costs $6/user/month billed yearly and is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant.
- An embeddable npm package and a large open-source community, with 134,000+ GitHub stars.
Cons
- Free scenes live in the browser, one scene on the free plan; cloud saving, folders and comments need Excalidraw+.
- Excalidraw+ accepts credit cards only, and charges are non-refundable under its terms.
- MCP and REST API access are still in public beta.
Excalidraw pricing
Free tier · paid from $6/mo · verified from the vendor's pricing page
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Full editor, 1 infinite scene stored in the browser, unlimited collaborators by link, 10 AI requests a day, PNG/SVG/file export, libraries, end-to-end encrypted sharing; no account needed. |
| Plus | $6/mo | Per user, billed yearly ($7 billed monthly), 14-day free trial: unlimited cloud-saved scenes and folders, team workspaces and access control, comments, presentations, voice hangouts and screensharing, PDF/PPTX export, 100 AI requests a day or your own key, MCP and REST API (public beta). |
What reviewers say
No third-party review scores on file yet.