tldraw review
Free browser whiteboard for quick collaborative sketches and diagrams, from the company behind the commercially licensed tldraw infinite-canvas SDK for developers.
By Noahlast updated pricing verified
tldraw screenshots & video
tldraw in 20 seconds
Best for: sketching quick diagrams and flows with collaborators on a free shared board
Pricing: tldraw.com is free; the SDK is free in development and for hobby projects, with commercial licenses priced by value after a 100-day free trial.
- tldraw.com is a free collaborative whiteboard built on the tldraw SDK.
- tldraw raised a $10M Series A in April 2025 after about $1M in SDK license revenue in its first year of sales.
- The tldraw SDK repository on GitHub has 51,000+ stars and is source-available under a commercial license, not open source.
- tldraw offers a 100-day free trial and a free hobby license for its SDK; production use requires a license.
- tldraw offline, launched in July 2026, is a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux that needs no account.
Limitations: No paid team plan or published admin terms for tldraw.com.; Commercial SDK pricing is not published.; The SDK is source-available, not open source.
Top alternatives: Excalidraw, Miro, FigJam, Microsoft Whiteboard, Mural — full list
What is tldraw?
tldraw is best known as tldraw.com, a free whiteboard that needs nothing more than a browser: draw or add shapes, arrows, text, sticky notes, images and frames on an infinite canvas and work on the same board with others in real time, with live cursors, viewport following and comments. Signing in with a free account keeps boards as files in workspaces. The whiteboard is also a showcase. tldraw, a London startup founded in 2022 by Steve Ruiz, earns its revenue licensing the tldraw SDK, the same React canvas engine, to products such as ClickUp's whiteboards, Padlet's Sandboxes and Jam's screenshot annotations, and it ships early SDK versions to tldraw.com for testing. Newer products aim the canvas at AI agents: tldraw offline is a no-account desktop app whose files can carry scripts that coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex write, with LAN multiplayer added in August 2026, and a tldraw plugin puts a live, multiplayer board inside ChatGPT and Codex, where agents can read, draw and edit, including Mermaid diagrams.
tldraw is a free collaborative whiteboard at tldraw.com and the commercially licensed infinite-canvas SDK that powers it. tldraw.com opens instantly in the browser for drawing, shapes, arrows, text, sticky notes and frames, shares boards with live cursors and comments, and keeps files in workspaces with a free account; tldraw offline, launched in July 2026, is a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux that saves self-contained .tldraw files with no account or server. AI agents can work on boards through tldraw's plugin for ChatGPT and Codex and an MCP app for Claude and Cursor. Developers can use the SDK free in development and for hobby projects, but production use needs a commercial license, priced by value after a 100-day free trial; ClickUp, Padlet and Jam build on it, and its GitHub repository has 51,000+ stars.
Standout feature: A canvas engine good enough that other companies license it: the SDK that runs tldraw.com also powers ClickUp's whiteboards, Padlet's Sandboxes and Jam's annotations, and tldraw now opens that canvas to AI agents through ChatGPT, Codex, Claude and Cursor integrations.
Biggest weakness: tldraw.com is the company's free flagship demo, where early SDK versions ship for testing, and tldraw sells no team plan for it, so companies that standardize on it get no published admin, security or support terms. Developers face the opposite trade-off: the SDK is source-available rather than open source, and shipping it in a product requires a commercial license whose price is not published.
tldraw: pros and cons
Pros
- tldraw.com is free and opens instantly in the browser, with real-time collaboration, live cursors and comments.
- tldraw offline saves self-contained .tldraw files (canvas, images, videos and scripts) on macOS, Windows or Linux with no account or server.
- AI agents can create and edit boards, including Mermaid diagrams, through the tldraw plugin for ChatGPT and Codex and an MCP app for Claude and Cursor.
- The SDK behind it powers ClickUp's whiteboards, Padlet's Sandboxes and Jam, and its source is public on GitHub with 51,000+ stars.
- Developers get a free hobby license and a 100-day free SDK trial with no credit card.
Cons
- No paid team plan for tldraw.com, so organizations get no published admin, security or support terms.
- The SDK is not open source; production use requires a commercial license with unpublished, value-based pricing.
- Hobby licenses show a tldraw watermark in production.
tldraw pricing
Free · verified from the vendor's pricing page
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| tldraw.com | Free | Free collaborative whiteboard in the browser; a free account keeps boards as files in workspaces. |
| SDK hobby license | Free | Free license for non-commercial hobby projects; shows a tldraw watermark in production. |
| SDK commercial license | Custom | Annual license for production use with value-based pricing, full SDK access and multiplayer sync included; 100-day free trial with no credit card, discounted pricing for early-stage startups. |
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