Logo
Deploy Now

SaaS Alternative

Miro FigJam Lucidchart Mural

Categories

Self-Hosted Open Source Productivity Collaboration Design Whiteboard Diagramming

Stars

128335

Forks

14557

Watchers

500

Developer links

Last Updated: 07-25-2026 11:52 PM (UTC)

Excalidraw

Half the architecture sketches on the internet trace back to Excalidraw - the MIT-licensed virtual whiteboard whose hand-drawn aesthetic made technical diagramming feel approachable, at roughly 85,000 GitHub stars. The infinite canvas offers rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, arrows with smart binding and labels, free-draw, text, images, and an eraser, with full undo/redo, zoom, dark mode, and keyboard-first ergonomics. Community shape libraries add thousands of pre-built elements - AWS architecture icons, flowchart stencils, UI wireframe kits - and everything exports to PNG, SVG, the clipboard, or the open .excalidraw JSON format that keeps drawings diffable and portable. Live collaboration works on a share-a-link model with live cursors and a laser pointer for presenting, and it is end-to-end encrypted by design: the room key travels in the URL hash, which never reaches the server, so the WebSocket relay only ever sees ciphertext. The architecture is remarkably light - the app is a static bundle served by Nginx, drawings persist locally in the browser, and the stateless excalidraw-room relay handles multiplayer - so a self-hosted deployment gives unlimited boards and collaborators with near-zero resource cost, replacing per-editor whiteboard subscriptions.

Excalidraw

Benefits

  • No Per-Editor Pricing
  • Unlimited boards and collaborators on your own instance - the features Miro and FigJam meter, free forever.
  • The Server Can't Read Your Boards
  • The encryption key lives in the URL hash and never reaches the relay - collaboration data is ciphertext end to end.
  • Diagrams That Don't Intimidate
  • The sketch aesthetic signals 'draft, discuss, change' - ideal for design reviews and architecture discussions.
  • Nearly Nothing to Run
  • A static frontend plus a stateless WebSocket relay - no database, no backend state, minimal resources.

Features

  • Infinite Hand-Drawn Canvas
  • Shapes, bound arrows, free-draw, text, and images with undo/redo and dark mode.
  • Live Collaboration
  • Share a link for simultaneous drawing with live cursors and a laser pointer.
  • End-to-End Encryption
  • Room keys stay in the browser; the collaboration server relays only encrypted data.
  • Shape Libraries
  • Thousands of community elements - AWS icons, flowcharts, wireframe kits.
  • Open Export Formats
  • PNG, SVG, clipboard, and the portable .excalidraw JSON format.
  • PWA and Local-First
  • Works offline with browser autosave; embeddable as an npm component in your own apps.