Excalidraw
Excalidraw is a free, open-source virtual whiteboard for sketching diagrams, wireframes and flowcharts with a deliberate hand-drawn look. No sign-up required, with a paid Excalidraw+ tier adding cloud workspaces and team features.
What is Excalidraw?
Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard published by Excalidraw s.r.o., based in Brno, Czechia. Its signature is a deliberately hand-drawn rendering, carried by the Excalifont typeface, that makes a diagram look sketched rather than engineered. The editor is free and open source: the code lives on GitHub under excalidraw/excalidraw and ships as the @excalidraw/excalidraw npm package. It opens with no account and no sign-up, on the publisher's own terms, no account is needed, just start drawing. You get an infinite canvas, a compact set of shape and text tools, a command palette and keyboard shortcuts, with end-to-end encryption applied locally in the browser on the free editor. Scenes are shared through a link, a read-only link or an embed, and public sketch libraries supply ready-made components alongside a personal library. Two generative AI features sit on top: Text to diagram, driven through a chat interface, and Wireframe to code, both labelled Limited on the free plan and Extended on Excalidraw+. Mermaid diagrams can be imported, covering flowchart, sequence, class and entity relationship types. The paid Excalidraw+ tier adds unlimited cloud scenes, access management, presentations, teams and comments, while API and MCP documentation supports developers embedding the editor elsewhere.
What it does
- Sketch diagrams, flowcharts and wireframes freehand on an infinite canvas
- Collaborate in real time by sharing a single link to a scene
- Generate a diagram from a plain-language description with Text to diagram
- Turn a drawn wireframe into an interactive mockup with Wireframe to code
- Export work as PNG, SVG or JSON, and as PDF or PPTX on Excalidraw+
- Present scenes as slides straight from the canvas
- Drop in ready-made sketches from the public and personal libraries
When to use Excalidraw / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Excalidraw is the right fit.
When to use Excalidraw
- Developers and software architects sketching UML diagrams and system architecture
- Product managers and designers producing low-fidelity wireframes, user flows and mockups
- Teachers and students explaining ideas visually or taking visual notes
- Remote teams running brainstorming sessions, workshops, interviews and meetings around a shared link
- Anyone who needs a quick diagram immediately, with no account and nothing to install
When not to use Excalidraw
- Teams that need high-fidelity, pixel-precise design work: the sketchy rendering is intentional
- Heavy free-plan users, who get a single infinite scene and a personal library stored in the browser only
- Buyers who must pay by bank transfer, since credit card is the only accepted payment method
- Anyone under 18, who is excluded by the terms of service
- Users looking for a native mobile app, as none is listed on the site
How to use Excalidraw
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open excalidraw.com in a browser and start drawing straight away, with no account
- Pick a tool, such as rectangle, ellipse, arrow, text or freedraw, and lay out your shapes on the infinite canvas
- Speed up with keyboard shortcuts and the command palette
- Drop in ready-made sketches from the public libraries or your personal library
- Describe a diagram in natural language in the Text to diagram chat interface, then edit the result on the canvas
- Use Wireframe to code to turn a drawn mockup into an interactive prototype
- Invite collaborators by sharing the link to the scene
- Export the result as PNG, SVG or a saved file, or switch to presentation mode
- Create an account on app.excalidraw.com to start the 14-day Excalidraw+ trial
- Embed the editor in your own product using the open-source npm package and the API and MCP documentation
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Free and usable without an account for the core drawing experience
- Open source, so the code can be audited and re-used through the npm package
- Immediate to pick up, with a zero learning curve claimed on the site
- End-to-end encryption handled locally in the browser on the free editor
- Unlimited collaborators, even on the free plan
- Simple, low pricing on the paid tier at USD 6 per user per month billed yearly
- EU-based publisher with a published DPA, a postal address and dedicated support and privacy contacts
Cons
- The free plan is limited to a single infinite scene
- On the free plan the personal library is stored in the browser only, so it can be lost
- The privacy policy is dated 29 April 2021, predates the AI features and is built on a Termly template
- The policy explicitly permits targeted advertising involving third parties
- Servers are located in the United States although the publisher is Czech
- No published position on training models with customer data, no public subprocessor list and no certification on the pages collected
- Credit card is the only payment method, and the pricing FAQ answers do not render without JavaScript
Pricing & Plans
Excalidraw offers a free plan, presented as free forever, which covers the full editor. The lowest paid entry point is Excalidraw+ at USD 6.00 per user per month billed yearly, or USD 7.00 per user per month billed monthly, an annual saving the site puts at 14%. A 14-day free trial is available on Excalidraw+, and credit card is the only supported payment method.
- the complete editor
- one infinite scene
- unlimited collaborators
- PNG and SVG export plus save to file
- Notion and Obsidian integrations
- sketch libraries
- end-to-end encryption applied locally in the browser
- and open-source software. Generative AI is labelled Limited and the personal library is stored in the browser.
- everything in Free plus unlimited scenes and folders
- cloud backup
- access management
- sharing with edit or read rights
- read-only links and embeds
- voice hangouts and screen sharing
- live presentations
- Extended generative AI
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Excalidraw handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy never uses the term GDPR, yet it addresses the rights that regulation grants. Users in the EEA and the UK are offered access to and a copy of their data, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, withdrawal of consent, and the right to lodge a complaint with their local supervisory authority. Transfers outside the EEA and the UK rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, which the company says it will provide on request. A data processing agreement is published and linked from the footer, a dedicated privacy contact is available at privacy@excalidraw.com, and access or deletion requests go through a form hosted by Termly. Separate CCPA sections cover California residents. The publisher is established in Czechia, inside the EU, so no Article 27 representative is required. The policy is dated 29 April 2021.
Who owns the data?
The terms of service state that Excalidraw s.r.o. asserts no ownership over user contributions: you retain full ownership of everything you create, together with the intellectual property and other proprietary rights attached to it. In exchange you grant the publisher a licence to use that content as needed to operate and provide the service, and you waive the moral rights associated with your contributions. The company also reserves the right, at its sole and absolute discretion and without notice, to edit, redact or otherwise change contributions, to re-categorise them, and to pre-screen or delete any contribution at any time and for any reason.
Reuse rights
The privacy policy lists the purposes for which personal data is processed: creating and managing accounts, performing the contract, providing support, securing the service and preventing fraud, handling orders and payments, sending administrative messages, requesting feedback, publishing testimonials with consent, running prize draws, and meeting legal obligations. Marketing communications are sent according to the preferences you express. The policy also allows the company to develop and display personalised content and targeted advertising, working with third parties, tailored to your interests and location, and to measure its effectiveness. Data collected automatically includes IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language, referring URL, country and usage logs, along with location data from GPS or IP that can be refused at device level. Signing in through a Google or Facebook account passes on the profile held by that provider. The legal bases invoked are legitimate interests, performance of the contract and legal obligations. The company states it has not sold personal information to third parties in the preceding twelve months, and the policy makes no mention of AI models being trained on customer data.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy policy is explicit on one point: our servers are located in the United States. Data may also be transferred beyond the United States to the third-party providers the company works with, and transfers from the EEA and the UK are covered by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. The publisher itself, Excalidraw s.r.o., is established in Czechia, so the corporate jurisdiction and the hosting jurisdiction do not coincide. No region, availability zone or named data centre is disclosed. Technical checks add little certainty: the domain resolves to 216.150.1.193, geolocated in the United States, but this is an anycast CDN node and therefore not conclusive about where data actually sits, while the home page HTTP headers show a Vercel server. For the free editor the company claims end-to-end encryption performed locally in the browser, which limits what reaches a server in the first place. A data processing agreement is published and linked from the footer.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Excalidraw.
- The privacy policy is dated 29 April 2021 and therefore predates the product's AI features; it is built on a Termly template, with the CCPA sections and the data request form hosted by Termly
- Targeted advertising with third parties is explicitly permitted by the policy
- The policy mentions collecting location data, including precise location, which can only be refused at device level
- Servers sit in the United States, with transfers from the EEA and the UK covered by Standard Contractual Clauses
- Nothing is published on whether customer content is used to train AI models
- Retention is capped at one month after the account ends: check that this covers any cloud scenes you may want to recover
- On the free plan the personal library lives in the browser, so clearing site data loses it
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Setup is minimal. Excalidraw is a web application: nothing to install, the free editor opens directly in a browser, and no account is required to start drawing, with the site claiming a zero learning curve. An account is only needed for Excalidraw+, created at app.excalidraw.com. The one place where technical skill matters is developer integration: embedding the editor through the open-source npm package, or working with the published API and MCP documentation, calls for front-end development experience. For every other use, the difficulty is close to none.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Excalidraw
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account to use Excalidraw?
How much does Excalidraw+ cost?
What are the limits of the free plan?
Can I pay by bank transfer?
Is Excalidraw open source?
What does Excalidraw's AI actually do?
Should you pick Excalidraw?
Excalidraw has been online since the start of 2020 and carries the marks of a mature product: an identified, contactable publisher in Brno, a public GitHub repository, named endorsements from well-known engineers, and a business model that is easy to read, with a genuinely generous free editor alongside Excalidraw+ at USD 6 per user per month. For sketching an architecture, teaching an idea or thinking out loud with a remote team, little else gets you drawing so fast. The reservations sit on the governance side rather than the product: a privacy policy dated April 2021, written before the AI features shipped, that explicitly permits targeted advertising with third parties; servers in the United States under a Czech publisher; and no published position on whether customer data is used to train models. Worth weighing before putting sensitive material on the cloud tier.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.