Excalidraw
By Excalidraw
Excalidraw is an open-source, collaborative virtual whiteboard for quickly sketching diagrams, wireframes, and ideas in a distinctive hand-drawn visual style.
Definition
Excalidraw is an open-source, collaborative virtual whiteboard for quickly sketching diagrams, wireframes, and ideas in a distinctive hand-drawn visual style.
Overview
Excalidraw's defining trait is its rendering style: shapes and lines are drawn with a slightly rough, hand-sketched look rather than crisp vector lines, which makes rough diagrams feel intentionally informal and less intimidating to share early. Users can draw rectangles, arrows, freehand lines, and text on an infinite canvas, and boards can be shared for real-time collaborative editing without requiring an account. Because Excalidraw is open source, it is widely embedded inside other products rather than only used as a standalone app — for example, it powers drawing features inside note-taking tools such as Obsidian via community plugins, and its core library is used by other developers to add sketch-style canvases to their own applications. A hosted version at excalidraw.com offers a free way to use it directly in the browser, while a companion product, Excalidraw+, adds team workspace and collaboration features on top of the open-source core. Excalidraw is typically used for fast, low-fidelity diagramming — system sketches, quick wireframes, or explaining an idea in a meeting — rather than the more structured, standards-based diagrams produced by tools like Lucidchart or Draw.io.
Key Features
- Distinctive hand-drawn rendering style for shapes, lines, and text
- Open-source core library, embeddable in other applications
- Real-time collaborative editing without requiring an account
- Infinite canvas with freehand drawing, shapes, arrows, and text
- Export to PNG, SVG, or a portable `.excalidraw` file format
- Excalidraw+ adds team workspaces and additional collaboration features