Lucidspark
Virtual whiteboard from the makers of Lucidchart.
Alternatives · 2026
Alternatives to Excalidraw
Open-source hand-drawn style whiteboard with shared sessions.
4 hand-curated alternatives from MintedSaaS's directory. See the Excalidraw listing →
Excalidraw is an open-source whiteboard tool designed for sketching diagrams, flowcharts, and wireframes with a hand-drawn aesthetic. It's particularly popular with software teams, product designers, and technical writers who want a lightweight alternative to polished design tools. The product prioritizes simplicity and speed—you can open it, start drawing, and share a link without signing up. Because it's open-source, it can be self-hosted, and the interface remains intentionally minimal compared to enterprise whiteboard platforms.
Teams typically use Excalidraw for real-time collaboration during brainstorms, technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and low-fidelity design work. The hand-drawn style makes it feel less formal than Figma or Adobe products, which suits quick ideation sessions. The main limitation is that it doesn't offer the project management, voting, or structured workflow features you'd find in commercial tools like Miro or Mural. Buyers who outgrow Excalidraw usually need better organization across multiple boards, persistent team spaces, or tighter integration with their design or development stack.
What we offer that competes
FigJam
Figma's collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming.
Miro
Collaborative online whiteboard for distributed teams.
Mural
Visual collaboration whiteboard for distributed teams.
What to look for
- Whether the tool can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure or requires a cloud-only deployment.
- Whether the tool has persistent team spaces that survive after a single session ends, or just generates shareable links.
- Whether voting, reactions, and comment threads are included without upgrade, or gated behind a paid tier.
- Whether the tool integrates natively with Slack, Microsoft Teams, or your existing design and project-management stack.
- Whether you can save boards as standard image or vector formats, or export is locked into the vendor's format.
- Whether the free tier includes unlimited concurrent participants or enforces strict board limits and user counts.
FAQ
What are the best alternatives to Excalidraw?
Lucidspark, FigJam, Mural, and Miro all offer collaborative whiteboarding with more structured workspaces and integrations than Excalidraw. Lucidspark and FigJam focus on ideation and retain the sketch-like feel; Mural and Miro add project management, templates, and team dashboards.
Are there free alternatives to Excalidraw?
Lucidspark and FigJam both offer free tiers with limited boards and participants. Excalidraw itself is free and open-source with no usage limits, so unless you need team features or persistent workspaces, the free tier may not match Excalidraw's cost advantage.
Which whiteboarding tool should I pick for remote brainstorms?
FigJam and Lucidspark are optimized for rapid-fire ideation and work well for distributed teams with their comment threads and voting features. Miro and Mural add more structure, making them better if you need to organize ideas into deliverables afterward.
Can I use these tools offline or self-host them?
Excalidraw can be self-hosted because it's open-source. Lucidspark, FigJam, Mural, and Miro are cloud-only and don't support self-hosting or offline-first workflows.
Do these whiteboarding tools integrate with Slack and Microsoft Teams?
Miro, Mural, and Lucidspark have native Slack integrations for sharing boards and notifications. FigJam integrates with Slack but not as deeply; Excalidraw lacks built-in Slack integration but can be embedded via URL.
What's the difference between FigJam and Lucidspark?
FigJam is built into Figma, so it's tightly integrated with design workflows and files. Lucidspark is a standalone tool better suited for non-design brainstorms and works as well in product, strategy, and engineering contexts.
Which alternatives work best for technical diagramming?
Lucidspark and Miro both support shapes, connectors, and libraries for flowcharts and system diagrams. Excalidraw also handles technical diagrams well but lacks diagram libraries; FigJam is lighter-weight and better for visual brainstorms than structured technical work.
Do these tools charge per user or per workspace?
Miro and Mural charge per seat or per team, with pricing scaling by team size. Lucidspark and FigJam have per-board or per-file limits on free plans, then fixed team pricing on paid plans. Excalidraw has no per-user costs because it's open-source.