Excalidraw

Excalidraw

Your Digital Sketchpad for Creative Minds

from 15€ per month
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​In a world driven by innovation and remote collaboration, the ability to quickly visualize, brainstorm, and share ideas is paramount. Excalidraw is a leading open-source, virtual whiteboard tool designed for sketching, diagramming, and collaborative brainstorming—all in a hand-drawn, approachable style. With real-time multi-user support, it enables teams to visualize ideas, build user flows, or annotate technical concepts, making complex ideas simple and engaging. Traditional whiteboards have limitations, and complex diagramming tools can stifle creativity.

Why Integrate Excalidraw?

  • Visual Collaboration: Users and teams can ideate visually, whether outlining processes, sketching UIs, or co-designing architecture diagrams, directly inside your product.
  • Instant Interactivity: Its intuitive interface invites all skill levels, while features like infinite canvas, shape libraries, and drag-and-drop smoothen every drawing task.
  • Privacy and Flexibility: Excalidraw is privacy-conscious—whiteboards can be hosted locally or in your cloud, and content isn’t shared unless you want it to be.

How to Add Excalidraw

  • Direct Embedding: Use the official Excalidraw React component (@excalidraw/excalidraw) to embed the editor inside your app. This approach is modular and lets you control styling, theming, or collaborative features as needed.​
  • Browser-Based Use: For basic integration, you can embed Excalidraw using an iframe or shareable links so users can access and edit boards without setup.​
  • Enhance Collaboration: Pair with your authentication system to enable secure sharing and co-editing. Excalidraw’s API and plugin-friendly model also let you expand capabilities as your app grows.

Key Use Cases

  • Agile planning, technical architecture, and sprint retrospectives
  • Onboarding, knowledge sharing, and product wireframing
  • Customer support explanations—draw diagrams and share them instantly

FAQ

  • Excalidraw is an open-source, web-based whiteboard tool for creating hand-drawn diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps, system designs, and wireframes. It supports both solo and real-time collaborative work, making it ideal for teams, remote brainstorming, and visual planning.

  • Yes, Excalidraw is completely free and open source. It runs entirely in your web browser—no installation or account is required. You can simply visit the website and start creating diagrams instantly.

  • Absolutely! Excalidraw offers real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work together on the same whiteboard simultaneously. You can share a link to your board and see changes live as they happen.

  • Excalidraw supports exporting your diagrams as PNG or SVG images, as well as saving and sharing editable .excalidraw files. You can embed diagrams in other tools or share with teammates and clients for continued collaboration.

  • Excalidraw stands out for its simplicity, privacy-first approach, hand-drawn design style, and fully open-source codebase. While it may not have all the advanced features of Figma or Miro, it excels at fast, informal sketching, collaborative diagrams, and easy integration with other platforms like Obsidian.