Excalidraw vs Figma
Excalidraw and Figma are both design and whiteboard software. Excalidraw is open source under MIT, with 135k GitHub stars. Figma is a commercial product from Figma, Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick Excalidraw when
- Teams want quick informal diagrams in meetings, docs or your own app without heavyweight diagram tools.
- Pick Figma when
- A product team designs apps or websites together and wants designers and developers working from one shared file.
Side by side
A browser whiteboard for hand-drawn style diagrams and wireframes with end-to-end encrypted live collaboration, also published as an embeddable React component.
A browser-based design tool for interfaces, prototypes and design systems, with real-time multiplayer editing, Dev Mode for handoff and FigJam whiteboards.
The free app is light on team features; persistent workspaces and libraries are in paid Excalidraw+.
Per-seat prices have risen, Dev Mode and full seats are billed separately, and files live only in Figma's cloud.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service, self-hosted server and library
Cloud service and desktop app
TypeScript, React and Vite
Not published
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Figma, Inc.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
135k GitHub stars
5.7k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 6 years ago, latest release v0.18.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More design and whiteboard tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.