131.4k stars · MIT · v0.18.1 (2026-04-21) · Track this in Scout
Hand-drawn-style diagramming for tutorial visuals and blog illustrations; the free counterpart to tldraw.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A drawing tool that runs entirely in the browser. It has a small set of shapes, a library of ready-made icons, live editing with other people, and export to PNG and SVG. The drawings you keep are stored in your own browser unless you deliberately share them, and a shared room is encrypted so the server cannot read it.
What it is good for. Anyone who has to explain a shape to somebody else: how a system fits together, where a user gets stuck, what the three boxes on a slide are. The problem it removes is the hour lost to a proper design tool when you only wanted an arrow between two rectangles. It is also the fastest way to draw what a new screen should look like before anybody builds it.
- Nothing to install and no account. You open the page and start.
- The hand-drawn look keeps a sketch looking like a sketch, which matters while a decision is still open.
- MIT licence, so the drawing component can be put inside your own product without a fee.
- Your drawings live in one browser on one machine unless you export them or share a link. It is easy to lose work by clearing your browser data.
- The official releases are not frequent. The newest tag for the embeddable package is v0.18.1, shown as "21 Apr" with no year, which by GitHub's habit means 21 April 2026.
- It is for sketches. For a precise diagram with lanes, layers and a fixed grid, draw.io is the better answer.
tldraw/tldrawAn infinite canvas kit for React with a more polished set of tools, and its own licence, which needs a paid key in production.
Track this in Scout
jgraph/drawioPublished in Edition 22, it draws precise diagrams with proper connectors and layers, and it is much denser to learn.
Track this in Scout
GraphiteEditor/GraphitePublished in Edition 22, a full vector and raster editor where every step stays editable, which is a different job from a sketch.
Track this in Scout
# Nothing to install. Open https://excalidraw.com and draw. # To put the canvas inside your own React app: npm install react react-dom @excalidraw/excalidraw # To run the whole thing yourself: git clone https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw.git cd excalidraw yarn yarn start
