Our take
Pick Excalidraw if engineers and PMs who will stay on the forever-free OSS editor at $0 (excalidraw.com; no account) while they open a first playground, then Plus at $7/user/month monthly ($6/user/month billed annually) when they need comments, cloud scenes, and presentations — not a $20 chat seat. Pick Napkin if operators and educators who already have the words and need a diagram, not a photo. Skip Napkin if
text-to-visual canvas
Best for
Excalidraw A whiteboard you start at a public $
Napkin A slide-ready diagram from a paragraph
Free plan
Excalidraw $0 · , Free forever (priceMonthly / priceAnnually: “Free forever”). Infinite canvas. Full editor. Invite collaborators by link. PNG / SVG / JSON save-to-file. Personal library stored in the browser. Image uploads: compressed. AI requests: 10 a day. Mermaid to Excalidraw: unlimited. No account on excalidraw.com
Napkin $0 · 500 AI credits/week; unlimited editing and PNG/PDF export; Napkin branding on visuals
Lowest paid
Excalidraw Plus $7/user/mo
Napkin Plus $9/mo
Next step up
Excalidraw
Napkin Pro $22/mo
Watch out
Excalidraw Comments, cloud scenes, and presentations print on Plus
Napkin Credits are per selected word
Last checked
Excalidraw 2026-10-23 · plus.excalidraw.com/pricing
Napkin 2026-10-21 · napkin.ai/pricing
engineers and PMs who will stay on the forever-free OSS editor at $0 (excalidraw.com; no account) while they open a first playground, then Plus at $7/user/month monthly ($6/user/month billed annually) when they need comments, cloud scenes, and presentations — not a $20 chat seat.
Read the Excalidraw pageoperators and educators who already have the words and need a diagram, not a photo.
Read the Napkin page