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 tldraw if people who will stay on the free tldraw.com board at $0 (no account) while they open a first Page 1,
Best for
Excalidraw A whiteboard you start at a public $
tldraw A live tldraw.com board you start at a public $
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
tldraw $0 · no sign-up. Collaborative whiteboarding in the browser
Lowest paid
Excalidraw Plus $7/user/mo
tldraw Not published by the vendor
Runs where
Excalidraw
tldraw Hosted
Watch out
Excalidraw Comments, cloud scenes, and presentations print on Plus
tldraw The free board is not a production SDK license
Last checked
Excalidraw 2026-10-23 · plus.excalidraw.com/pricing
tldraw 2026-10-23 · tldraw.dev/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 pagepeople who will stay on the free tldraw.com board at $0 (no account) while they open a first Page 1, then an SDK 100-day trial at $0 if they embed the canvas — not a commercial quote unless they ship a production embed, and not the agent kit unless they want tldraw AI.
Read the tldraw page
