Excalidraw vs Miro
Excalidraw is a free, open-source sketching tool for diagrams and wireframes. Miro is a paid team workspace built around saved boards and workshops: free for 3 editable boards, then $8 per member per month billed yearly. The two overlap less than the search suggests, and the right one depends on whether you sketch diagrams or facilitate a group.
Excalidraw or Miro: which should you use?
Excalidraw and Miro are both called whiteboards, but they do different jobs. Excalidraw is an MIT-licensed drawing tool with about 133,000 GitHub stars: open a page, sketch boxes and arrows in a hand-drawn style, then export a PNG, an SVG or an .excalidraw file. Miro is a hosted team workspace with saved, named boards, 7,000+ templates, and facilitation tools such as a timer, voting and private mode on its paid plans. Use Excalidraw for architecture diagrams, wireframes and sketches that end up in a doc, a ticket or a repository. Use Miro when a group works on the same saved board over days or weeks, or when you run workshops.
The price gap between Excalidraw and Miro is wide. Miro's pricing page (miro.com/pricing) lists Free with 3 editable boards, Starter at $8 per member per month billed yearly and Business at $20 per member per month billed yearly. Five people on Starter is $480 a year, and ten on Business is $2,400. Excalidraw has three ways to run, and two of them cost nothing per person: excalidraw.com is free, a self-hosted copy on InstaPods is $3/mo flat for any number of people ($36 a year), and Excalidraw+ is listed at $6 a month per user billed annually or $7 billed monthly (plus.excalidraw.com/pricing) if you want scenes saved to a cloud workspace with access management and comments. Prices checked 2026-10-06.
Excalidraw's limit is persistence, and it is the thing to check before you switch. The free editor and the self-hosted build keep scenes in your browser and in files you export. A live session can be shared with a link and is end-to-end encrypted, but a session is a room behind a link, not a saved board with a name, members and permissions. If your team needs saved boards and still prefers the Excalidraw editor, Excalidraw+ is the paid route. If your team needs templates, voting and Jira or Asana on the board, pick Miro.
Excalidraw vs Miro: the verdict by how you use a whiteboard
For diagrams and sketches, pick Excalidraw. It loads and draws without a sign-in, the hand-drawn style reads as a draft, and an .excalidraw file is JSON you can commit next to the code it describes. For workshops and long-lived team boards, pick Miro. Excalidraw has no saved, named boards in its free and self-hosted builds, no template library on Miro's scale and no timer or voting. Self-hosted Excalidraw on InstaPods serves the app from your own pod on your own domain for $3/mo: scenes stay in your browser and in exported files, and the pod has no board database. Live collaboration works in the self-hosted build, with one caveat. The production build points at the public Excalidraw collaboration server and its Firebase room store, so a shared session does not run on your pod. The session is end-to-end encrypted: the key sits in the URL fragment, which the browser does not send to the server, and what Excalidraw stores for the room is ciphertext. Five people sketching architecture pay $36 a year this way against $480 a year on Miro Starter. A team that puts a dozen people on one board every week should pay Miro. We build InstaPods, so weigh this accordingly. Miro prices checked 2026-10-06 against miro.com/pricing.
Last updated: 2026-10-06Quick Comparison
| Feature | Miro | Excalidraw |
|---|---|---|
| Price, 5 people | $40/mo on Starter billed yearly ($480/yr) | $3/mo flat ($36/yr) |
| Free tier | Yes, with 3 editable boards | excalidraw.com is free. Self-hosted, the software is free and you pay for the pod |
| Board limit | Unlimited from Starter up | No limit, and no board concept to meter |
| Per-seat pricing | Yes. $8 Starter, $20 Business per member per month billed yearly | No. Anyone with the URL can use it |
| Real-time multiplayer | Yes, live cursors and presence | Yes, but the session runs on the public Excalidraw collab server, not your pod |
| Saved cloud boards | Yes, named boards in a workspace | Not in the free or self-hosted build: scenes live in your browser and as .excalidraw files. Excalidraw+ adds cloud-saved scenes at $6 a month per user billed annually |
| Templates | 7,000+ | A libraries ecosystem, much smaller |
| Workshop tooling | Timer, voting and private mode on Starter and up | None |
| Diagram quality | Clean vector, 4,700+ shapes on Business | Hand-drawn style that reads as a sketch, not a spec |
| Speed to first stroke | Sign in, load workspace, open board | Load the page and draw |
| AI credits | 25/member/mo on Starter, 50 on Business | None, nothing metered |
| Where your drawings live | Miro cloud | Your browser, plus files you export. A shared session also stores an encrypted copy on the public Excalidraw room store |
| License | Proprietary subscription | MIT, ~133,000 GitHub stars |
Where Miro Gets Expensive
Trade-offs to weigh before committing.
The Free Plan Stops at 3 Editable Boards
Miro Free includes 3 editable boards. A fourth editable board means moving to Starter at $8 per member per month billed yearly, and that price applies to each member of the team.
It Is Priced Per Member
Miro Starter is $8 per member per month billed yearly, and Business is $20. Five people on Starter is $480 a year for a whiteboard, and Enterprise pricing starts from 30 members.
The Features You Want Are One Tier Up
On Miro, signed-in guests, the 4,700+ shape set for technical diagrams and two-way sync with Jira, Asana and Linear are on Business at $20 per member per month billed yearly, not on Starter at $8.
Your Boards Live in Miro
A Miro board is stored in a Miro workspace. An Excalidraw scene is a JSON file, so it can sit in a repository next to the code it describes, show up in a diff and go through a pull request.
Why Self-Host with Excalidraw?
What you get when you pick this stack.
Nobody Counts Members
There are no seats to buy, no members to invite and no boards to run out of. One $3/mo Launch pod (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB storage) serves the app to your whole team on your own domain.
No Board Database on the Pod
The pod serves the Excalidraw application as a static build behind nginx. Scenes stay in your browser and in .excalidraw files you save, so the pod holds no store of your diagrams. Start a shared session and the scene goes to the public Excalidraw room store as ciphertext: the key sits in the URL fragment, which the browser does not send to the server.
Diagrams as Files You Can Commit
An .excalidraw file is JSON. Put it in the repository beside the service it documents, diff it, review it in a pull request, and export a PNG or SVG for the README.
The Sketch Look Is the Feature
Hand-drawn boxes and arrows signal draft, which is exactly what you want on an architecture diagram nobody should mistake for a finished spec.
Real Cost Comparison
A five-person engineering team sketching architecture diagrams and wireframes.
- Miro Starter: $8 per member per month, billed yearly
- 5 members: $40/mo, $480/yr
- Business, for guests and two-way Jira sync, is $20 per member per month billed yearly
- Free plan includes 3 editable boards
- InstaPods Launch plan: $3/mo
- Excalidraw: free and open source (MIT)
- No seats, no board limit, nothing metered
- Scenes stored in your browser and as .excalidraw files
When Miro is the right call
Miro is the better choice when the board itself is the deliverable. A Miro board is saved in a workspace, has a name, members and permissions, and is still there next month. Excalidraw's free and self-hosted builds have no equivalent: a scene lives in one browser or in a file someone has to pass around.
Miro is also the better choice for facilitated sessions. Miro Starter includes a timer, voting and private mode plus Jira and Asana integrations, and Business adds two-way sync with Jira, Asana and Linear and a 4,700+ shape set for technical diagrams. Excalidraw has none of those.
Miro Free is enough for some teams. If you only ever need 3 editable boards, Miro costs nothing and there is no server to run. Self-hosting Excalidraw makes sense when you want the Excalidraw editor on your own domain, at a version you choose, for a flat $3/mo. It does not make shared sessions private to your server, because those still use the public Excalidraw collaboration service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is self-hosted Excalidraw a full Miro replacement?
No. Miro gives you persistent shared boards, live cursors, 7,000+ templates, voting and timers, and deep project-tool integrations. Self-hosted Excalidraw does support live collaboration, but through the public Excalidraw collab server rather than your pod, and it has no server-side board storage, so a session is something you start and share rather than a board that lives somewhere. For diagrams, wireframes and quick sketches it costs far less and needs no sign-in. For facilitated group sessions it does not compete.
How much does Miro cost in 2026?
Miro lists Free with 3 editable boards, Starter at $8 per member per month billed yearly, Business at $20 per member per month billed yearly, and custom Enterprise pricing from 30 members. Prices checked on miro.com/pricing on 6 October 2026.
Is Excalidraw free?
Yes. Excalidraw is open source under the MIT license, and the editor at excalidraw.com is free to use without an account. Excalidraw+ is the paid hosted version, listed at $6 a month per user billed annually or $7 billed monthly, with a 14-day free trial, and it adds unlimited cloud-saved scenes, access management, comments and presentations. Self-hosting the open-source editor costs only the server, which is $3/mo on InstaPods. Prices checked on plus.excalidraw.com/pricing on 6 October 2026.
Where are my drawings saved?
In your browser local storage, and in the .excalidraw files you export. The pod serves the application, not your scenes, so the pod has no database of drawings. The exception is a shared session: Excalidraw then stores an end-to-end encrypted copy of the scene on its public room store so the room link can reload it. The practical workflow is to keep working files in the repository or a synced folder and treat the pod as the app you load them into.
Can two people draw on the same board?
Yes, with a caveat worth knowing. Excalidraw builds ship pointing at the public Excalidraw collaboration server, so starting a shared session works out of the box on your self-hosted copy, with live cursors and end-to-end encryption using a key in the URL fragment, which the browser does not send to the server. What it is not is self-hosted collaboration: that session runs on Excalidraw infrastructure, not on your pod, and it is a room behind a link rather than a named board with members and permissions. If you need multi-user editing that runs entirely on hardware you control, self-host AFFiNE, whose edgeless canvas is backed by PostgreSQL on your own pod.
Why self-host Excalidraw at all when excalidraw.com is free?
One main reason: the editor runs on your own domain at a version you control (the InstaPods image builds Excalidraw v0.18.1), so it does not change when the public instance does. Be clear about the limit. A shared session on a self-hosted copy still goes through the public Excalidraw collaboration service, so self-hosting the editor does not isolate collaboration. If you never start a shared session, your scenes stay in your browser and in the files you export.
What does Excalidraw need to run?
Almost nothing. The InstaPods image builds the app from source with Node 22 and then serves the static output with nginx, so at runtime it is a web server handing out files. The $3/mo Launch plan with 1 vCPU and 512 MB of RAM is enough, because the pod only hands out static files and the drawing happens in each browser.
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