Excalidraw+

plus.excalidraw.com

YES

Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent.

The paid tier of the hand-drawn diagram editor: saved workspaces, sharing with a team and search across your drawings, on top of an editor that is free.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

The editor is free. Build the library around it.

START FROM THE RIGHT PLACE
- Excalidraw is MIT-licensed and embeddable as a React component. Never reimplement the canvas

STACK
- The Excalidraw component, a small Node server, SQLite, S3-compatible storage

SAVING
- A drawing is the scene JSON plus a PNG preview generated on save
- Store the JSON in object storage and the metadata in SQLite

SEARCH
- Extract every text element from the scene JSON on save into a searchable column
- That single step makes a library of drawings findable, and is the feature people actually miss

SHARING
- A link is a random token with an expiry and a view-or-edit flag
- Never expose the storage key

COLLABORATING
- Excalidraw ships a collaboration protocol; run its room server rather than writing one

Include the save route, the text extraction and the share tokens.

What you lose

A hosted workspace with search across every drawing, which is what the fee buys
Live collaboration on the same canvas with presence
Sharing and permissions for a team, rather than a link anyone can open

If you would rather not build

tldraw, for a similar canvas with a permissive licence

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

Excalidraw

The editor itself, MIT-licensed and embeddable.

excalidraw/excalidrawfree · open source

draw.io

A full diagram editor you can host, saving to storage you control.

jgraph/drawiofree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

83/100

Verdict yes at 83. Extracting text from the scene JSON so drawings are searchable is the whole build, and it is one function.

History

tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 days

Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.

Questions about Excalidraw+

answered from the record above

Is Excalidraw+ free?

No — the plan we track is $7 a month. Around $7 per user per month billed monthly, $6 annually; the drawing editor itself is free and open source.

Can you replace Excalidraw+ by building your own?

YES. Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent. Replacement score 83 out of 100, build time one session. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does Excalidraw+ cost?

$7 a month on Plus — $84 a year. Recorded 10 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing Excalidraw+?

A hosted workspace with search across every drawing, which is what the fee buys; Live collaboration on the same canvas with presence; Sharing and permissions for a team, rather than a link anyone can open. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Excalidraw+?

Yes: Excalidraw, draw.io. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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