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Open source alternatives to Whimsical

2 open source tools do the job of Whimsical. The most starred is Excalidraw, with 135k stars. Verified on GitHub. About Whimsical

Whimsical homepage
WhimsicalFree
Excalidraw homepage
Excalidraw135k stars · MITGitHub

All 2 alternatives

Questions about alternatives to Whimsical

What is the best open source alternative to Whimsical?

By GitHub stars it is Excalidraw, with 135,641 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose Excalidraw when you want to draw without object caps, since Whimsical's free plan stops at 50 board objects a month. Next come draw.io (9,354 stars).

Is there a free alternative to Whimsical?

Yes. The code of all 2 is public under MIT or Apache 2.0, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

How do I choose between them?

Start from the job you use Whimsical for. Choose draw.io when you need UML, network, BPMN and cloud architecture shape libraries in a free editor that needs no account.

Which Whimsical alternatives can I host on my own server?

All 2: Excalidraw and draw.io. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

Which ones are still being worked on?

All 2 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Excalidraw and draw.io. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

What licences do they use?

MIT (1), Apache 2.0 (1). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely.

What do I lose by leaving Whimsical?

The hosting. Whimsical's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.