Best open-source alternatives to Miro

Excalidraw is an open source drawing and whiteboarding project focused on hand-drawn style diagrams, wireframes, and sketches. It is presented as both a reusable npm package for embedding into other applications and as the hosted Excalidraw web app. The project is aimed at developers and teams who want a lightweight, visually approachable canvas for diagramming with support for collaboration and local-first editing. The hosted app adds offline use, real-time collaboration, end-to-end encryption, autosave in the browser, and shareable read-only links, while the library itself emphasizes export formats, basic drawing tools, and customization.

AFFiNE is an open-source workspace platform designed for writing, drawing, planning, and organizing knowledge in one place. It combines document editing and whiteboard-style canvas interactions, aiming to serve users who want a Notion- and Miro-like experience in a single product. The project emphasizes a local-first approach, so users keep data on their own devices while still getting real-time sync and collaboration across web and cross-platform clients. It also includes AI-assisted creation workflows, such as turning outlines into slides or summaries into mind maps, and supports self-hosting for teams or individuals who want more control over deployment and data.

AFFiNE is an open-source workspace platform designed for people who want to combine note-taking, whiteboarding, planning, and knowledge management in one place. The README presents it as a local-first alternative to Notion and Miro, with emphasis on owning data on disk while still supporting cloud-based synchronization and collaboration. The project appears aimed at individuals and teams that need a flexible canvas for creative and structured work. It highlights an edgeless canvas where documents, tables, sticky notes, embedded web content, shapes, and slides can coexist, plus AI-assisted workflows for drafting reports, turning outlines into slides, summarizing content into mind maps, and prototyping ideas. It also mentions self-hosting and a plugin ecosystem, suggesting it is intended for users who want both a hosted product and the option to run and extend their own deployment.

tldraw is a React SDK for building infinite canvas applications. It is aimed at developers who want to create whiteboarding, diagramming, drawing, collaboration, or other canvas-based products without starting from scratch. The README emphasizes that the library provides a feature-complete canvas engine and a set of primitives that can be extended into custom experiences. The project supports building on top of default whiteboarding tools or constructing entirely new interactions with custom shapes, tools, bindings, UI components, side effects, and event hooks. It also highlights real-time multiplayer via a self-hostable sync layer, runtime control through the Editor API, and support for AI-driven canvas workflows. The SDK is presented as browser-based and cross-device, with starter kits available for common app patterns such as collaboration, agent workflows, chat, branching chat, and shader-based experiences.

FossFLOW is an open-source progressive web app for drawing beautiful isometric diagrams. It is built with React and the Isoflow library, and it runs entirely in the browser with offline support, making it suitable for users who want a local, self-contained diagramming experience. The project appears aimed at people creating network-style or infrastructure diagrams, with a library of components, drag-and-drop canvas editing, and connector tools for linking nodes. It supports quick session saving, JSON import/export for persistent storage, and optional HTTP Basic Authentication when deployed with Docker. The README also includes local development and monorepo build instructions, suggesting it is maintained as both an app and a reusable component library.

draw.io is a diagramming and whiteboarding application aimed at users who need to create and edit diagrams in a browser or as a desktop app. The README describes it as configurable and notes that it is jointly developed and maintained by the project’s core team. The project can be run in several ways: as a fully functional editor hosted on GitHub Pages without integrations, through an official Docker image, or by downloading the desktop application. It also provides packaged .war files on the releases page. The README explicitly states that this version does not support real-time collaborative editing and that it is not an SVG editor, while SVG export is intended for embedding in web pages.

WBO is a web-based collaborative whiteboard designed for groups that need to draw and edit together in real time. It supports many simultaneous users on a shared board, with updates broadcast instantly and board contents persisted so sessions can continue over time. The project is intended for self-hosting as well as use through a public demonstration server. It can be run either in Docker or directly with Node.js, and it includes configuration for authentication via JWT, board-specific access control, reverse-proxy deployment, and metrics export for self-hosted monitoring. The README also highlights use cases such as art, entertainment, design, and teaching.

MonoSketch is a browser-based ASCII diagram editor aimed at people who create technical diagrams, flowcharts, circuit sketches, or other text-art visualizations. It is designed to run entirely on the client side, so users can work without server-side processing and keep their data on their own device. The project offers a set of drawing and editing tools centered on text-based diagram creation: rectangles, text, lines, fills, borders, rounded corners, and line decorations. It also includes productivity features such as an infinite canvas, autosave, multiple projects, layer management, smart snapping, and export options for copying diagrams or selected shapes as text. The README also describes future collaboration and sharing ideas, including opening files from URLs and sharing to GitHub Gist.

Drawpile is a cross-platform drawing application built for real-time collaboration. It allows multiple people to draw, paint, and animate together on the same canvas, and it runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. The project is aimed at artists, groups, and communities that want a shared digital canvas rather than a single-user illustration tool. Its README points users to downloadable builds, source compilation instructions, and support channels, and it also notes browser-accessible community chat options for getting help. The client depends on several shared libraries, and the build process includes pinned dependency versions and integrity checks for upstream sources.

OurBoard is an online whiteboard application aimed at people who want a simpler, self-hostable alternative to tools like Miro. It lets users create boards, add notes and images, organize content with areas and connections, and collaborate through shared board links. The README describes it as free to use and available both as a hosted service and as software that can be deployed independently. It supports lightweight access control, including Google sign-in for private boards and board sharing restricted by email or domain. For integration and automation, it exposes a limited HTTP API for creating, updating, exporting, and listing boards and board history, and it also includes a GitHub Issues integration via webhook. The project is built with TypeScript, Express, WebSockets, and PostgreSQL, and can be run locally with Docker Compose.