Excalidraw

What you get for free

The pricing page lists a free tier that is free forever and includes:

• the full editor
• one infinite canvas (scene) in your browser
• unlimited collaborators on a shared live link
• export to PNG, SVG and JSON
• end-to-end encryption, done locally in your browser
• public shape libraries saved in your browser
• limited AI features

The project is open source under the MIT licence, and its repository has about 133k GitHub stars as of September 2026, with commits landing daily.

Excalidraw+ is the paid tier, listed at 6 US dollars per user per month with a 14-day free trial. It adds unlimited saved scenes and folders in the cloud, access management and view or edit sharing, read-only links and embeds, voice hangouts and screen sharing, presentations, comments, team management, extended AI, personal libraries and PDF and PPTX export. For interview practice and personal use, the free tier is enough.

Why it matters for system design

Remote design interviews happen on a shared canvas, and candidates lose real minutes fighting an unfamiliar tool: finding the arrow, aligning boxes, recovering something they deleted. Ten minutes of practice removes that entirely, and looking composed while drawing makes a noticeable difference. Some companies use Excalidraw directly; others use similar whiteboards, and the skills transfer.

Tips that save time in an interview

• Learn the shortcuts: each tool has a single-key shortcut (for example R for rectangle, A for arrow, T for text). Hover over the toolbar to see them.
• Bind arrows to shapes by dragging the arrow end onto a box, so arrows move with boxes when you rearrange.
• Use a small set of colours consistently, for example one colour for data stores and another for services.
• Build a personal library of reusable shapes, such as a database cylinder, a queue and a load balancer. Public libraries include ready-made system design icons.
• Label arrows with what flows along them (request, event, replication). Interviewers read the arrows as closely as the boxes.
• Practise a full design on the canvas under a 45-minute timer at least twice before a real round.

Beyond interviews

It is also one of the fastest ways to think through a design with a colleague. The sketchy style is a genuine feature: a diagram that looks provisional invites people to argue with it, which is what you want early in a design. Many engineers also embed Excalidraw diagrams in documentation, and there are integrations for tools such as Obsidian and VS Code.

Common questions

Is it really free? Yes. The core editor, live collaboration and exports are free with no account.

Is my drawing private? Collaboration sessions are end-to-end encrypted. Free scenes are stored in your browser, so export anything you want to keep.

What does the paid plan add? Cloud storage, organisation, sharing controls, presentations and team features.

Best for: anyone who draws system diagrams, and especially candidates preparing for remote design interviews.