Excalidraw — The Complete Guide: A Virtual Whiteboard for Concept Sketches and Explaining Ideas

Excalidraw is an open-source (MIT) virtual whiteboard in the browser in which every shape, arrow and piece of text looks like a pen sketch. It is the tool for the moment you need to explain an idea quickly — on a video call, in a design meeting or in a message to a colleague — without opening drafting software.

Excalidraw

A virtual whiteboard with a hand-drawn look — for quick concept sketches, explaining ideas in calls and shared design reviews.

Get it from the vendor

What you get

Infinite canvas — room for every sketch on the topic.
Real-time collaboration — shared sessions with end-to-end encryption.
Offline work — autosave in the browser.
Export — to PNG and SVG for documents and presentations.
Self-hosting — it can be installed on an internal office server.

When to use it and when not

Excalidraw is excellent for a first concept sketch, a quick system diagram or explaining a detail during a call. The informal look makes it clear to everyone that this is a draft, not a final drawing. It is not a tool for accurate, to-scale drawing — that is what CAD software is for. It is free for any use, including commercial; Excalidraw+ is a paid hosted service with extra features and is not needed for normal work.

Related tools

For tidy diagrams with shape libraries — diagrams.net. For handwriting and sketching with a digital pen — Rnote. For a whiteboard for teaching and classroom presentation — OpenBoard.