Excalidraw vs FigJam

Excalidraw

• Quick architecture sketches, wireframes and diagrams
• Ad hoc sessions where guests join by link with no account
• Developers who want an open-source editor to embed or self-host
• Students and teachers, who get a reduced Excalidraw+ price

FigJam

• Teams that already design products in Figma
• Stand-ups, retrospectives and workshops run on a shared board
• Mapping user flows next to the designs they describe
• Classrooms: verified students and teachers get FigJam free

Excalidraw

• The free editor has 1 scene and no accounts or cloud saving; anything else has to be exported or saved to a file.
• Unlimited scenes, comments, access management, presentations and voice hangouts all need Excalidraw+.
• The vendor's pages list no desktop or mobile apps; Excalidraw runs in a web browser.
• Excalidraw+ bills every seat in every workspace, accepts credit cards only, and its terms make charges non-refundable.

FigJam

• FigJam cannot be bought separately; access comes with a Figma seat, and plans and seats are chosen for the whole Figma product set.
• The free Starter plan allows 3 FigJam files in its team folder and leaves out voting, open sessions, audio conversations and advanced shapes.
• Custom color palettes and organization-wide custom templates need the Organization plan, which is billed annually only.
• The iPhone and Android apps view and comment on FigJam files; on mobile, sketching in FigJam is offered on iPad only.

Excalidraw

Hand-drawn style canvas

An infinite canvas with elementary drawing tools and a sketched, hand-drawn look. Keyboard shortcuts and a command palette speed up drawing.

Collaboration by link

Sharing a link starts a live session that anyone can join without an account. Excalidraw+ adds read-only links, edit or view rights, comments and embeds.

Libraries

Public libraries supply ready-made sketches to drop into a scene. A personal library is kept in the browser on the free editor and on the server with Excalidraw+.

Generative AI

Text to diagram builds and edits diagrams from a prompt, and wireframe to code turns a sketch into an interactive mockup. AI use is limited on Free and extended on Plus.

Excalidraw+ workspace

Scenes sync to the cloud and are organized into collections, with user accounts, team management and access control. An MCP server lets AI agents draw into a workspace.

Presentations and voice

With Plus, frames become slides for live presentations, scenes export to PDF and PPTX, and collaborators can talk over voice hangouts with screen sharing.

FigJam

Shapes and connectors

Shapes and connectors snap to the grid for mapping user flows, processes and systems. Advanced shapes for AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure and Kubernetes need a paid plan.

Facilitation tools

A shared timer, stamps, emotes and a built-in music player are on every plan, and Spotlight mode lets a presenter guide the group. Voting starts at Professional.

FigJam AI

A prompt generates meeting templates and visuals, and one click sorts stickies into themes or summarizes them. These draw on the AI credits included with each plan and seat.

Open sessions

On paid plans, people outside the team can be invited to contribute to a board for 24 hours without a paid seat, with no limit on the number of sessions.

Templates, widgets and plugins

More than 300 ready-made templates cover kickoffs, retrospectives, flow charts and journey maps, and community widgets and plugins extend a board.

Ties to Figma Design and Slides

Screens and components from Figma libraries can be dropped into a diagram, and an AI feature in Figma Slides drafts a deck outline from a FigJam board.

Excalidraw

• Free$0

  Full editor with 1 infinite scene, unlimited collaborators by link, PNG and SVG export, libraries, and end-to-end encryption in the browser.

• Plus$6

  per user / month, billed annually ($7 billed monthly)

  Unlimited scenes and folders saved to the cloud, edit or view-only sharing, comments, team management, presentations, voice hangouts and extended AI.

FigJam

• Starter$0

  3 FigJam files plus unlimited drafts, with the timer, tables, code blocks, diagramming tools and the AI generate, sort and summarize features.

• Professional$3

  per Collab seat / month, billed annually

  Unlimited files, voting, open sessions, audio, advanced shapes and unlimited version history. Dev seats are $12 and Full seats $16 a month.

• Organization$5

  per Collab seat / month, billed annually

  Adds custom color palettes, custom templates shared across the organization, SSO and centralized administration. Full seats are $55 a month.

• Enterprise$5

  per Collab seat / month, billed annually

  Adds custom workspaces, SCIM seat management, guest access controls and expiring public links. Full seats are $90 a month.

Excalidraw

• Annual discount

  Save 14% with annual billing

  Excalidraw+ is $6 per user a month when billed annually and $7 when billed monthly. The pricing page states the annual saving as 14%.

• Education

  Excalidraw+ for $4 a month with a school email

  Students and teachers with an educational email address can get Excalidraw+ for $4 monthly or $36 yearly, shown at checkout or after verification.

FigJam

• Education

  Free for verified students and educators

  Figma for Education gives students and teachers who verify their status free access to Figma and FigJam, including the paid professional tools, through an education team.

• Annual discount

  Lower Professional seat prices on annual billing

  Professional seats can be billed monthly or annually, and the pricing page shows the lower annual rates. Figma's help center prices a Dev seat at $15 on monthly billing against $12 on annual.