Excalidraw is excellent and the closest cousin to cnvs.app in spirit. The two main practical differences: Excalidraw.com's free tier is limited to a single scene (switching overwrites it unless you export first), and live multi-user collaboration sits behind Excalidraw+ ($7/user/mo) or self-hosting. cnvs.app puts both on the free tier with no signup.
| Capability | Excalidraw (free) | Excalidraw+ ($7/u/mo) | cnvs.app |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signup required | No | Yes | No |
| Multiple saved boards | 1 scene | Yes | Unlimited |
| Real-time multi-user sync | Self-host or Plus | Yes | Yes, free tier |
| Open source / self-host | Yes (MIT) | — | No |
| Hand-drawn aesthetic | Yes | Yes | No (clean vector) |
| Custom shape libraries | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mermaid diagrams | Import only | Import only | Built in (live re-render) |
| Clipboard image & URL paste | Images | Images | Both |
| AI collaboration | — | Excalidraw AI (in-app) | Public MCP endpoint |
| Installable PWA + offline | Yes | Yes | Yes (offline read-only) |
You love the hand-drawn aesthetic, want to self-host, or work in file-based flows (.excalidraw files in a repo, version-controlled). If you're a single user and one scene at a time is fine, the free tier is great.
You want Excalidraw's look-and-feel plus multiple saved scenes, version history, libraries, AI inside the app, and you're OK paying per seat.
You want real-time multi-user sync without paying or self-hosting, you need more than one saved board, and you'd like an open AI protocol (MCP) so any agent — not just one app's built-in AI — can edit alongside you.
Yes — unlimited, free. The recent-boards sidebar surfaces every board you've opened in this browser. No "switch scene overwrites current" behaviour.
No, cnvs.app strokes are clean vector lines (SVG paths). If the hand-drawn look is core to your workflow, Excalidraw is the better pick.
No. We run the hosted service and exclude board content from AI training and limited product analytics. Deleted boards are unavailable through cnvs.app, although platform disaster-recovery history may retain whole-database state for a limited window. Excalidraw's open-source license is one of its biggest strengths if self-hosting matters to you. Privacy details.
Excalidraw supports importing a Mermaid diagram as a one-shot conversion. cnvs.app renders Mermaid live inside any text node — edit the source and the diagram re-renders for all viewers. Details.