Doist vs Excalidraw

Doist (Empowering people with simple yet powerful tools ✨) and Excalidraw (Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Excalidraw (rank #103) holds a narrow lead over Doist (rank #122) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 54). The gap of 1 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Doist is ahead of Excalidraw. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Excalidraw is ahead of Doist. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Excalidraw is slightly ahead of Doist. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Doist is clearly ahead of Excalidraw.

Doist carries 5,576 GitHub stars across 170 public repos, with 45 repositories active in the last 90 days and 21 external contributors on record. Excalidraw shows 136,744 stars across 25 public repos, 3 active in the last 90 days and 215 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Excalidraw's footprint is roughly 24.5x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Doist is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Excalidraw looks better where community is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.