Element vs Excalidraw

Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) 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 Element (rank #190) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 50). The gap of 5 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Element carries 34,608 GitHub stars across 137 public repos, with 33 repositories active in the last 90 days and 97 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 4.0x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Element is the stronger read for anyone weighting momentum. Excalidraw looks better where education 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.