Excalidraw vs Stream

Excalidraw (Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.) and Stream (Build scalable in-app chat, feeds, and live video with AI moderation capabilities in hours, not weeks.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Excalidraw (rank #103) holds a modest lead over Stream (rank #317) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 44). The gap of 11 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Excalidraw carries 136,744 GitHub stars across 25 public repos, with 3 repositories active in the last 90 days and 215 external contributors on record. Stream shows 35,664 stars across 487 public repos, 84 active in the last 90 days and 44 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Excalidraw's footprint is roughly 3.8x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Excalidraw is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. Stream looks better where momentum 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.