Excalidraw vs draw.io

Excalidraw (Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.) and draw.io (draw.io specialises in browser-based diagramming components and applications.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Excalidraw (rank #103) holds a modest lead over draw.io (rank #338) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (55 vs 43). The gap of 12 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Excalidraw is ahead of draw.io. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Excalidraw is slightly ahead of draw.io. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Excalidraw is slightly ahead of draw.io. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), draw.io is slightly ahead of Excalidraw. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), draw.io 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. draw.io shows 86,983 stars across 32 public repos, 12 active in the last 90 days and 13 external contributors.

Excalidraw is the stronger read for anyone weighting code quality. draw.io 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.