Excalidraw
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 17 diagramming tools by recommenders
People recommend it for quick, low-friction hand-drawn diagrams and sketches, with fast keyboard shortcuts. Critics often find its hand-drawn default style and font unprofessional.
People recommend it for quick, low-friction hand-drawn diagrams and sketches, with fast keyboard shortcuts. Critics often find its hand-drawn default style and font unprofessional.
66 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 56
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 56 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Keyboard shortcuts make work faster
“Coming from excalidraw, I can't live without the numbered 1-5 shortcuts to select the tool”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Monosketch” “My favorite aspect of it is the keyboard shortcuts. It makes things so much faster.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” Simple and low-friction for sketches
“does what it needs to do and doesn't get in your way”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “Excalidraw is excellent for low-friction sketches.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” Works inside notes and other tools
“Claude code can output Excalidraw format files which can be imported directly into the webapp.”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark” “You can also bootstrap your initial schema with LLMs with the excalidraw MCP "app"”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “You can copy past the mermaid to excalidraw to visualize it.”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Prompt-to-Excalidraw demo with Gemma 4 E2B in the browser (3.1GB)” - Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog”
- Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?”
Hand-drawn style feels approachable
“Excalidraw is my favourite thinking tool, and the style it produces is just the right level of limiting, disarming, and professional at the same time.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “people are still more willing to engage with your content because they think that its made by hand”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Drawgent: Coding agent on a live Excalidraw canvas” “It's a great tool if you're looking for that hand-drawn aesthetic”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Zero-Code Instrumentation of an Envoy TCP Proxy Using eBPF”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Looks unprofessional or wonky
“It also looks very unprofessional so if you ever have to write customer-facing diagrams, you have tool fragmentation.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “I genuinely don't understand how people can use these wonky looking tools.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “I don't like how it looks, it's a personal preference.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” - Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog”
Default font hard to read
“I just cannot read the default hand-scrawl font on Excalidraw diagrams”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “When Is "Next Friday"?” “the default font is ugly, childish and inaccessible”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” Frustrating and sometimes unusable for presentations
“It's not perfect, some things make me crazy but overall it is better than draw.io that I used to use before.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “The presentation software itself (Excalidraw) makes this nearly unusable for me”
Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: A visual guide to learning Jujutsu (JJ)” “it can be really frustratingly mediocre a lot of the time”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” - Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: A visual guide to learning Jujutsu (JJ)”
Barebones, lacks multiple scenes and symbols
“It would have been great if Excalidraw made it easier to do manage multiple scenes”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog” “a little barebone indeed but seems like something I've sometimes wanted to do too”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “The Toil of (Blog) Art” “Primarily the styling and a lack of symbols”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)”
Other diagramming tools people recommend
The four most recommended other diagramming tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Krita | 77 | 11 | 88% | 12 | — | Approved |
| ExcalidrawThis page | 56 | 10 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Aseprite | 26 | 3 | 90% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Procreate | 23 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Monosketch | 23 | 4 | 85% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 76 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“people are still more willing to engage with your content because they think that its made by hand”
“looks more like intentional competence with a quick and imperfect tool”
“The final DMG is 3.4MB. It's drawing everything with core graphics.”
“I made sure whitespace render 90%+ or so excalidraw features.”
“I find it so enjoyable because it forces me to slow down and check what I think I know”
“Primarily the styling and a lack of symbols”
“I just cannot read the default hand-scrawl font on Excalidraw diagrams”
“You can copy past the mermaid to excalidraw to visualize it.”
“It has a mermaid WYSIWYG editor and once the diagram is inserted you can edit it, move objects, add text”
“it can be really frustratingly mediocre a lot of the time”
“You literally call Excalidraw a "wonky looking tool".”
“The default one is very legible but has a style (and ligatures) that make it feel not too neat”
“It also looks very unprofessional so if you ever have to write customer-facing diagrams, you have tool fragmentation.”
“It would have been great if Excalidraw made it easier to do manage multiple scenes”
“I don't like how it looks, it's a personal preference.”
“My favorite aspect of it is the keyboard shortcuts. It makes things so much faster.”
“Excalidraw is excellent for low-friction sketches.”
“does what it needs to do and doesn't get in your way”
“you can get transparent PNGs of diagrams or of detailed subsets of a larger diagram easily”
“it can easily do both :) (Excalidraw is basically just fancy SVG)”
“It's pretty effective to immediately communicate to folks that 'this is a concept' approach.”
“to visualize things high level i find excalidraw way nicer”
“Excalidraw is my favourite thinking tool, and the style it produces is just the right level of limiting, disarming, and professional at the same time.”
“Then using UML is probably THE wrong look. And Exaclidraw should be used instead.”
“I genuinely don't understand how people can use these wonky looking tools.”
“means I can add diagrams to notes without leaving Obsidian.”
“the default font is ugly, childish and inaccessible”
“I use Excalidraw extensively at work. For me, it's really close to perfection.”
“You can also bootstrap your initial schema with LLMs with the excalidraw MCP "app"”
“It's not perfect, some things make me crazy but overall it is better than draw.io that I used to use before.”
“gets you 80% of the way to knowing what you actually want”
“Coming from excalidraw, I can't live without the numbered 1-5 shortcuts to select the tool”
“Claude code can output Excalidraw format files which can be imported directly into the webapp.”
“It's fantastic. It was really a fresh take on the stuff people were doing with visio.”
“a little barebone indeed but seems like something I've sometimes wanted to do too”
“It's a great tool if you're looking for that hand-drawn aesthetic”
“Excalidraw/tldraw are nice for stuff that should go into static documents.”
“The presentation software itself (Excalidraw) makes this nearly unusable for me”
“makes this nearly unusable for me”
“I really like the excalidraw plugin in obsidian”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.