Excalidraw: Self-Hosted Virtual Whiteboard

Excalidraw is an open-source virtual whiteboard that produces sketches with a distinctive hand-drawn feel. With over 116,000 GitHub stars, it has become one of the most popular diagramming tools for developers, designers, and teams. Excalidraw runs entirely in the browser and supports real-time collaboration, making it ideal for brainstorming sessions, architecture diagrams, wireframes, and quick visual explanations.

Self-hosting Excalidraw gives your team a private, always-available whiteboard without relying on third-party cloud services.

Key Features

• Hand-drawn aesthetic that makes diagrams approachable and informal
• Real-time collaboration with multiple users editing the same canvas simultaneously
• End-to-end encryption for shared sessions — only participants can see the content
• Extensive shape library including arrows, text, rectangles, ellipses, and freehand drawing
• Exportable to PNG, SVG, and native .excalidraw format for lossless editing
• Dark mode and customizable canvas settings
• Drag-and-drop image embedding directly onto the canvas
• Library system for saving and reusing custom component collections

Why Self-Host Excalidraw?

Keep diagrams private. When you self-host Excalidraw, every diagram, wireframe, and architecture sketch stays on your infrastructure. For teams working on proprietary product designs or sensitive system architectures, this eliminates the risk of intellectual property passing through external servers.

Always available, no rate limits. The public excalidraw.com instance works well for casual use, but self-hosting guarantees availability for your team. No usage limits, no downtime from shared infrastructure, and no dependency on an external service for critical workflow tools.

Custom branding and integration. Self-hosting lets you embed Excalidraw into internal tools, customize the interface, and integrate it with your existing collaboration stack. Deploy it behind your VPN or SSO for seamless access control.

Zero cost per user. Cloud whiteboard tools charge per seat. A self-hosted Excalidraw instance serves your entire organization from a single lightweight VPS with no per-user fees.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	1 vCPU	2 vCPUs
RAM	512 MB	2 GB
Storage	5 GB SSD	10 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Excalidraw is a lightweight frontend application. The server primarily serves static files, so resource requirements are minimal. If you enable the collaboration backend (excalidraw-room), add modest resources for WebSocket connections.

Getting Started

Deploy Excalidraw on your VPS using Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our deployment guide walks you through the full setup including the collaboration server, persistent storage, and SSL configuration.

Deploy Excalidraw with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• draw.io — Full-featured diagramming tool with extensive shape libraries and integrations
• Miro — Collaborative whiteboard platform for teams with templates and workflows
• tldraw — Minimalist collaborative whiteboard with a clean interface
• Penpot — Open-source design and prototyping platform for teams

FAQ

Can I use Excalidraw offline? Yes. Excalidraw works entirely in the browser and can function offline once loaded. Your drawings are saved in browser local storage. For a self-hosted instance, you just need initial access to load the application.

Does Excalidraw support real-time collaboration? Yes. When self-hosted with the excalidraw-room collaboration server, multiple users can edit the same canvas simultaneously. Sessions are end-to-end encrypted by default so the server cannot read the canvas content.

Can I embed Excalidraw in other applications? Yes. Excalidraw provides a React component (@excalidraw/excalidraw) that you can embed directly into your own web applications. Many tools like Obsidian and Notion already integrate Excalidraw.

What file formats does Excalidraw support? Excalidraw saves in its native .excalidraw JSON format for lossless editing. You can export to PNG and SVG for sharing. The native format preserves all element properties so you can continue editing later.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.