tldraw
The canvas as an SDK — embed it in your own product.
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sovereigntytldraw is an infinite canvas that is also a library: the drawing experience is excellent, and the SDK is designed to be embedded so your own application can have a canvas without building one. That dual nature is what distinguishes it — for most people it is a very good free whiteboard, and for a product team it is a component. Licensing is the thing to check: tldraw uses its own licence rather than a standard OSI one, free for many uses with terms for commercial embedding, so read it against your intended use rather than assuming.
SOURCE-AVAILABLEtldraw licence (custom — free for many uses; read the terms before commercial embedding)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
Licensetldraw licence (custom — free for many uses; read the terms before commercial embedding)
PricingFree to use. Commercial embedding has its own licence terms.
Open sourceNo
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +Best drawing feel of anything in this comparison
- +SDK designed for embedding a canvas in your own product
- +Very actively developed with a strong design sensibility
- +Self-hostable
Where it falls short
- −Custom licence, not OSI open source — read it before commercial use
- −Fewer collaboration features than Miro
- −No workshop facilitation tooling
- −Smaller template ecosystem
tldraw as an alternative to
Where tldraw shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
tldraw head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.