Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Balsamiq VS Excalidraw

Compare Balsamiq VS Excalidraw and see what are their differences

Balsamiq logo Balsamiq

Balsamiq. Rapid, effective and fun wireframing software.

Excalidraw logo Excalidraw

Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.
  • Balsamiq Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-02
  • Excalidraw Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-04-05

Balsamiq videos

UX Review: Balsamiq.com - Watch a Usability Expert Review Our Site!

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Balsamiq Mockups: Beginner Tutorial
  • Review - Balsamiq Wireframes for Desktop Overview (Windows)

Excalidraw videos

Rapid Mockup Creation Using Excalidraw

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Balsamiq and Excalidraw)
Prototyping
100 100%
0% 0
Sketching
0 0%
100% 100
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Digital Whiteboard
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Balsamiq and Excalidraw

Balsamiq Reviews

Figma Alternatives: 12 Prototyping and Design Tools in 2024
Balsamiq is a design tool that has been available since 2008. It’s easy to use and even boasts active customer service if you need help. The software is beginner-friendly, so there is no learning curve if you’re a newbie.

Excalidraw Reviews

5 great diagramming tools for enterprise and software architects
As your system evolves, you must update your diagrams to reflect those changes. Because Excalidraw is a browser-based tool, you have to open a browser tab and make changes visually, which can be inconvenient. You also can't easily see your history of changes. While Excalidraw has fans, I prefer a text-based diagram tool.
Source: www.redhat.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Excalidraw should be more popular than Balsamiq. It has been mentiond 212 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Balsamiq mentions (30)

  • Tell HN: My Favorite Tools
    A few apps that are a joy to use: https://ia.net/writer for writing. https://usecontrast.com/ for checking contrast. https://sipapp.io/ for picking colors. https://nova.app/ for editing code. https://cleanshot.com/ for screenshots. https://getpixelsnap.com/ for measuring elements on screen. https://netnewswire.com/ for reading things via RSS. https://panic.com/transmit/ for file transfers. https://usefathom.com/... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: Best UI design courses for hackers?
    I think the best practical approach for designing UIs is to download (and buy) Balsamic[0] and use that to design UIs. Cut through the nonsense of colours and pixels in the first instance and just lay things out logically and simply. [0] https://balsamiq.com. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Build Products that don’t SUCK
    Create a low-fidelity mockup or wireframe of your MVP using tools like Balsamiq, Sketch, or Figma. Or use an easier-to-use tool like Uizard, which also has text-to-design capabilities. Source: 10 months ago
  • Starting Design Work in a Spreadsheet
    Just for drawing mock app screens, I have found Balsamiq[0] to be pretty good (you can do a bunch of stuff with the trial version itself). Not affiliated with them in any way. [0]: https://balsamiq.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Is there software for building out copywriting for a website?
    Balsamiq has been pretty good for me so far. It's super bare-bones so it's better for copy mockups than actual UX design. It's also a lot easier than Figma. Note that you don't have to use the default comic sans, but I do because it's funny. Source: over 1 year ago
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Excalidraw mentions (212)

  • ✨ 5 useful productivity apps for every developer!
    The app hosted at excalidraw.com is a minimal showcase of what you can build with Excalidraw. Its source code is part of this repository as well, and the app features:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • UI elements with a hand-drawn, sketchy look
    My absolute favorite for hand-drawn-esque elements is Excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/). Immediately became enamored by the UX and the ability to get done what I was looking for. It stores everything locally on your browser, which makes it easy to work offline as well. - Source: Hacker News / 27 days ago
  • Build a Scalable REST API with TypeScript, Express, Drizzle ORM, and Turso Database: A Step-by-Step Guide
    To best illustrate this concept, I made a little sketch using excalidraw:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How I built a Multiplayer App in 3 days
    Just before I went to sleep last Sunday I thought it would be fun to create an app for my friends and I where we can rate the Eurovision Song Contest participants live together. The idea was to have everyones votes being tallied up live as we make adjustments to the ratings. This led me into looking at Replicache as the solution. I've been interested in trying it out for a while now and this was the perfect... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 17 Best Developer Productivity Tools to Try
    Diagrams and visualizations are often indispensable when explaining complex concepts or designing system architectures. Excalidraw and Whimsical are two popular quick drawing tools that allow developers to create diagrams easily. With their simple yet powerful interface, developers can create wireframes, flowcharts, and other visual representations in no time. These tools are great for both brainstorming ideas and... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Balsamiq and Excalidraw, you can also consider the following products

Invision - Prototyping and collaboration for design teams

Miro - Scalable, secure, cross-device and enterprise-ready team collaboration tool for distributed teams. Join 2M+ users & 8000+ teams from around the world.

Moqups - The most stunning HTML5 app for creating resolution-independent SVG mockups, wireframes & interactive prototypes for your next project

Kanboard - Kanboard is a free and open source Kanban project management software.

Zeplin - Collaboration app for UI designers & frontend developers

draw.io - Online diagramming application