vscode-drawio VS excalidraw

Compare vscode-drawio vs excalidraw and see what are their differences.

vscode-drawio

This unofficial extension integrates Draw.io (also known as diagrams.net) into VS Code. (by hediet)
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vscode-drawio excalidraw
5 373
8,967 72,707
- 5.4%
4.2 9.5
3 months ago 6 days ago
TypeScript TypeScript
GNU General Public License v3.0 only MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

vscode-drawio

Posts with mentions or reviews of vscode-drawio. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-10-14.
  • Gitlab VSCode Extension Now Supports Locally-Hosted AI Completion with FauxPilot
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Oct 2022
    Open VSX allows anyone to upload an extension there with the same name and description from the VSCode marketplace, but silently change code or make new releases, maybe introducing misfeatures or malicious code. Users typically don't notice because they think they are installing "the same" extension from the VSCode marketplace.

    https://github.com/hediet/vscode-drawio/issues/141

    > Hi ;)

    > I never published a version v999.0! It seems like you are using the unofficial open vsx marketplace (where, apparently, anyone can upload anything). You can find an issue here in this repository about it.

    > Unfortunately, someone uploaded the extension in that version which blocks any further updates with that name.

    > For now I believe in Microsofts vision. I don't think a secondary marketplace is good for the community - It just causes confusions like this.

    > If you setup a github action that automatically publishes this extension to open vsx, please open a PR! ;)

    The established practice of having random individuals set up ad-hoc mirrors of VSCode extensions is a serious security issue.

    If Open VSX wants to mirror VSCode extensions, that's okay - but they should do so with an automated process that mirrors ALL extensions and do not allow for people to silently change the code of an extension.

    If someone want to copy the code of an existing VSCode extension, change some things and upload it to Open VSX, that's okay too, but please fork it and clearly indicate in the description that the extension is a fork, linking to the source code of the original extension.

  • VSCode extensions that you need [Webdevs]🚀🔧
    18 projects | dev.to | 15 Sep 2021
    7. Draw.io integration
  • Ask HN: What diagrams do you use in software development?
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Apr 2021
    You can find it here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.v...

    Like draw.io, it is open source! (https://github.com/hediet/vscode-drawio)

  • Visual tooling/extensions to navigate your codebase in vscode
    1 project | /r/vscode | 9 Apr 2021
    See: https://github.com/hediet/vscode-drawio/issues/169#issuecomment-723645139
  • Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
    1 project | /r/sysadmin | 19 Jan 2021

excalidraw

Posts with mentions or reviews of excalidraw. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-22.
  • Creating Animated Diagrams for LinkedIn
    3 projects | dev.to | 22 Apr 2024
    ExcaliDraw - https://excalidraw.com/
  • Software Engineering Workflow
    6 projects | dev.to | 8 Apr 2024
    ExcaliDraw
  • Tools that Make Me Productive as a Software Engineer
    6 projects | dev.to | 3 Mar 2024
    However, Notion and Obsidian can only help you write documentation. Well, how about some visuals? Let's talk about Excalidraw.
  • Rapier is a set of 2D and 3D physics engines written in Rust
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Feb 2024
    Fun fact: I used GA in Excalidraw, and it's still powering some of the interactions! https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/blob/master/package...
  • Ask HN: Anyone use a code to mindmap/flowchart tool?
    14 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Feb 2024
    I was happy to find out recently that there is a way to make Mermaid diagrams WYSIWYG / drag and drop editable that the open source https://excalidraw.com has and did I mention it's open source!? With a LLM, you can go full loop back to Mermaid again after a few rounds of manual editing. "What a time to be alive!"
  • Show HN: Batch Image Manipulation Toolkit in Browser
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Feb 2024
  • Ask HN: What development tools are you using for your current project?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Feb 2024
    I'm working on a personal project and found myself looking for an alternative to Postman/Insomnia this morning. This made me realize i've been using the same tools for so long for work (mobile development, finance) that this project may be a good time to try out some new things.

    Here are a few tools that i've been using lately that I really enjoy:

    https://pocketbase.io/ - A dead-simple self-hosted firebase/supabase-like "backend in a box" using golang and sqlite. So far i've been really impressed. I've gone the route of extending the base offering with more go code and am really enjoying the experience.

    https://excalidraw.com/ - An open source whiteboarding tool. Slick to use and after learning some keybinds I've gotten pretty fast at throwing together diagrams to explain things to people on my team. The killer piece though is that the filetype is just json, so I can source control my diagrams. Even better, their "export to png" function has a box to embed the json data _into_ the png, allowing me to slap the diagram in places that only accept images (think confluence) and still be able to change the diagram later if needed. 10/10.

    https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ - Gitlab's CI/CD toolset is really impressive, and I've gotten really intimate with it's deeper features over the past year. I'd be curious though to hear from someone who's familiar with it vs it's competitors.

  • Keeping your fonts in embedded SVG
    1 project | dev.to | 25 Jan 2024
  • Excalidraw
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Jan 2024
  • Penrose – Penrose
    13 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Jan 2024
    Sketch easy and go back to work...

    https://excalidraw.com/

What are some alternatives?

When comparing vscode-drawio and excalidraw you can also consider the following projects:

mermaid - Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text in a similar manner as markdown

tldraw - Infinite canvas.

diagrams - :art: Diagram as Code for prototyping cloud system architectures

draw.io - draw.io is a JavaScript, client-side editor for general diagramming.

Modelio - Modelio is a modeling solution offering a wide range of functionalities based on the main standards of enterprise architecture, software development and systems engineering.

vscode-emacs-mcx - Awesome Emacs Keymap - VSCode emacs keybinding with multi cursor support

obsidian-excalidraw-plugin - A plugin to edit and view Excalidraw drawings in Obsidian

c4-draw.io - Draw.io template/diagram containing C4 Model shapes. Drawio Diagrams.net

docker-draw.io - Dockerized draw.io based on tomcat:9-jre11 & tomcat:9-jre8-alpine official image.

drawio-desktop - Official electron build of draw.io