Design and diagrams

Annnimate alternatives

2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.

The full assessment →

The projects

microsoft/Ontology-Playground2,395MITA static web app that browses, previews, edits, and exports a catalogue of ontologies with interactive diagrams.Open on GitHub chartdb/chartdb22,715AGPL-3.0A database diagram editor web application for designing, visualizing, and exporting schema diagrams from queries.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

Access to the full, curated, growing 70+ component catalog and weekly new components
Studio-maintained provenance and components proven on client sites
MCP server features (Cursor and Claude Code) and team-oriented MCP tooling
Priority support and team-seat subscription features
Ongoing managed updates and new component shipping included with subscription

An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Annnimate, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.