Design and diagrams

Creately 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

jgraph/drawio-desktop62,485Apache-2.0Electron desktop application for creating and editing general diagrams with shapes, templates, and export options.Open on GitHub jgraph/drawio7,353Apache-2.0Client-side web diagram editor for drawing flowcharts, UML, network diagrams, and exporting to common formats.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

Real-time multi-user collaboration (live cursors, concurrent editing)
Enterprise-grade compliance and certified security posture
Built-in AI diagram generation and advanced automation
Large template/catalog breadth and integrations (Teams, Slack, Confluence, etc.)
Hosted scaling, uptime SLAs, and managed support

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