Design and diagrams decision
Miro
A single developer can build a narrow collaborative whiteboard covering Miro's core canvas and realtime sync, but reproducing Miro's scale, ecosystem (integrations/templates), AI workflows, and enterprise security is impractical—keep paying for full product unless you only need a limited, self-hosted canvas.
Visit website↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Miro alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Create a shared canvas, add and arrange shapes/sticky notes/frames, realtime multi-user updates, and export/share boards.
What it still won’t have
- Scale and global low-latency infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of concurrent users
- 250+ built-in third-party integrations and prebuilt templates
- Enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance controls
- AI workflows, agent orchestration, and bundled AI credits
- Polish: mobile apps, device integrations, and long-tail feature set
What remains hard
- Brand trust
100M+ people collaborating on Miro
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal, self-hosted collaborative whiteboard: use React + TypeScript for the front end, Node.js + Express for the API, PostgreSQL for storage, Redis for ephemeral presence, and Socket.IO for realtime sync. Implement: user auth (email/password or OAuth), create/edit/delete boards, shapes/sticky notes/text/connectors with Z-order and transform, realtime presence and cursor positions, board persistence with optimistic updates, and export selected frames to PNG/PDF. Out of scope: AI workflows/agents, 3rd-party app marketplace, enterprise compliance features, native mobile apps. Include end-to-end and unit tests, input validation, rate limiting, and basic monitoring/alerts for uptime/errors.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- Evidence score63
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productMiro — official product
- official pricingMiro Pricing
- official docsMiro Docs / Capabilities
- open sourcelovasoa/whitebophir
- open sourcespacedeck/spacedeck-open
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
