Software Alternatives & Reviews

Structurizr VS Excalidraw

Compare Structurizr VS Excalidraw and see what are their differences

Structurizr logo Structurizr

Structurizr is a workspace editor that creates software architecture diagrams and documentation based on the C4 model.

Excalidraw logo Excalidraw

Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.
  • Structurizr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-23
  • Excalidraw Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-04-05

Structurizr videos

Simon Brown: C4 Architecture Model and Structurizr

Excalidraw videos

Rapid Mockup Creation Using Excalidraw

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Structurizr and Excalidraw)
Diagrams
34 34%
66% 66
Sketching
0 0%
100% 100
Developer 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 Structurizr and Excalidraw

Structurizr Reviews

Top 7 diagrams as code tools for software architecture
Structurizr builds upon “diagrams as code”, allowing you to create multiple diagrams from a single model using a number of tools and programming languages.

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 seems to be a lot more popular than Structurizr. While we know about 207 links to Excalidraw, we've tracked only 8 mentions of Structurizr. 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.

Structurizr mentions (8)

  • Could someone give me some feedback on my first 2 diagrams?
    You are welcome! It’s a nice way of breaking down problems. You can go one step further and generate them from code using something like Structurizr (https://structurizr.org/) if you want to get fancy. Source: about 1 year ago
  • System Design How to?
    Regarding documentation, I created the C4 model for visualising software architecture as a way to introduce some structure into architecture diagrams, because even today most of what I see is still ad hoc boxes and arrows, with little thought into what (abstractions) and how (notation) an architecture is described. My own tooling (https://structurizr.org) allows you to create multiple diagrams from a single model,... Source: about 1 year ago
  • D2, a text-to-diagram tool and library written in Go
    Would love to see a comparison to structurizr, which is a higher level dsl that essentially renders to any of the other three you're comparing. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Diagram as Code
    I just watched a goto conference talk by Simon Brown on https://structurizr.org/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Diagrams as Code 2.0
    You can look at https://structurizr.org/ for a free version. Source: almost 2 years ago
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Excalidraw mentions (207)

  • An infinite canvas for code exploration
    To fix this, I added a digital whiteboard to my workflow, and this is phenomenal. You can use any digital whiteboard, such as https://www.figma.com/figjam/, https://excalidraw.com/, https://miro.com/, or https://obsidian.md/canvas. My workflow generally goes like:. - Source: Hacker News / 3 days ago
  • Tools that Make Me Productive as a Software Engineer
    However, Notion and Obsidian can only help you write documentation. Well, how about some visuals? Let's talk about Excalidraw. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: Anyone use a code to mindmap/flowchart tool?
    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!". - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Show HN: Batch Image Manipulation Toolkit in Browser
    Would love more ideas for what I could add to bother, ideally mundane batch image processing tasks that can be automated. [1] https://excalidraw.com/#json=VB-95wXb8mmw-WEIe2pNu,Abn9sV1PylQ2ZPuRfwKjKQ. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: What development tools are you using for your current project?
    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... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

IcePanel - Collaborative system design; linked with reality

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

Terrastruct - A diagramming tool for software architecture

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

draw.io - Online diagramming application

Kinopio - Thinking canvas for mind mapping, brainstorming, and moodboards