head to head · open source
cobalt vs excalidraw-collaboration
cobalt has 43,461 GitHub stars, 3,812 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. excalidraw-collaboration has 622 stars, 104 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 6,887% (43,461 vs 622 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; excalidraw-collaboration is written in various languages under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, excalidraw-collaboration 17%. excalidraw-collaboration was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cobalt | excalidraw-collaboration | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 622 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | — |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 104 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick excalidraw-collaboration if
- You want the excalidraw-collaboration feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- You evaluated both and excalidraw-collaboration fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About excalidraw-collaboration
Excalidraw Collaboration Self hosted Excalidraw with live collaboration, scene storage, and a small set of Docker Compose deployment examples. Try it online The Railway demo is live and has been verified with alswl/excalidraw room go:v0.1.0 . If the demo is unavailable, deploy your own instance from the Railway template: Snapshot What is included An Excalidraw frontend configured through runtime environment variables. HTTP storage for scenes and files. A Socket.IO room service for real time collaboration, powered by excalidraw room go. A local Compose example and an HTTPS/Nginx production example. The exact servi…
read the full excalidraw-collaboration overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or excalidraw-collaboration more popular?
cobalt has 43,461 GitHub stars and excalidraw-collaboration has 622. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and excalidraw-collaboration free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and excalidraw-collaboration under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and excalidraw-collaboration?
cobalt is written in Svelte and excalidraw-collaboration in various languages. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cobalt or excalidraw-collaboration?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,461 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose excalidraw-collaboration if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.