head to head · open source
cobalt vs excalidraw-collaboration
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. excalidraw-collaboration has 634 stars, 107 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 7,112% (45,722 vs 634 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 | ★ 46K | ★ 634 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | — |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-08-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 107 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 46K 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
best way to save what you love cobalt.tools 💬 community discord server 🐦 twitter 🦋 bluesky cobalt is a media downloader that doesn't piss you off. it's friendly, efficient, and doesn't have ads, trackers, paywalls or other nonsense. paste the link, get the file, move on. that simple, just how it should be. cobalt monorepo this monorepo includes source code for api, frontend, and related packages: api tree & readme web tree & readme packages tree it also includes documentation in the docs tree: how to run a cobalt instance how to protect a cobalt instance cobalt api instance environment variables cobalt api…
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…
read the full excalidraw-collaboration overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or excalidraw-collaboration more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and excalidraw-collaboration has 634. 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 (45,722 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.