head to head · open source
Excalidraw vs ShareX
Excalidraw has 132,233 GitHub stars, 15,326 forks, 3,445 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ShareX has 39,618 stars, 3,916 forks, 646 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Excalidraw leads on adoption by 234% (132,233 vs 39,618 stars). Excalidraw is written in TypeScript under MIT; ShareX is written in C# under GPL-3.0. Excalidraw has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, ShareX 10%. Excalidraw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Excalidraw | ShareX | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 132K | ★ 40K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Excalidraw if
- You weight community size — 132K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ShareX if
- You want the ShareX feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and ShareX fits your workflow better
About Excalidraw
Excalidraw is an open source virtual whiteboard application built in TypeScript, designed for sketching hand drawn style diagrams, wireframes, and freeform ideas. It lives within the web based productivity and design visualization ecosystem, offering a lightweight alternative to commercial tools like Figma, Miro, and Canva. The project includes both a standalone web app at excalidraw.com and an embeddable npm package for integration into third party applications.
read the full Excalidraw overview →
About ShareX
ShareX is a free and open source Windows application written in C that combines screen capture, screen recording, image annotation, file uploading, and productivity utilities into a single lightweight tool. It lives in the Windows desktop productivity ecosystem and is distributed under the GPL 3.0 license with over 39,000 GitHub stars.
read the full ShareX overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Excalidraw or ShareX more popular?
Excalidraw has 132,233 GitHub stars and ShareX has 39,618. Excalidraw has the larger community by that measure.
Are Excalidraw and ShareX free?
Both are open source. Excalidraw is licensed under MIT and ShareX under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Excalidraw and ShareX?
Excalidraw is written in TypeScript and ShareX in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Excalidraw or ShareX?
Choose Excalidraw if you want the larger community (132,233 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ShareX if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.