Excalidraw
Pulumi
| Feature | Excalidraw | Pulumi |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $7/mo | Free / from $50/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.7 / 5 | 4.4 / 5 |
| Best For | developers, product-teams, educators, brainstorming-sessions | developers, platform-engineers, polyglot-teams, cloud-architects |
| Founded | 2020 | 2017 |
| Freehand Drawing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real Time Collaboration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Component Library | ✓ | ✗ |
| Export Options | ✓ | ✗ |
| End To End Encryption | ✓ | ✗ |
| Embeddable | ✓ | ✗ |
| Shapes And Arrows | ✓ | ✗ |
| Programming Languages | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi Cloud | ✗ | ✓ |
| State Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Policy As Code | ✗ | ✓ |
| Secrets Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pulumi Ai | ✗ | ✓ |
| Drift Detection | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Excalidraw Pros
- Beautiful hand-drawn sketch aesthetic
- Completely free and open source core
- Real-time collaboration with shared links
- Library of reusable components and templates
- Embeddable in other applications
✗ Excalidraw Cons
- Limited formatting compared to structured diagramming tools
- No presentation mode built-in
- File management basic without Excalidraw+
✓ Pulumi Pros
- Use real programming languages instead of DSLs
- Strong typing and IDE support for infrastructure code
- Multi-cloud support with consistent API
- Pulumi AI generates infrastructure code from prompts
✗ Pulumi Cons
- Smaller community than Terraform
- State management requires Pulumi Cloud or self-hosting
- Less third-party provider coverage than Terraform
The Verdict
Excalidraw is built for developers and product teams, with a focus on freehand-drawing and real-time-collaboration. Pulumi targets developers and platform engineers and leads with programming-languages and multi-cloud.
On pricing, Excalidraw is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $7/mo compared to $50/mo for Pulumi. That $43/mo difference adds up quickly for growing teams.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Both tools are a solid fit for developers — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
Bottom line: Excalidraw has a slight overall edge — but if use real programming languages instead of dsls matters most to you, Pulumi may still be the right call.