Compare tools side by side · TechInTrends

Long-standing text-to-diagram tool for UML, C4 and many other diagram types, common in enterprise docs.

Markdown-like syntax for flowcharts, sequence and ER diagrams rendered natively by GitHub, GitLab and Notion.

Free diagramming app (diagrams.net) for architecture and flow diagrams, with desktop, web and IDE integrations.

Hand-drawn style virtual whiteboard, also embeddable as a React component.

Head to head

Metric	PlantUML	Mermaid	draw.io	Excalidraw
Stars	13.4k	91k	9.2k	135k
Weekly downloads	n/a	25.9M	n/a	1.4M
Download growth	n/a	+58%	n/a	+122%
Popularity score	75/100	91/100	72/100	83/100
Forks	1.3k	9.5k	1.4k	16k
Open issues	598	2.1k	39	3.5k
Last commit	1w ago	3d ago	1w ago	1w ago
Latest version	n/a	12.3.0	n/a	0.18.1
License	LGPL-3.0	MIT	Apache-2.0	MIT
First released	2010	2014	2016	2020
Signals	None	Popular	Popular	Trending
Listed in	Git & Developer Tools › Documentation & Diagrams as Code	Git & Developer Tools › Documentation & Diagrams as Code	Git & Developer Tools › Documentation & Diagrams as Code	Frontend › 3D, WebGL & Canvas Git & Developer Tools › Documentation & Diagrams as Code

Weekly downloads over time

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes. Not shown (no comparable download data): PlantUML, draw.io.

Mermaid
Excalidraw