Excaliself vs Nextcloud Whiteboard

Nextcloud Whiteboard is the official whiteboard app for Nextcloud, built on the Excalidraw editor. Excaliself is a standalone app built on the same editor. I maintain Excaliself. I checked Whiteboard at v2.1.2 (October 2026) in its repository.

The short answer: if you already run Nextcloud, use Whiteboard. The rest of this post is for teams that do not.

Side by side

	Excaliself	Nextcloud Whiteboard
License	MIT	AGPL-3.0
What you run	App and Postgres	Nextcloud, the app, a websocket server, and Redis for more than one node
Users and SSO	Its own accounts. Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID, OIDC	Nextcloud users, groups, and SSO apps
Sharing	Team space, Private space, guest links	Nextcloud file sharing
Storage	Rows in Postgres	.whiteboard files in Nextcloud
Live collab	Built into the app	Separate websocket server with a shared JWT secret
Comments	Pinned to shapes	Yes
Version history	No	Nextcloud file versions
Extras	Team library, search inside drawings, Excalidraw+ import	Voting, timer, presentation mode, recording
AI	MCP server for Claude and other clients	Prompt to Mermaid diagram through Nextcloud Assistant
Scaling	One replica	Several nodes with Redis

Where Nextcloud Whiteboard is ahead

• It is part of Nextcloud. Users, groups, SSO, folders, sharing, and storage come from the Nextcloud you already run. A board is a file, next to your other files.
• Version history from Nextcloud file versions, with a preview.
• Meeting tools: voting, a timer, presentation mode, and recording.
• Scale. With Redis, the websocket server runs on several nodes. Its README has load test numbers up to 500 users (README). Excaliself runs as one replica.

Where Excaliself is ahead

• Less to run without Nextcloud. One app container and Postgres, or a Railway template, or a Coolify compose file. Whiteboard needs a full Nextcloud plus its websocket container, and both must share JWT_SECRET_KEY.
• A whiteboard-first home. A gallery of drawing previews, recent and starred drawings, nested folders, a Team space, and a command palette (⌘K) (Organize and find).
• Search inside drawings, over the text on the canvas.
• MCP. Claude and other MCP clients can find, read, create, and export drawings, and answer comments. Changes to a drawing wait for Apply (Connect an AI client). No AI provider is needed on the server.
• Excalidraw+ import with an API key (Import).
• A shared team library saved on the server (Team library).
• MIT license, if AGPL is a problem for your company.

Which one?

• You run Nextcloud: Whiteboard. Your users, groups, and storage are already there.
• You do not run Nextcloud and want only the whiteboard: Excaliself. The quick start is one compose file.

For more options, see open-source alternatives to Excalidraw+.