draw.io

draw.io is a browser-based diagramming editor for flowcharts, architecture diagrams, network maps, UML and wireframes, used by engineers, product teams and students who want a whiteboard-grade tool without a subscription. The whole product is free: there is no paid tier at all.

What the free plan gives you

The site describes draw.io as free forever, no sign-up required and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. You open app.diagrams.net and start drawing, with no account and no credit card. You choose where the file lives: Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, GitHub, GitLab, your browser, or your own disk via the desktop app. draw.io itself never sees your data. The desktop app runs fully offline on Windows, macOS and Linux, and there are native integrations for Confluence, Jira, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Real-time collaboration works when the file is stored in a shared cloud drive. The vendor explicitly says there is no artificial scarcity and no enterprise tier for SSO.

Where the free plan stops

It does not. There is no usage cap, no diagram limit, no export watermark and no premium feature list. The only things you might pay for are the storage you choose to keep files in, or the Atlassian Marketplace apps if your Confluence or Jira instance requires a licensed app, and those are billed by that ecosystem rather than draw.io's web editor.

Who it suits

Anyone who needs technical diagrams and is happy with a file-based workflow rather than a hosted workspace. If you want a design-system style canvas with comments, version history and team admin built into the product, tools like Figma or Miro are a better fit. If you just need to draw and own the file, draw.io costs nothing and asks nothing.