The 5 best online whiteboards in 2026

Brainstorming works better visually. Sometimes that means a physical whiteboard full of sticky notes—it works. But if your team is spread between multiple offices, or works remotely, you need a virtual whiteboard. 

These applications take what's great about a physical whiteboard—the freewheeling, visual collaboration—and bring it to your computer screen. You can draw, drag virtual sticky notes around, and even embed images or entire documents. 

For the past few years, I've tested dozens of online whiteboards to find the best ones for a variety of needs. I've been working remotely for my entire tech writing career—well over a decade now—so I have a lot of experience testing apps and actually using online collaborative tools. Based on my testing this year, I'd be happy to work with a team using any of these picks.

The best online whiteboards

• Miro for turning ideas into tasks

• Stormboard for creating multiple whiteboards in a single brainstorming session

• Mural for big remote team meetings

• FigJam for collaborating on designs

• Excalidraw for collaborating without an account

What makes the best online whiteboard?

Almost any sketch or design app can technically be used as a digital whiteboard if you need to bat around a few ideas with your team. If you're sharing your screen over a conference call, you could even use MS Paint. But that doesn't mean a drawing app is the best tool for the job.

Instead, I was looking for proper online whiteboards that your team can use to freely ideate, brainstorm, workshop, and otherwise collaborate however they want wherever they are. To really enable this kind of dynamic workflow, there are a few key features that I felt a great online whiteboard had to have:

• Unlimited canvas. While physical whiteboards might have size restrictions, going digital shouldn't come with limits. I was looking for whiteboarding tools that have an unlimited, ever-expanding canvas, so whatever way your visualizations go, they can accommodate them. And with such a large canvas, navigating it needed to be easy. You should be able to zoom and scroll around at will.

• Collaboration features. Using a whiteboard—whether physical or digital—is often a collaborative act. I required all the apps on this list to allow multiple users to collaborate in real time. Some apps allow private collaboration between team members, while others allow you to share a link or code so that even non-users can comment or add notes. The specifics didn't matter as much as the feature working as it was meant to.

• Ability to attach files. Your digital whiteboard shouldn't limit the kinds of things you can add to it. You can stick a photo or doodle on a real whiteboard, so I felt you should be able to attach links, images, and other files to your web whiteboard as needed for easy reference.

• Presentation options. Because whiteboards are so often used for both ideation and presentation, I looked for features that allowed you to present using your whiteboard. This could be sharing your whiteboard online, exporting it, or a dedicated presentation mode. The more advanced the app, though, the more advanced I wanted the presentation features to be.

• Accessible everywhere. Whether you're working on your own ideas or collaborating on a shared whiteboard with a team, chances are high that you'd like to have access to the whiteboard even if you're not seated at your desk. This meant it had to be accessible through the web and ideally on mobile devices.

While most whiteboard apps are starting to implement AI-powered features, they aren't yet a major factor for inclusion. As these features become more mature and deeply integrated in each app, they might become more of a factor. But for now, I'm still considering them a nice-to-have.

To find the best online whiteboards, I started out with a list of every relevant app that I could find and then compared each one against the criteria above. If an app looked like it could meet them, I tested it to see how it was to use. The specifics of the testing depended on the app, but it generally involved signing up for an account and creating a few different whiteboards to see how everything worked, as well as testing any unique or headline features. Quite a few apps failed out at this step for just being unpleasant to use. The differences between a top-tier web app and one that's badly coded are impossible not to notice.

I then went back and re-tested the top contenders. I also compared the apps to each other: where two (or more) apps offered a very similar feature set, I went with the one that had a better overall user experience or pricing options, or was the more mature product. I've been keeping this list updated for a few years now, so every app on it has been reviewed multiple times.

At the end of all the testing, I was left with my five favorite apps—and a few alternate picks that didn't quite make the list for one reason or another. Here they are. 

The best online whiteboards at a glance

Best online whiteboard for turning ideas into tasks

Miro (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)

Miro pros:

• Powerful

• Lots of integrations

Miro cons:

• Using it is a tad less intuitive than some of the other apps

Miro is available on any device—and on the web. To get started, choose from a long list of templates (e.g., UX design, customer mapping, and retrospective), or just start with a standard blank whiteboard. And you're not limited to one template: you can add as many as you want to a board, zooming and scrolling with your mouse, trackpad, or touchscreen to navigate through the various templates on the board. Then add shapes, text, and sticky notes (drag-and-drop) as needed.

If you find yourself looking for more features, go to the Miro marketplace, which houses a list of apps you can integrate, allowing you to do things like update Miro cards within your Airtable base or send tasks straight to GitHub.

Miro is built for more than just brainstorming. It has all the features you need to move from ideation to implementation. You can monitor what changes have been made, assign tasks, and carry on conversations with team members from within the interface. There are multiple ways to organize and present information. And, of course, it's got AI features: you can ask to turn a brainstorming session into a well-formatted list of ideas or ask the assistant, called Sidekick, questions about the current whiteboard.

You can do even more with Miro by connecting Miro to Zapier—embedding whiteboards into orchestrated workflows across your business. For example, you can kick off workflows in Miro when trigger events happen in other apps, or directly from your AI chat window. Learn more about how to automate Miro.

Miro pricing: Free for 3 editable boards; from $10/user/month (or $96/user/year) for the Starter plan that includes unlimited boards and features like timers and voting.

Best online whiteboard for creating multiple boards in a single brainstorming session

Stormboard (Web, iOS, Android)

Stormboard pros:

• Solid free plan

• Lots of clever touches like substorms and StormAI

Stormboard cons:

• User interface is a bit more basic than some other apps

Stormboard is a sticky note-style ideation tool that handles the basics really well. It's simple for anyone to drop notes or index cards with text, pictures, and even videos onto different sections of the board. But each digital sticky note can also house its own whiteboard, opening up a world of opportunity for big picture brainstorming and collaboration. As soon as you create a new Storm (brainstorming board), you can start adding your ideas. Any sticky note can then turn into a collaborative whiteboard that all collaborators can view and edit in real time.

Using Stormboard solves one of the major problems in any brainstorming or collaborative meeting: how to save each iteration so that it's easy to review and revise moving forward. To organize, drag each whiteboard note around the board with your mouse. Board collaborators can then vote on each board, carry on a text chat conversation, and even assign tasks.

Stormboard also has a couple of handy AI features. StormAI can help you brainstorm or summarize the key takeaways of something, but my favorite feature is that it can automatically group sticky notes based on the themes or sentiment it detects.

Because Stormboard integrates with Zapier, you can do things like create tasks in your project management tool and share a summarized update with your team in Slack whenever a new Storm is created. Or you can build Storms directly from your favorite AI assistant.

Stormboard pricing: Free for the Personal account that includes 5 open Storms and 5 collaborators per Storm; from $10/user/month for the Business plan that includes unlimited open Storms.

Best online whiteboard for big remote team meetings

Mural (Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android)

Mural pros:

• Easy to use

• Great templates

Mural cons:

• Less creative freedom than some of the other apps

The Mural canvas can house multiple whiteboard areas, similar to Photoshop artboards, that you can rearrange and resize as needed. On each whiteboard, you can go with the standard blank white background, or choose from a variety of templates to add pre-built grids and content boxes for some additional structure. Many of the templates come with detailed instructions and facilitator guidelines, which makes getting started with Mural really quick and the user interface a joy to use. There's also a handy command bar, which makes it easy to trigger various functions in a few keystrokes.

Mural is particularly strong as a team tool, letting you create multiple "rooms" for your whiteboards, each with different permissions to limit access. You might have one room for your design team, one for your marketing team, and so on. You could also create rooms that correspond to various projects.

Remote teams who use Mural for meetings will love the digital version of some office staples, from timers (which you can use for focused ideation sprints) to chat boxes. It can be tough to share candid feedback in remote team meetings. That's why I liked Mural's timed voting session and private mode. Both allow you to get honest, anonymous input from everyone. And like the other apps on this list, Mural is rolling out AI features that are currently available to all paid plans. It functions as a chatbot that can interact with any of the currently selected items, allowing you to do things like generate a summary of cards.

Mural also integrates with Zapier, allowing you to embed whiteboards into AI-powered workflows at scale. For example, you can automatically turn new form submissions into stickies on a board, add them as tasks in your project management tool, and notify your team in Slack when boards are updated. This way, brainstorming, task tracking, and team communication all stay in sync.

Mural pricing: Free for 3 murals with unlimited members, from $12/user/month (or $119.88/user/year) for the Team+ plan.

Best online whiteboard for collaborating on designs

FigJam (Web, iOS, Android)

FigJam pros:

• Great integration with Figma

• All the basics you need otherwise

FigJam cons:

• A little awkward to use without embracing Figma

Figma is one of Zapier's favorite design apps. It's super flexible and incredibly popular for good reasons. FigJam is a feature of all Figma accounts, using the design tools offered by Figma to power a pretty nice whiteboarding solution.  If your team is already used to Figma—and already paying for Figma—you should try this out before considering any other application. 

FigJam used to be an independent app, but that's not the case anymore. FigJam whiteboards are simply a kind of file you can make in Figma ( a good analogy is Google Docs, which also comes with Sheets and Slides).

The integration is a key selling point. You can copy and paste objects between FigJam whiteboards and other Figma files, allowing you to show off designs during meetings and take that feedback back to the design process. You can make changes in one file that carry across to the other. Basically, FigJam is the best whiteboard for designers using Figma to get feedback from their other team members.

I probably wouldn't recommend FigJam to anyone who doesn't use Figma, but it's also not a bad choice. It's got a nice and intuitive interface, a decent selection of templates, and all the features, voting, and sticky notes that you need to run a good collaborative design meeting.

FigJam also has one of the more powerful AI implementations. It's capable of creating entire whiteboard templates from a single prompt, organizing your sticky notes, generating brainstorming ideas, and a lot more. And if you use it with Figma, you can automate your design workflows too, connecting Figma to all the other apps in your tech stack with Zapier. Learn more about how to automate Figma.

FigJam pricing: Figma is free for 6 files, FigJam and otherwise. Get unlimited files from $5/user/month (or $36/user/year) for the Professional plan, with shared team libraries, voting, and more.

Best online whiteboard for getting started without an account

Excalidraw (Web)

Excalidraw stands out for one simple reason: you don't need an account. You can head to the Exacalidraw website, right now, and start making a whiteboard. You can get a link to share that whiteboard with others, and all they need to do is click the link to get started. Everyone will be able to see, and collaborate, without signing up for an account. That lack of friction goes a long way, especially if you're collaborating with people outside your organization. For this reason, it's a site worth bookmarking even if you're paying for another whiteboarding tool.  

The toolkit offered by Excalidraw is simple, but not barebones. You can create shapes, add text, and add images in a few clicks. Export options are limited in the free version—it's just images—but the paid plan lets you export to PDF and PowerPoint, along with a live presentation feature. You'll also need to pay if you want to store whiteboards on the cloud—everything lives in your browser otherwise. 

Still, it's hard to find a better tool than this that doesn't require an account. And it's open source, meaning businesses could in theory set this up on their own server if privacy is a concern. That's a bit of flexibility no other app on this list can offer. 

AI features, limited to the paid version, include automatically turning text into details diagrams and the ability to turn wireframes into code. 

Excalidraw pricing: Free (and open source). Cloud storage and AI features start at $6/user/month for Excalidraw+.

Other great virtual whiteboards to consider

While these five apps are some of the best online whiteboards available, there are other great apps I didn't include (for various reasons) that could make sense for you to check out. 

• First up, most online conferencing software and office suites have a whiteboard built in. Zoom has Zoom Whiteboard, Microsoft Teams has Microsoft Whiteboard (which is also a standalone app), and Webex has, you guessed it, a feature called Whiteboard. If you're visiting this article, I've assumed that you either don't want to use these built-in tools, you aren't locked into a tool like Microsoft Whiteboard, or you need a dedicated online whiteboard tool that offers more advanced or specific features—so I didn't really consider them. But if you need something quick and you already use one of these apps, give them a look. 

• Lucidspark and Draft.io are both decent tools—they mostly didn't make the list because of pricing. Lucidspark locks a lot of features into a Team plan that requires at least three users at $10/month, and Draft.io is based in France and only available in euros. While these certainly won't be dealbreakers for everyone, they complicate things enough that I'd recommend Mural, Miro, and the other apps on this list first. 

• Otherwise, you really can do a lot just by sharing your screen and using any notes or drawing app you love. While it won't let you collaborate in the same way, if you just need something in a pinch, it'll work. Or, if you really want to go nuts, just point a high-resolution webcam at a physical whiteboard.

Which virtual whiteboard should I use?

Because almost any app can be used as a whiteboard app, the best whiteboard app comes down to the features your team wants the most. If you don't need anything specific, but your team uses Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Webex, then the best option is probably the one that's built into the software you already use every day. 

On the other hand, if you're looking for dedicated online whiteboard software that offers more integrations, advanced features, and customization, then one of the picks above is probably a better fit. They all—in their own ways—offer a great collaborative whiteboard experience.

Related reading:

• Miro vs. Mural: Which should you use?

• The best brainstorming tools

• The best team collaboration tools

This piece was originally published in March 2019 by Maria Myre. The most recent update, with contributions from Justin Pot, was in June 2026.