8 Eraser alternatives for architecture documentation
Eraser is a strong fit for diagrams that come from code. If you are leaving it, the choice comes down to where the detail should live, what keeps the diagram true, and what you can take with you.
Also searched as alternatives to Eraser, Eraser competitors, and Eraser replacement.
What to look for when leaving Eraser
Where the detail lives
Prose beside a diagram goes stale separately from it. Look for detail attached to the shape it describes, so one edit updates both.
Whether the source stays open
Diagram text and markdown are portable. Check what you can export, and whether an embed still works after you stop paying.
What keeps it true
A cloud scan, a Terraform state, or a connector snapshot on a shape. Without one, the document is right on the day it is written and drifts after.
The shortlist
Blueprintr
Diagram-first documentationA blueprint is a document that opens on a diagram. Every shape carries its own detail, and the blueprint publishes to one live URL. On Team, Continuum Cloud draws AWS and Azure from a read-only role. On Enterprise, Continuum Link attaches dated snapshots from monitoring and ITSM tools, and Continuum Local sweeps your on-premise network from inside it so Blueprintr can draw it.
- The document is behind the shapes. In Eraser the markdown sits beside the canvas as one document. In Blueprintr every shape carries its own stratum: markdown, tables, code, files and links open when a reader clicks the box. The overview stays readable and the depth is one click down.
- The scan lands as an editable document. Continuum Cloud scans a scope you choose in AWS or Azure and produces a Vellum canvas with a stratum on every resource. Re-scan later and the diagram shows what changed. On AWS, Terraform state reconciliation puts drift on the same canvas.
- One live URL, embedded anywhere. A blueprint publishes to a page with tabs, a contents tree and a Pages and Strata sidebar. The same page embeds in Confluence, SharePoint or a README, and readers open strata inside the embed.
- Unlimited files on the free plan. Eraser's free plan holds three files. Blueprintr's free plan holds unlimited public and private blueprints, with Vellum, draw.io and the vendor icon packs.
Free forever for unlimited blueprints. Premium is $10 a month, Team is $29 a seat a month, Enterprise is quoted.
Whimsical
Diagrams and docs togetherWhimsical is a whiteboard for product teams with flowcharts, wireframes and mind maps on Boards, a Docs editor beside them, multiplayer editing and an AI agent.
Best for: Product teams who want quick flowcharts and wireframes next to lightweight docs, with an AI agent that drafts both.
Free for 50 objects a month, then $10 an editor a month for Pro and $20 for Business, billed annually. AI is bought in credit packs.
Cloudcraft
Cloud diagram automationCloudcraft draws AWS and Azure architecture diagrams from a live account scan, in 2D or isometric 3D, with a cost estimate attached.
Best for: Teams who want an auto-generated inventory diagram of an AWS or Azure account with a running cost estimate, especially if they already use Datadog.
Free for manual diagrams. Pro is $40.83 a user a month billed annually, Enterprise $100 a user a month billed annually.
Hava
Cloud diagram automationHava generates versioned infrastructure and security diagrams from read-only connections to AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes, synced daily.
Best for: Operations and security teams who want an always-current inventory of every environment, with a diff between any two syncs and alerts when something changes.
No free plan. Professional is $59 a month for three sources, Teams $249 a month for ten. Enterprise is quoted.
Lucidscale
Cloud diagram automationLucidscale was Lucid's cloud-visualisation product; its features now live in the Cloud Accelerator, an Enterprise add-on that imports AWS, Azure and Google Cloud into Lucidchart.
Best for: Lucid Enterprise customers who want AWS, Azure and Google Cloud drawn on the Lucidchart canvas they already use, refreshed on a schedule.
No public price. The Cloud Accelerator is an add-on for Lucid Enterprise accounts, licensed account-wide and quoted by sales.
IcePanel
Architecture modellingIcePanel is a C4-model architecture tool where every diagram is a view of one shared model, with flows, drafts, versions and decision records.
Best for: Teams committed to the C4 model who want one governed model, future-state drafts merged like branches, and decision records attached to the objects they concern.
Free up to 100 model objects, then $40 or $80 an editor a month billed annually. Viewers are free. Enterprise is quoted.
Structurizr
Architecture modellingStructurizr is the original C4 model tool: a text DSL that describes one model and renders many diagrams from it, now shipped as one binary with a licensed server edition.
Best for: Teams who want their architecture model in version control as a DSL, rendered in CI, and are comfortable running the server themselves.
The local tooling is free and open source. The server is licensed per installation by user count, from 300 pounds a month for up to 20 users, billed annually.
Ilograph
Architecture modellingIlograph builds interactive, zoomable architecture diagrams from a YAML model, with multiple perspectives and step-through sequences, in the browser or a desktop app.
Best for: Engineers who want a text-defined model rendered as an interactive diagram readers can zoom into, and a desktop app that works air-gapped.
Free for unlimited diagrams. Pro is $18 a month, Team $25 an editor a month, billed annually. The desktop app is $11.99 a month.
How Blueprintr compares with Eraser
Read from Eraser’s own pages on 7 September 2026 and from Blueprintr’s pricing table. The plan label is the Blueprintr tier the capability lands on.
| Capability | Eraser | Blueprintr |
|---|---|---|
| Diagrams and the detail behind them | ||
| Documentation behind every shapeCan a shape hold real content: markdown, tables, code, files? | Partly: A markdown document sits beside the canvas in the same file. Prose attached to an individual shape is not documented. | Yes: A stratum on any shape: markdown, tables, code, files, links, tabs, even another diagram.Free |
| Hand-drawn diagrams with vendor iconsCan you draw freely, with real AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes icons? | Yes: A visual editor with cloud icon sets, plus the diagram-as-code syntax. Custom icons are capped per plan: 20 on Starter, 100 on Business. | Yes: Vellum, with vendor icon packs and your own SVGs. draw.io and Excalidraw are engines too.Free |
| Diagrams from textCan a diagram be written as code and kept in version control? | Yes: Eraser's own syntax, readable and diffable as text, alongside AI generation from code and prompts. | Partly: Mermaid tabs render from text and sit beside drawn tabs. Vellum diagrams are drawn, not coded.Free |
| A documentation siteLong-form docs with a nav tree, search and your own domain? | No: No documentation-site product. Git sync pushes markdown and PNG renders to a GitHub repository. | Yes: Folium: nested pages, search, your subdomain or custom domain, with live blueprints in the pages.Team and up |
| Present from the diagramCan the diagram itself be the slide deck? | No: Not documented. | Yes: Podium frames regions of a live canvas as slides and presents them in the browser.Premium and up |
| AI draftingCan AI draw a first draft, or convert a document you already wrote? | Yes: AI generates diagrams from prompts, code, cloud accounts and uploaded files. Metered as AI credits per plan, with a paid overage. | Yes: Draft from a description or a document, and explain a shape. Every change is proposed, then confirmed by you.Free allowance, credits on paid plans |
| Keeping the diagram true | ||
| Draw AWS or Azure from a live accountWill it diagram what is actually running, read-only? | Yes: A read-only connector for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. There is no scheduled rescan; Eraser reads the account when you ask. | Yes: Continuum Cloud takes a read-only role or a Reader app registration and scans the accounts or subscriptions and regions you choose, narrowed to a VPC, subnet or resource group.Team and up |
| Terraform drift on the diagramDoes it compare what you declared with what is running? | Partly: Eraserbot diagrams Terraform, CloudFormation and Kubernetes YAML from a repository on pull requests. Comparing declared with running is not documented. | Yes: Point an AWS connection at your Terraform remote state. Drift from the declared infrastructure shows on the diagram.Team and up |
| Operational data on shapesCan a shape show the on-call, the open incidents or the uptime from the tools that report them? | No: Not documented. | Yes: Continuum Link attaches 39 connectors (PagerDuty, Datadog, ServiceNow, CloudWatch and more) as tabs on a stratum, each a timestamped snapshot an editor refreshes. On-premise systems such as SolarWinds, Zabbix and NetBox answer through Continuum Local, an agent inside your network that also sweeps it for Blueprintr to draw.Enterprise |
| Version history and diffsCan you see what changed since the last review, and restore? | Partly: Snapshots after 30 minutes of inactivity, kept for 7 days free, 90 days on Starter and unlimited on Business. Restore or duplicate; no diff view. | Yes: Every publish is a snapshot. History diffs against any earlier version and restores it.Team and up |
| AI agents and an APICan Claude Code, Cursor or a script read and write your documentation? | Yes: An MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and others, plus a REST API. MCP calls consume AI credits. | Yes: A personal MCP server and a REST API, with scoped keys you mint yourself. |
| Sharing, teams and platform | ||
| Real-time collaborationCan two people draw on one canvas at once? | Yes: Real-time editing with comments and mentions. | Yes: Multi-cursor editing on Vellum diagrams.Premium and up |
| Live embedsCan the live diagram sit inside Confluence, SharePoint, a README or your site? | Partly: Public view links, and embeds in Notion and Confluence. Password-protected links are not documented. | Yes: An iframe or oEmbed embed of the live blueprint. Readers open strata inside it. Footer-free on Premium.Free |
| Bringing existing work inWhich files and sources come across? | Yes: Images and draw.io files on the canvas; markdown and rich text into documents. Visio, PDF and DOCX arrive through the AI file-to-diagram tool. | Yes: draw.io files, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, Markdown and images through the import wizard. Confluence, Notion and SharePoint through a grant.Premium and up |
| Getting work outWhich formats can you leave with? | Yes: PNG, SVG and PDF for diagrams; Markdown and PDF for documents. The free plan watermarks exports. | Yes: PNG, SVG, PDF and GIF from Vellum. Whole blueprints as Markdown and YAML. A folium as a static site.Free |
| Desktop appIs there a native app, and does it work offline? | No: No desktop app is documented. | Yes: Blueprintr Vellum for macOS, Windows and Linux, plus Vellum Core: local files, no account, no network.Free |
| SSO and SCIMCan your identity provider own sign-in and provisioning? | Yes: SAML SSO on Business and Enterprise. SCIM on Enterprise only. | Yes: SAML and OIDC single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and IP allow-listing.Enterprise |
| Free planWhat do you get without paying? | Partly: Three files, three AI diagrams and seven days of history. Unlimited guests. | Yes: Unlimited public and private blueprints, Vellum and draw.io, icon packs, embeds and a portfolio page.Free |
Moving work from Eraser
Export each Eraser diagram as SVG or PNG and each document as Markdown. The Markdown pastes into a stratum or a folium page as it is. Diagrams are redrawn in Vellum, or brought in as images through the import wizard and redrawn behind the picture at your own pace. If the diagram came from Terraform, connect the remote state to Continuum on the Team plan and let the scan draw it.
Frequently asked
Why leave Eraser?
The usual reasons are a three-file free plan, documentation that lives beside the diagram rather than inside it, and wanting one published page that readers navigate by clicking shapes.
Which alternative is closest to Eraser?
For diagrams as text in a repository, Mermaid and Structurizr. For a canvas with the documentation behind every shape and a live cloud scan, Blueprintr.
Can I keep my Eraser diagrams?
Yes. Export them as SVG or PNG and the documents as Markdown. Most tools on this list import at least the images.
Draw the first diagram. The document follows.
Eraser is a trademark of Eraser Labs, Inc. Every other product named here is a trademark of its owner, and Blueprintr is affiliated with none of them. Facts were read from each vendor’s published pages on 7 September 2026. If something is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.