8 FigJam alternatives for architecture documentation
FigJam comes with the Figma seat, which is why many teams diagram in it. If you are looking for something else for architecture, the questions are how the board reads later, what you can export, and what keeps the diagram true.
Also searched as alternatives to FigJam, FigJam competitors, and FigJam replacement.
What to look for when leaving FigJam
Capture versus reading
A whiteboard is built for the workshop. Ask what the board looks like to someone who reads it a month later.
Bounded documents
An infinite canvas has no front page. A document with tabs and a contents tree has one.
Keeping the sketch
The rough board still matters. Look for a tool that keeps a sketch layer next to the tidy diagram rather than forcing a redraw.
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.
- Documentation behind the shape. A FigJam shape holds a label and a link. A Blueprintr stratum holds markdown, tables, code, files and tabs, and can hold another diagram.
- Vendor icons, and SVG out. Vellum ships AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes icon packs and exports SVG, PNG, PDF and GIF. FigJam has no vendor icon packs and does not export SVG.
- A scan that draws for you. Continuum Cloud draws AWS and Azure from a read-only scan on Team, and shows Terraform drift for AWS. FigJam draws what you draw.
- Free for unlimited documents. FigJam's free plan holds three files with 30 days of history. Blueprintr's free plan holds unlimited blueprints.
Free forever for unlimited blueprints. Premium is $10 a month, Team is $29 a seat a month, Enterprise is quoted.
Miro
WhiteboardsMiro is a multiplayer whiteboard: an infinite canvas with diagramming, docs, tables, slides and AI, used for workshops, planning and mapping.
Best for: Workshops, planning sessions and any collaboration where capture matters more than reading afterwards, across every team in the company.
Free for three boards, then $8 a member a month for Starter and $20 for Business, billed yearly. Enterprise is quoted from 30 members.
Excalidraw
WhiteboardsExcalidraw is an open-source whiteboard with a hand-drawn style, and Excalidraw+ is the paid version with cloud storage, teams, comments, presentations and AI.
Best for: Sketches that should look provisional: quick whiteboarding with end-to-end encrypted live collaboration, free and open source.
The editor is free and open source. Excalidraw+ is $6 a user a month billed annually, or $7 monthly, after a 14-day trial.
Eraser
Diagrams and docs togetherEraser is an AI-first diagramming tool for engineers: diagrams written as code or drawn on a canvas, with a markdown document beside them in the same file.
Best for: Teams who want diagrams generated from Terraform, CloudFormation or a codebase, kept in a GitHub repository as text, and updated by a bot on pull requests.
Free for three files, then $15 or $45 a member a month billed annually. 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.
How Blueprintr compares with FigJam
Read from FigJam’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 | FigJam | Blueprintr |
|---|---|---|
| Diagrams and the detail behind them | ||
| Documentation behind every shapeCan a shape hold real content: markdown, tables, code, files? | No: Shapes hold text and links; sticky notes and sections hold the rest. No prose behind a shape. | 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? | Partly: A whiteboard with grid-snapping shapes and connectors. No vendor icon packs are documented. | 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? | Partly: Mermaid pastes as an editable diagram, and the Figma MCP server generates diagrams from Mermaid or a prompt. | 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: Not offered. | 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? | Partly: Sections and frames can be walked through. Slides live in Figma Slides. | 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: FigJam AI generates boards and diagrams and sorts stickies, on paid seats, metered in AI credits. | 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? | No: Not offered. | 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? | No: Not offered. | 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? | Partly: Jira, Asana and GitHub widgets show issues on the board. | 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: Named versions and restore; 30 days on the free plan, unlimited on paid. No compare view for FigJam. | 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? | Partly: The Figma MCP server generates diagrams, and a Figma REST API reads files. | 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: Multiplayer with cursors, audio, live chat and comments. | Yes: Multi-cursor editing on Vellum diagrams.Premium and up |
| Live embedsCan the live diagram sit inside Confluence, SharePoint, a README or your site? | Yes: Live embeds in browser-based tools, Confluence and Notion, visible to signed-in Figma users. Password protection on paid plans. | 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? | Partly: Images, video, CSV to tables, PDF, and boards from Miro, Mural, Lucid and Jamboard. No Visio or draw.io import. | 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? | Partly: PNG, JPG and PDF, and CSV for stickies and tables. SVG export is not supported. | 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? | Partly: Desktop apps for macOS and Windows. No offline mode; edits made offline sync later. | 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 Organization and Enterprise. SCIM seat management on Enterprise. | Yes: SAML and OIDC single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and IP allow-listing.Enterprise |
| Free planWhat do you get without paying? | Partly: Three FigJam files, 30 days of history and a daily AI allowance. | Yes: Unlimited public and private blueprints, Vellum and draw.io, icon packs, embeds and a portfolio page.Free |
Moving work from FigJam
Export the boards that hold architecture as PDF or PNG, since FigJam does not export SVG, and bring the images into a blueprint through the import wizard. Redraw the diagram in Vellum with the vendor icon packs, and turn the sticky notes into strata on the shapes they describe. FigJam stays where the design team works.
Frequently asked
Why leave FigJam for architecture work?
Usually because boards do not carry documentation, there is no SVG export or vendor icon set, and the diagram cannot be kept true to the running system.
Which alternative is closest to FigJam?
Excalidraw or Miro for a whiteboard. Blueprintr for the document the whiteboard session produces.
Can I keep the boards?
Yes, as PDF or PNG. Miro imports FigJam boards directly.
Draw the first diagram. The document follows.
FigJam and Figma are trademarks of Figma, 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.