Excalidraw vs Semaphore UI
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted developer tools & git options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Excalidraw with
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Compare Semaphore UI with
choose an app… lazygit Hoppscotch json-server Strapi NocoDB Penpot dive Windows lazydocker AWX Rundeck
Feature Excalidraw Semaphore UI Category Developer Tools & Git Developer Tools & Git License MIT MIT Language TypeScript Go Setup difficulty Easy Easy Min. RAM 256 MB 256 MB Deployment docker docker, binary, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 129,145 ★ 13,973 First released 2020 2017 Replaces Miro Ansible Tower, AWX
Why pick each one
Choose Excalidraw if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 129.1k GitHub stars Excalidraw details Choose Semaphore UI if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 14k GitHub stars Semaphore UI details
Frequently asked questions Is Excalidraw or Semaphore UI better? Neither is universally better. Excalidraw has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Excalidraw and Semaphore UI free and open-source? Yes. Excalidraw is licensed under MIT and Semaphore UI under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Excalidraw and Semaphore UI with Docker? Excalidraw: yes. Semaphore UI: yes.