Excalimate
Excalimate turns hand-drawn Excalidraw diagrams into keyframe animations.
What Excalimate is
Excalimate turns hand-drawn Excalidraw diagrams into keyframe animations. Its built-in Excalidraw editor supports drawing, editing, and connecting elements, while a visual timeline controls opacity, position, scale, rotation, and draw progress. Camera keyframes add pan, zoom, and rotation with an aspect-ratio lock. Exports include MP4, WebM, GIF, SVG, dotLottie, Lottie JSON, PNG, and WebP. The web app performs editing, animation, and rendering in the browser, and the maker says no account is needed. Excalimate is free to use and open source under the MIT license, with code published on GitHub; commercial use and scene templates are supported. An MCP server connects it to AI clients, with setup instructions for GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Windsurf. The maker describes 23 MCP tools and 16 specialized AI skills for diagram and animation workflows. Shared projects are encrypted client-side with AES-256-GCM, with the key kept in the URL hash. Shares are retained for up to 30 days. Optional pseudonymous analytics run through PostHog Cloud EU after consent.
Good
- Free and open source under the MIT license.
- No account required.
- Timeline includes five keyframe properties.
- Exports include video, image, and animation formats.
- Commercial use is supported.
Watch out
- Shared projects are retained for up to 30 days.
- Analytics can run after consent.
- Editing and rendering happen in the browser.
Who it suits
Excalimate suits people who want to animate Excalidraw diagrams and export them in multiple formats. It may also fit users seeking a free, open-source browser tool with AI-client connections.
Verdict
Excalimate pairs diagram editing with timeline and camera animation controls, plus a broad set of export formats. It is free and account-free, with AI-client connections and encrypted project sharing.
Plans and prices
From Excalimate's own pricing page, checked 15 Oct 2001.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | full editor · keyframe animation · 8 export formats · MCP tools · encrypted sharing · no account required |
The facts
Each one read from Excalimate's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Account requirement
- The maker says Excalimate is available without an account.checked 5 Oct 2001
- AI clients
- The MCP documentation provides configurations for VS Code/GitHub Copilot, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf and HTTP-compatible clients.checked 15 Oct 2001
- AI integration
- The site advertises 23 MCP tools, live SSE updates and 16 specialized AI skills.checked 15 Oct 2001
- AI tools
- The maker’s site describes 23 MCP tools and 16 specialized AI skills for diagram and animation workflows.checked 5 Oct 2001
- Animation
- Its visual timeline supports opacity, position, scale, rotation, and draw-progress keyframes.checked 5 Oct 2001
- Architecture
- An independent developer profile describes Excalimate as a React 19 and TypeScript SPA deployed with Cloudflare Pages, Workers and R2.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Camera animation
- Camera keyframes can pan, zoom and rotate the canvas with aspect-ratio locking.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Camera motion
- Camera keyframes support pan, zoom, and rotation with aspect-ratio lock.checked 5 Oct 2001
- Developer identity
- David Szakacs is listed as the npm publisher of Excalimate packages.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Documentation depth
- The repository includes documentation for architecture, V2 migration, hosted playback, security, sharing, exports, accessibility and MCP operation.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Editor
- The product embeds a full Excalidraw drawing editor for creating, editing and connecting diagram elements.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Encrypted sharing
- Sharing encrypts project data client-side with AES-256-GCM; the key remains in the URL fragment and is not sent to the server.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Export formats
- Exports include MP4, WebM, GIF, SVG, dotLottie, Lottie JSON, PNG and WebP.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Exports
- It exports MP4, WebM, GIF, SVG, dotLottie, Lottie JSON, PNG, and WebP.checked 5 Oct 2001
- Hosted player
- A separate hosted player supports encrypted-share playback and iframe embedding with a restricted postMessage command set.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Independent technical description
- The developer profile describes WebCodecs for MP4/WebM, gif.js for GIF export and programmatic SVG animation.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Initial release
- The changelog lists version 0.2.0 as the initial public release on 16 March 2026.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Keyframe properties
- Animation tracks support opacity, position, scale, rotation and draw progress.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Limit: code maturity
- The GitHub README warns that a considerable part of the codebase was built with AI and that cleanup and bug fixing were still ongoing.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Limit: collaboration
- The official Excalimate-versus-Excalidraw comparison states that Excalimate does not currently provide real-time multi-user editing.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Limit: known bugs
- The public feedback board records a bug report about extra scale keyframes appearing after loading saved .excanim projects.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Limit: timeline editing
- The feedback board records requests for multi-keyframe movement and timeline zoom improvements, indicating those workflows had gaps when reported.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Local data
- The privacy notice says projects and recent projects are stored in browser storage for autosave and reopening.checked 15 Oct 2001
- Local editing
- The web app is a static single-page application where rendering, animation, and editing happen in the browser.checked 5 Oct 2001
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