Creative tools are where open source has caught up fastest in recent years. Each of these has a large community and an active codebase.
Design (Figma)
1
penpot penpot/penpot
A browser-based design and prototyping platform built on open standards (SVG, CSS). The main open-source answer to Figma. MPL-2.0.
Whiteboards (Miro)
2
excalidraw excalidraw/excalidraw
A virtual whiteboard with a hand-drawn look, loved for quick diagrams. MIT.
3
tldraw tldraw/tldraw
An infinite-canvas SDK for building whiteboard features into your own React app. Check the license before commercial use.
4
AFFiNE toeverything/AFFiNE
Docs and whiteboard in one workspace, named as an alternative to both Notion and Miro.
Screen recording (Loom)
5
Cap CapSoftware/Cap
‘Open source Loom alternative’: record your screen and share a link. Desktop app plus a sharing service you can self-host.
How we pick: we start from every public GitHub repository with 1,000+ stars, keep the projects that do the job in the title, and read their descriptions and licenses. Stars show community size, not quality, so we also show maintenance status. Nobody paid to be listed.