Mattermost
Mattermost ships v11.8 compliance controls amid heavy sovereign-defence content
Comparison · Collab
Excalidraw vs SiYuan
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Excalidraw and SiYuan — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Excalidraw vs SiYuan: at a glance
What is Excalidraw?
Excalidraw library cadence is glacial — v0.18 in March 2025, then silence; feed is mostly GitHub-profile noise.
The captured changelog tracks the npm library at github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw, not the hosted app at excalidraw.com. The library has shipped four substantive releases over two-and-a-half years: v0.16.1 (Sep 2023), v0.17.0 (Nov 2023), v0.17.3 (Feb 2024), and v0.18.0 (March 2025). The latest entry is from April 2026 but is a GitHub-profile scraping artifact, not a release. Half the feed is GitHub user-profile pages ('Sorry, something went wrong') that landed instead of release content.
What is SiYuan?
SiYuan's 3.7.0 turns the note-taker into a scriptable, extensible platform
SiYuan is converging its long 3.7.0 dev cycle toward release. The cumulative changelog — repeated across many dev builds — centers on a kernel plugin system, a new command-line interface, configurable secrets and variables, a reworked settings UI, and a large batch of database, editor, and mobile refinements. A breaking change now requires an explicit 'serve' subcommand to run the kernel.
Excalidraw vs SiYuan: editorial side-by-side
Excalidraw
1.3COLLAB
Excalidraw library cadence is glacial — v0.18 in March 2025, then silence; feed is mostly GitHub-profile noise.
◆ Current state
The captured changelog tracks the npm library at github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw, not the hosted app at excalidraw.com. The library has shipped four substantive releases over two-and-a-half years: v0.16.1 (Sep 2023), v0.17.0 (Nov 2023), v0.17.3 (Feb 2024), and v0.18.0 (March 2025). The latest entry is from April 2026 but is a GitHub-profile scraping artifact, not a release. Half the feed is GitHub user-profile pages ('Sorry, something went wrong') that landed instead of release content.
◆ Where it's heading
v0.18.0 was the high-water release — command palette, multiplayer undo/redo, editable element stats, text wrapping, and laser pointer. Since then the library has been quiet for over a year while the hosted app at excalidraw.com presumably continued to evolve through unversioned deploys. This pattern suggests the team has shifted investment toward the SaaS product and integrations, with the open-source library treated as a stable embedding target rather than the frontier of feature work.
◆ Prediction
The library will likely see another minor release rather than going dormant — there is too much downstream embedding (Notion, Obsidian, etc.) for it to fully fall behind the SaaS app — but expect months between releases, not weeks. The feed-source issue is fixable: the crawler should target the GitHub Releases API or RSS, not the HTML release pages and contributor profiles that produce the current noise.
SiYuan
6.3COLLAB
SiYuan's 3.7.0 turns the note-taker into a scriptable, extensible platform
◆ Current state
SiYuan is converging its long 3.7.0 dev cycle toward release. The cumulative changelog — repeated across many dev builds — centers on a kernel plugin system, a new command-line interface, configurable secrets and variables, a reworked settings UI, and a large batch of database, editor, and mobile refinements. A breaking change now requires an explicit 'serve' subcommand to run the kernel.
◆ Where it's heading
The headline direction is extensibility and automation: a plugin-capable kernel, CLI access, and secrets/variables move SiYuan from a self-contained app toward something developers can script and integrate. The breaking kernel API changes and the new serve subcommand are the cost of that platform shift. Underneath, steady editor/database hardening and broad localization continue.
◆ Prediction
Expect 3.7.0 to ship from the beta line with the plugin system and CLI as its banner features, followed by an ecosystem period of plugins and integrations building on the new kernel APIs. The repeated dev-build entries don't add direction beyond this.
Alternatives to Excalidraw and SiYuan
Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Excalidraw or SiYuan.
Anytype
Anytype's 0.55 cycle is a steady grind on chat, with code blocks the headline
Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat is methodically migrating off Meteor DDP toward a REST core
Front
Front is rebuilding the shared inbox around AI agents and omnichannel reach.
Claromentis
Claromentis's feed is secure-AI and compliance thought-leadership, not a release log.
Powell Software
Powell Software's feed is digital-workplace marketing and PR, not release notes.
See all Excalidraw alternatives → · See all SiYuan alternatives →
Recent activity from Excalidraw and SiYuan
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoSiYuanSiYuan 3.7.0-beta.2: secrets/variables, CLI, kernel plugin system ⚡
- 4d agoSiYuan3.7.0 dev build (cumulative pre-release notes)
- 5d agoSiYuan3.7.0 dev15 (cumulative pre-release notes)
- 16d agoSiYuan3.7.0 dev14 (cumulative pre-release notes)
- 16d agoSiYuan3.7.0 dev13 (cumulative pre-release notes)
- 17d agoSiYuan3.7.0 dev12 (cumulative pre-release notes)
- 2mo agoExcalidrawGitHub profile scrape (feed artifact, not a release)
- 1y agoExcalidrawv0.18.0 (2025-03-11) ⚡
- 1y agoExcalidrawGitHub profile error page (feed artifact)
- 1y agoExcalidrawv0.18.0 (duplicate feed entry)
- 2y agoExcalidrawv0.17.3 (2024-02-09)
- 2y agoExcalidrawv0.17.3 (2024-02-09)
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Excalidraw and SiYuan?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. SiYuan is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 1.3), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Excalidraw better than SiYuan?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. SiYuan is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 1.3), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Excalidraw?
Top Excalidraw alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Excalidraw alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/excalidraw for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to SiYuan?
Top SiYuan alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "SiYuan alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/siyuan for the full list with editorial commentary on each.