Top Software Architecture Diagram Tools for 2024

Software architecture diagram tools empower developers and the IT architect’s teams to create clear, detailed visual representations of software systems.

Software architecture diagram tools play a crucial role in clarifying system structure, streamlining the planning process, and facilitating informed decision-making. By utilizing these tools, teams can simplify complex projects, make it easy to understand the software flow, and ultimately improve the quality and success of software development outcomes.

Geekflare has researched and listed the best software architecture diagram tools based on key features such as templates, design elements, supported diagram types, and real-time collaboration

• LucidChart – Best for Templates and Integrations
• Miro – Best for Collaborative Diagramming
• Creately – Best for Variety of Diagrams
• Draw.io – Best for Free Solution
• Terrastruct – Best for Cloud Architecture Diagrams
• Gliffy – Best for Technical Documentation
• Cacoo – Best for Real-Time Collaboration
• Microsoft Visio – Best for Microsoft Office Integration
• Excalidraw – Best for Hand-Drawn Style
• Tldraw – Best for Simple Browser Usage
• OmniGraffle – Best for Apple Users
• Isoflow – Best for Interactive 3D Flowcharts
• Show moreShow less

LucidChart

LucidChart is an intuitive diagramming tool for software architects and development teams to collaborate on and create the best designs. It’s a popular choice for many users and helps you visualize complicated ideas and simplify them quickly through intelligent diagramming. 

Lucidchart brings every member on the same page with powerful collaboration features such as mentions, comments, Lucidspark virtual whiteboard, collaborative AI, team spaces, and more. You can create technical diagrams, flowcharts, process maps, C4 models, and more. It doubles down as a documentation tool for your software architecture and systems. 

Get automatic diagram creation with features like AI Prompt Flow and ChatGPT plugin. LucidChart offers security and scalability for enterprises with easy-to-control and allows you to manage account settings, data encryption, domain and publishing restrictions, and document permissions. 

LucidChart Pricing

Plans	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Free	100+ templates, commenting, presentation mode	Free
Individual	Unlimited editable documents, 1GB storage, premium templates, premium shape libraries	$7.95
Team	Password-protected publishing, visual activities, advanced controls	$9
Enterprise	Team spaces, SAML authentication, IP address whitelisting, enforceable sharing restrictions, team folders	Custom

Try LucidChart

Miro

Miro is one of the best collaborative diagramming tools with useful features, real-time collaboration, and a highly customizable user interface. Miro is user-friendly, allowing both beginners and experts to learn and use it effortlessly.

Use Miro to create technical architectural diagrams, mind maps, retrospectives, process maps, product planning, wireframes, customer journeys, and more.

Miro has a large collection of customizable templates, shapes, and other design elements. It offers multiple editing tools like Zoom, Pen, Sticky Note, Text, and more. Get an option to share diagrams and work on them.

Miro Pricing

Plans	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Free	5 talktracks, 2500+ templates, 100+ integrations	Free
Starter	Unlimited boards, board exports, unlimited talktracks, private mode	$8
Business	2000+ advanced diagramming shapes, unlimited guests on private and team boards, SSO, OneLogin	$16
Enterprise	Advanced security, premium support, flexible licensing program, SIEM integrations	Custom

Try Miro

Creately

Creately is an AI-powered diagram tool that helps you create visuals quickly, automate tasks, and discover new perspectives. Using this visual collaboration software in your development environment makes it easy for your team to work closely together from anywhere. 

Creately offers an infinite canvas that works as a central hub to brainstorm and ideate, plan and strategize, diagram and visualize, research and analyze, and manage projects, meetings, and workshops. 

You’ll get advanced whiteboards and the creation of diagrams, mind maps, flowcharts, class diagrams, etc. Creately provides 8k+ professional ready-to-use templates and 200k+ examples for multiple industries. It offers security features like advanced data sharing permissions, SCIM and SSO, audit logs, SOC 2 and ISO compliance, etc.

Creately Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price
Free	Standards shape libraries, JPEG and PNG export only	Free
Personal	Unlimited canvases, unlimited imports, premium shapes, AI diagrams	$5
Team	50 Active folders, email/chat support, advanced collaboration	$5/user
Enterprise	SSO, regional data servers, multiple admin accounts, audit logs, 2-way data sync	Custom

Try Creately

Draw.io

Draw.io is a security-first diagramming tool for teams. This versatile tool allows you to create diagrams faster and save them locally using the desktop application or on the cloud using the web application. 

Draw.io lets you use the web-based diagramming and sketching functionality to create diagrams and collaborate with your peers on projects. It allows you to create different types of diagrams like flowcharts, trees, process flows, circuit diagrams, floorplans, network infrastructure, story maps, timelines, sequence diagrams, freehand shapes, custom shapes, and many more. 

Draw.io doesn’t store your data. It focuses on security with data governance functionalities and offers a desktop app for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Get multiple data storage options – On your device or web browser, Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, or GitHub/GitLab. 

You’ll get a user-friendly, customizable diagram editor with functionalities like drag-and-drop, adding labels, automatic connector reroutes, customizable palettes, text formatting tools, sketch options, and keyboard shortcuts.

Draw.io Pricing

Draw.io is free to use. If you want to use the tool with JIRA and Atlassian Confluence, choose a paid version based on your team size. 

Try Draw.io

Terrastruct

Terrastruct is an open-source modern diagramming tool specifically designed for developers to create software architecture diagrams. It can improve your visual documentation at speed while being simple and easy to use with low maintenance. 

Rising beyond a general-purpose modeling tool, Terrastruct is built to work smoothly even if you’ve complex diagramming needs. It allows you to create multi-layered, interactive diagrams and define scenarios for different layers. Get an overview of the layered diagrams by zooming out or view lower abstraction levels by zooming in. 

Terrastruct offers text-to-diagram functionality, enabling you to create diagrams from text. It automatically syncs auto format for each saved diagram, avoiding potential issues with indentations or syntax styles. You’ll get a fully-featured GUI editor for better precision in diagramming 

Terrastruct Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Terrastruct Bundle	D2 studio, feature-complete GUI, branded presentations, TALA personal license, unlimited diagrams	$20
Enterprise	SSO, audit trail, insights and analytics, on-premises hosting, admin portal	$30

Try Terrastruct

Gliffy

Gliffy is an easy-to-navigate technical diagramming tool for Confluence. Its intuitive interface, best-in-class support, and powerful onboarding resources will make it effortless for you to get started and learn using it. 

Create complex tech diagrams with Gliffy without any training, whether your team is on Confluence Data Center or Cloud. It acts as a single source of truth for all your software architecture diagramming needs. 

Gliffy supports creating different types of diagrams – network infrastructure, flow charts, Venn diagrams, mind maps, wireframes, etc. It offers real-time collaboration with team members directly by sharing designs without extra passwords or plugins

Gliffy Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Professional	Unlimited diagrams, access to templates, Google Drive plug-in, private sharing	$6
Enterprise	Easy admin controls, centralized security, SSO, automatic diagram migration, team management	Custom

Try Gliffy

Cacoo

Cacoo is a simple-to-use online diagramming tool for creating and real-time collaboration on flowcharts, wireframes, network designs, and other diagrams. It supports a distributed workforce, giving options to multiple users to create, edit, chat, and comment on a design simultaneously. 

You can use Cacoo throughout your designing process, from ideation, creation, and approval to launch in your presentation or workflow. It’s built for everyone, from beginners to professionals, without sacrificing the features. 

Cacoo helps you create dynamic charts and populate them with data imported from spreadsheets or enter them manually. It allows you to share diagrams via email, social media, or a link, export data, embed diagrams in sites or wikis, and present diagrams in presentations. 

Cacoo Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price
Free	Unlimited users, 6 sheets, templates and shapes, in-app video chat, comment and chat, PNG exports	Free
Pro	Unlimited sheets, templates and shapes, real-time editing, multiple export options, timer	$6
Team	Upto 1000 users, unlimited sheets, 1 on 1 training, revision history	$6/user

Try Cacoo

Microsoft Visio

Microsoft Visio is a professional diagram creation tool that allows you to create powerful designs and visualize data to bring your concepts to life. It works best for teams using Microsoft Office as the tool integrates seamlessly with it.  

Whether you want to create network diagrams, flowcharts, org charts, or floor plans, Microsoft Visio comes in handy. Creating and coauthoring diagrams will enable you to make effective decisions, visualize data clearly, and execute processes efficiently.  

With Visio, you’ll get dozens of pre-made templates, stencils, and starter diagrams and Visual collaboration with Microsoft 365 for commercial subscribers.

Microsoft Visio Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Included in Microsoft 365	Minor editing, viewing diagrams, infographic timelines, basic flowcharts, hundreds of shapes and icons	Free
Visio Plan 1	Cross-functional flowcharts, IT diagrams, software and database diagrams, grids, power BI integration	$5
Visio Plan 2	Visio desktop apps, advanced process diagrams, business process models, electrical diagrams, custom shapes	$15

Try Microsoft Visio

Excalidraw

Excalidraw is a tool with templating having a simple user interface free of clutter. It’s one of the best tools with a virtual whiteboard for collaboration that allows you to effortlessly create diagrams giving a hand-drawn feel to each of them.

Use Excalidraw’s clean, open-source whiteboard to create beautiful diagrams, wireframes, etc. It offers many useful features and tools to make your design journey easier. You’ll get infinite canvas, customizable whiteboard, dark and light modes, supported shape libraries, image export to PNG, SVG, and clipboard, support for localization (i18n), and more.

Excalidraw Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Free	Full editor functions, unlimited collaborators, libraries, integrations	Free
Plus	Unlimited scenes and folders, access management, extended AI, presentations, voice hangouts	$6

Try Excalidraw

Tldraw

Tldraw is a modern, feature-rich library to create infinite canvases and whiteboards for drawings on the web. You can add a canvas to a React application in under 5 minutes by following its easy-to-understand documentation. 

Getting started with Tldraw is easy and requires no high-level command of programming languages. Start by installing Tldr’s library, importing styles, and rendering the Tldr component to get a full-screen canvas to work on. Next, you can customize the editor user interface, add shapes, and collaborate on your designs. 

Get a wide range of shapes like circles, arrows, triangles, rectangles, and more. Tldr provides tools like eraser, zoom in/out, redo, undo, cut, copy, delete, select all, unlock all, opacity, and more. You’ll experience multiple modes – dark, focus, and debug.

Tldr pricing

The Tldr SDK is open-source and free to use. 

Try Tldraw

OmniGraffle

OmniGraffle is an excellent drawing tool for Apple users as it works across all your devices like Mac, iPhone, and iPad. This enables you to sketch and edit a diagram on the go with useful features while the tool synchronizes data. 

If you need to communicate visually and organize data effectively, use the power of OmniGraffle to beautifully diagram, design, and rapidly prototype. It’s built especially to help you explain complex ideas easily and accurately. 

OmniGraffle offers professional-level vector graphics, app Lock to secure documents, supports SVG imports and paste, drag and drop objects, a ton of shapes and lines, a Pen tool to draw custom shapes, an option to add labels with the Text tool, and more.

OmniGraffle Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Price
Subscription (Mac+iPhone+iPad)	Canvas size modes, SVG import & paste, Shape Tool	$12.49/month
v7 Standard License (Mac)	Point editor tool, browse action tool, advanced export, Visio import	$149.99 (one-time)
v7 Pro License (Mac)	Subgraphs, SVH export, HTML image maps, mouseless editing, tables, presentation mode	$249.99 (one-time)
v3 Standard License (iPhone-iPad)	File support, canvases, drag and drop, line tool, shape tool, point editor, browse action	$59.99 (one-time)
v3 Pro License (iPhone-iPad)	Visio import and export, tables, interactive action, automation	$119.99 (one-time)

Try OmniGraffle

Isoflow

Isoflow is an open-source React-based library that’s best for drawing interactive 3D flowcharts and network diagrams. This diagram and flowchart maker tool allows your team to discuss, explore, and design complex systems and ideas. 

You’ll get a drag-and-drop interface; collaboration features like file sharing and saving designs, plenty of connectors rejoins and icons, customization with adding your own icons option, etc.

Isoflow Pricing

Plan	Key Features	Monthly Price/User
Free (Open-source)	Unlimited diagrams	Free
Subscription	Unlimited diagrams, cloud saving, project organizer, team workspaces	$10

Try Isoflow

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