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Discover the top Miro alternatives that solve pricing headaches, interface complexity, and shallow AI features. Compare 10 tools including Storyflow, Whimsical, FigJam, and more to find your perfect whiteboard solution.
Category
Productivity & Tools
Author
Sara de Klein
Head of Product
December 7, 2025
•
15 min read
•
Productivity & ToolsYour Miro bill just hit $320 this month. Twenty people times sixteen dollars. For sticky notes on a screen.
You scroll through the board from last week's brainstorm. Half the sticky notes say "test" or "asdfgh" from people figuring out how the tool works. The other half are buried under a pile of arrows, frames, and shapes nobody can find anymore.
Somewhere in there is a good idea. Probably.
Miro works. Millions of teams use it every day. The canvas is fast. The templates are endless. The collaboration features do what they promise. But three things keep pushing people to look elsewhere.
First, the pricing. Eight dollars per user sounds fine until your team grows. Suddenly you're paying hundreds a month for a whiteboard. And everyone needs a seat, even the people who just need to view boards occasionally.
Second, the complexity. Miro can do everything. That means menus inside menus, toolbars everywhere, and new hires asking "where do I click?" for the first week. Most teams use maybe 10% of the features and pay for 100%.
Third, the AI. Miro added it, but it feels bolted on. Ask for help and you get generic suggestions that could apply to anyone's project. The AI doesn't know what you're working on. It just knows you're on a whiteboard.
2025 brought alternatives that solve these problems. Some cost less. Some do more with AI. Some strip away the clutter and let you think.
The short version:
Let's get into each one.
Different problems need different tools. Here's where to start based on what you actually need.
You want AI that does more than generate generic sticky notes. Storyflow reads your entire workspace, boards, docs, cards, all of it, so when you ask for help, the suggestions make sense for your specific project. Blueprint tactics give you pre-built workflows instead of blank canvas paralysis. Flat pricing means your bill stays the same whether you have 5 people or 50.
You want a whiteboard that loads fast and stays out of your way. No feature bloat. No toolbar hunting. Clean interface, multiple content types, done. Product teams love it.
You live in Figma already. FigJam puts your whiteboard next to your design files. Pull components in, push ideas out. The free tier gives you unlimited collaborators on three files, which is generous enough for real work.
Three files, unlimited people, zero dollars. Most free tiers cripple collaboration features. FigJam doesn't.
You run structured sessions with 30, 50, sometimes 100 people. You need facilitation controls, timed activities, and private brainstorming before reveal. Mural was built by facilitators who understand large group dynamics.
You want your planning docs and visual boards in the same place. Notion added canvas features that handle basic whiteboarding without switching tools.
You think in hierarchies. Ideas branch into sub-ideas. MindMeister does one thing and does it clean.
You want whiteboards inside your project management tool. No context switching. Tasks and brainstorms live together.
Nobody wakes up wanting to migrate their team to a new tool. It's a hassle. You've got boards full of work, people who know where things are, muscle memory built up over months. Switching costs time.
So when people start googling "Miro alternatives," something pushed them there.
Miro charges per seat. Starts at $8 per user per month for the basic paid plan. Bumps to $16 for business features. Sounds reasonable until you do the math.
A 10-person team on the business plan pays $160 monthly. That's $1,920 a year for whiteboards. Grow to 25 people and you're at $4,800. For sticky notes and arrows.
The free plan exists but it caps you at three boards. Three. Most projects need more than that before lunch on day one.
And here's the part that stings: everyone needs a paid seat. The designer who uses it daily. The executive who glances at one board per quarter. Same price.
Open Miro for the first time. Count the buttons. The toolbars. The menus. The floating panels.
Miro can do almost anything. Flowcharts, wireframes, customer journey maps, retrospectives, org charts, Kanban boards. The feature list is enormous. The problem is you feel that enormity every time you open the app.
New team members need training. Casual collaborators get lost. The person you invited to add one comment ends up clicking randomly, trying to find the text tool.
Power users love it. Everyone else tolerates it.
Miro added AI features in 2023. You can ask it to generate sticky notes, summarize boards, cluster ideas. Sounds useful.
Try it. Ask Miro AI to help brainstorm your next product feature. You'll get suggestions that could apply to literally any product at any company. "Consider user needs." "Think about market fit." "Explore innovative solutions."
The AI sees the board. It doesn't see your research docs, your strategy notes, your previous brainstorms. It doesn't know what you've already tried. It doesn't know your customers.
You get a smart-sounding assistant that doesn't know anything about your actual work.
Here's how the top Miro alternatives stack up:
| Tool | Best For | Starting Price | Free Plan | AI Features | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storyflow | AI-powered visual work | $12/mo flat | Yes | ★★★★★ | 9.5/10 |
| Whimsical | Clean simplicity | $10/user/mo | Yes (limited) | ★★★☆☆ | 8.5/10 |
| FigJam | Design teams | $3/user/mo | Yes (3 files) | ★★☆☆☆ | 8.5/10 |
| Mural | Enterprise workshops | $12/user/mo | Yes (limited) | ★★☆☆☆ | 8/10 |
| Notion | Docs + visuals | $8/user/mo | Yes | ★★★☆☆ | 8/10 |
| Lucidspark | Diagramming | $7.95/user/mo | Yes (3 boards) | ★★☆☆☆ | 7.5/10 |
| Canva Whiteboards | Casual brainstorming | Free-$10/user/mo | Yes | ★★☆☆☆ | 7.5/10 |
| MindMeister | Mind mapping | $6/mo | Yes (3 maps) | ★★☆☆☆ | 7.5/10 |
| ClickUp Whiteboards | PM integration | $7/user/mo | Yes | ★★☆☆☆ | 7/10 |
| Heptabase | Visual note-taking | $9.99/mo | Trial only | ★★☆☆☆ | 7/10 |
A few things stand out.
Pricing models split two ways. Most tools charge per user, same as Miro. Storyflow, MindMeister, and Heptabase use flat monthly pricing. For teams larger than a few people, flat pricing wins fast.
AI capabilities vary wildly. Most tools added basic AI features in the last two years. Summarize this board. Generate some sticky notes. Cluster these ideas. Surface-level stuff. Storyflow is the exception. Its AI reads your full workspace, not just the current board, which means suggestions actually connect to your work.
Free plans all have catches. FigJam's is the most generous for collaboration. Unlimited people on three files. Most others cap features, boards, or both.
Best for: People who want AI that actually understands their work
Most whiteboard tools treat AI like a checkbox feature. Add a button that generates sticky notes. Ship it. Call it AI-powered.
Storyflow did something different. The AI reads your entire workspace. Your boards, your documents, your cards, your previous brainstorms. When you ask for help, it knows what you're working on. It knows what you've already tried. It knows the context.
Ask Miro's AI to help with your product launch and you get generic advice. Ask Storyflow and it references the competitive research you did last week, the customer feedback you collected, the positioning you've been developing.
The Blueprint Tactics solve the blank canvas problem. Instead of staring at an empty board wondering how to structure your thinking, you activate a pre-built workflow. Product launch. Content calendar. Campaign planning. The AI guides you through each step with prompts specific to your project.
The Cards system turns messy brainstorms into structured information. Ideas don't just float around on a canvas. They become organized, connected, actionable.
Pricing: $12/month flat. Not per user. Your whole team, one price.
Best for: Creators, startups, small teams who want AI that helps instead of suggests.
What you'll miss from Miro: The massive template library. Storyflow's is growing but not at 2,500 yet.
Verdict: This is what happens when you build a visual workspace around AI from day one instead of bolting it on later.
Best for: People who want fast and clean
Open Whimsical. Notice what's missing. No toolbar with 47 icons. No floating panels competing for attention. No feature tour that takes 10 minutes.
Just a canvas. A few tools. Speed.
Whimsical loads fast and stays fast. The interface makes sense immediately. New team members don't need training. They just start working.
The tool handles multiple formats. Mind maps, flowcharts, wireframes, sticky notes, docs. All in one workspace. Product teams use it to jump between ideation and specification without switching apps.
Pricing: Free for limited use, $10/user/month for Pro.
Best for: Product teams, small startups, anyone allergic to bloat.
What you'll miss from Miro: Scale. Whimsical isn't built for 50-person workshops.
Verdict: The thinking person's whiteboard. Does less, does it better.
Best for: Design teams living in Figma
If your design files live in Figma, your whiteboard should too. FigJam sits right next to your design work. Drag components from Figma onto your brainstorm board. Push refined ideas back into design files. The free tier is the real story: unlimited collaborators on up to three files. $3/user/month for Professional.
Best for: Running structured workshops at scale
Mural was built by facilitators who run workshops for a living. Private brainstorming before reveal. Timed activities with visible countdowns. Facilitator controls that let you summon everyone to your view or lock areas of the board. $12/user/month for Team+.
Best for: Teams who want docs and visuals in one place
Stop switching between your docs tool and your whiteboard tool. Keep everything in Notion. Meeting notes next to brainstorm boards. The canvas features are newer and lighter than dedicated whiteboard tools, but good enough for light visual work. $8/user/month for teams.
Best for: Teams who need brainstorms to become diagrams
Lucidspark comes from Lucid, the company behind Lucidchart. Brainstorm in Lucidspark, then push your ideas into Lucidchart and turn them into proper flowcharts, org charts, process diagrams. $7.95/user/month for Individual.
Best for: Casual visual work with polished output
Canva added whiteboards to its design platform. Access to Canva's massive element library means your brainstorm board can quickly become a polished presentation without leaving the tool. Free with Canva Free, included with Canva Pro at $10/user/month.
Best for: People who think in hierarchies
Not every project needs a freeform canvas. Sometimes you want structure from the start. MindMeister does mind mapping with ideas that branch into sub-ideas. Free for 3 maps, $6/month for Personal.
Best for: Teams who want everything in one app
Your brainstorm board lives next to your task list. Draw connections between ideas and tasks. Turn sticky notes into action items without switching tools. $7/user/month for Unlimited.
Best for: Visual thinkers who take notes
Cards contain your notes. You arrange cards on canvases. Ideas connect visually. Popular with researchers, writers, and anyone building a personal knowledge system. $9.99/month after free trial.
You've decided to move. Now what?
The bad news: there's no magic "export to Storyflow" button. Miro boards don't transfer cleanly to other tools. The sticky notes, frames, connections, and layouts are locked in Miro's format.
The good news: you probably don't need to bring everything.
Here's what most people discover when they look at their old Miro boards: 80% of them are dead. Brainstorms from six months ago. Workshops nobody references anymore. Planning sessions for projects that shipped or got cancelled.
Don't migrate the graveyard. Let it rest.
Pick the 3-5 boards you actually use. The ones you opened in the last month. The ones with work that's still active. That's your migration list.
For boards you need to reference but won't actively edit, take screenshots. Export as PDF. Save the images somewhere your team can find them.
You're preserving the artifact, not the working document. Good enough for most historical boards.
Your active work deserves a fresh start.
Open your most important Miro board. Look at it. Ask yourself: what's actually useful here? Which sticky notes matter? What structure emerged that you want to keep?
Now build that in Storyflow. Not a copy. A fresh version with the good parts.
This sounds like extra work. It is. But you'll end up with something cleaner than the original. The cruft disappears. The structure gets sharper. The AI can actually work with your content because it's organized.
FigJam gives you the most for free. Unlimited collaborators on three files. No feature restrictions that make it unusable. Canva Whiteboards is free if you're already on Canva's free plan. Mural and Lucidspark have free tiers but cap boards heavily. Storyflow has a free plan that lets you test the AI features before committing.
Storyflow. Flat pricing means you pay $12/month whether you have 2 people or 20. Most other tools charge per user, which punishes small teams that grow. The AI also helps small teams punch above their weight. Fewer people, but smarter tools.
Not cleanly. Miro exports to PDF and image formats, but the interactive elements don't transfer. You can't drag a Miro board into Storyflow or Whimsical and have it work. Most people screenshot important boards for reference and rebuild active projects fresh in the new tool.
FigJam at $3/user/month is the cheapest paid option per seat. But Storyflow's flat $12/month beats per-user pricing once you hit 2-3 people. For a 10-person team, FigJam costs $30/month. Storyflow costs $12.
Storyflow. Other tools added AI features, but most are surface-level. Generate sticky notes. Summarize a board. Cluster ideas. Storyflow's AI reads your entire workspace, not just the current board. It knows your project context. Suggestions connect to your actual work instead of generic prompts that could apply to anyone.
Miro works. It wouldn't have 50 million users if it didn't.
But working and being right for you are different things. Per-user pricing that scales into hundreds of dollars monthly. An interface built for power users that confuses everyone else. AI that generates suggestions without understanding what you're actually building.
You have options now.
Storyflow if you want AI that reads your whole workspace and gives suggestions that actually connect to your work. Flat pricing that doesn't punish team growth. Best for creators, startups, and small teams who want their tools to think with them.
Whimsical if you want clean and fast. No bloat. No feature hunting. Just a canvas that stays out of your way.
FigJam if your team lives in Figma. The integration is tight, the free tier is generous, and the vibe is more playful than corporate.
Mural if you run large structured workshops. The facilitation controls are built by people who actually facilitate.
Notion if you want docs and visuals in one place and don't need deep whiteboard features.
The right choice depends on how you work. A solo YouTuber planning content has different needs than a consulting firm running client workshops. A three-person startup has different budget constraints than an enterprise team with procurement approval.
One thing is clear. You don't have to pay $16 per person per month for sticky notes on a screen anymore.
Pick a tool. Run a real project in it. See if it fits.
The whiteboard you use should help you think, not drain your budget while you figure out where they hid the pen tool.
Sara de Klein
Head of Product at Storyflow
Published: December 7, 2025
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