At a Glance
| Dimension | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2011 (as RealtimeBoard) | 2011 | 2021 (by Figma) |
| Valuation | ~$5B (peak $17.5B) | $2B+ (2021 Series C) | Part of Figma ($20B) |
| Users | 60M+ across 200K+ orgs | 10M+ users | Millions (Figma ecosystem) |
| Fortune 100 | 99% | 95% | N/A (Figma: 80%+ of Fortune 100) |
| Architecture | Browser-native (WebGL) | Browser-native | Browser-native (Figma engine) |
| Free Tier | 3 editable boards, unlimited viewers | 3 murals, unlimited members | Unlimited files, unlimited collaborators |
| Paid Plans | Starter $8/mo → Business $16/mo → Enterprise (custom) | Team+ $12/mo → Business (custom) | Professional $3/mo (Figma Pro) → Organization $5/mo → Enterprise $5/mo |
| Template Count | 3,000+ (community + official) | 300+ (facilitation-focused) | Community templates (design/UX-focused) |
| Integrations | 130+ marketplace apps + Developer Platform | 50+ (enterprise meetings) | Figma deep integration + Jira, Asana, GitHub |
| Mobile App | iOS, Android | iOS, Android | iOS, Android (via Figma) |
| Offline Support | Limited (view-only offline) | Limited | Limited (via Figma desktop) |
Quick Verdict: Which Tool Should You Pick?
Miro
The most versatile whiteboard platform. Best for cross-functional teams that need async collaboration, persistent visual documentation, and the widest range of use cases — from product roadmaps to technical diagrams to strategy workshops. If you can only pick one tool for your entire organization, pick Miro.
Mural
The best tool for structured, facilitator-led sessions. If your core use case is design sprints, retrospectives, brainstorming workshops, and innovation consulting — and you have a dedicated facilitator — Mural's native facilitation features (timer, voting, private mode, summon) are unmatched.
FigJam
The best tool for product design teams already using Figma. FigJam-to-Figma integration creates a seamless sketch-to-final-design pipeline. FigJam's playful UX (stamps, cursor chat, emoji reactions) makes it the most fun tool to use. The free tier is extremely generous.
1. Canvas & Whiteboarding Experience
Miro's infinite canvas is the industry benchmark. The canvas has no edges — you can zoom out to see an entire project's worth of work or zoom in to a single pixel. Navigation uses the interaction model of maps (pan and zoom), not documents (scroll and paginate). This spatial thinking paradigm enables workflows that bounded tools cannot support: arrange your entire quarter's planning on one canvas with research on the left, user flows in the center, and roadmap at the top.
Mural's canvas is also infinite but its UX is built around structured workshops with discrete sections. Mural encourages bounded workspaces within the infinite canvas — the facilitation features (timer, summon, voting) pull users toward structured sessions. A Mural board feels like a well-organized workshop room; a Miro board feels like an infinite workspace that can contain anything.
FigJam's canvas is infinite but leans into ephemeral, playful, synchronous collaboration. Boards tend to be lighter-weight and less persistent than Miro boards. The UX is optimized for sticky notes, stamps, markers, and quick brainstorms — not for building complex, persistent visual documentation. FigJam boards are where ideas start; Miro boards are where ideas live.
| Canvas Feature | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infinite canvas | Best-in-class | Yes (structured) | Yes (lightweight) |
| Frames / Sections | Flexible frames | Workshop sections | Sections (basic) |
| Widget variety | Extensive (diagrams, wireframes, cards, tables, mind maps) | Moderate (sticky notes, shapes, connectors, images) | Designer-focused (sticky notes, stamps, connectors, tables) |
| Drawing tools | Good (pen, shapes, smart drawing) | Good (pen, shapes) | Best (marker, highlighter, eraser — designer-grade) |
| Cursor presence | Named cursors | Named cursors | Named cursors + emoji + cursor chat |
| Sticky notes | Good (colored, taggable) | Best (colored, private mode, grouping, voting integration) | Good (colored, stamps, emoji reactions) |
| Performance at scale | Excellent (handles 1,000+ objects) | Good (slower on very large boards) | Good (optimized for lightweight content) |
Miro's infinite canvas is not just a feature — it's an architectural philosophy. The product was built from the ground up to treat the canvas as the primary data model, with everything positioned in a boundless coordinate space. Competitors that started from document or page models and later added an "infinite canvas" are layering a spatial metaphor on top of a paginated architecture. The seams always show.
2. Templates & Content Ecosystem
Miro's template marketplace is the largest in the industry with 3,000+ templates spanning every use case: product management (roadmaps, user story maps, retrospectives), engineering (architecture diagrams, dependency maps), design (wireframes, user flows, design critiques), strategy (SWOT, Porter's Five Forces, business model canvas), education (lesson plans, mind maps), and more. The Miroverse community contributes templates, creating a content network effect — more templates attract more users, who create more templates.
Mural's template library (300+) is narrower but deeper in facilitation and design thinking. Mural templates are higher-quality for workshop use cases — design sprints, innovation sessions, team retrospectives — thanks to Mural's LUMA Institute partnership for design thinking methodology. If you're running a structured workshop with a specific methodology, Mural likely has a better template for it.
FigJam's template library is community-driven and smaller, focused on design and UX workflows: design critiques, user flow mapping, affinity diagramming, design sprints. The templates feel native to the design process — they use FigJam's playful visual language and assume a design-literate audience.
3. Integrations & Developer Platform
Miro has the most extensive integration ecosystem with 130+ marketplace apps (Jira, Asana, Confluence, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Drive, Airtable, Notion, and more) plus a full Developer Platform with REST API, Web SDK, and App Framework. Companies can build custom Miro apps that connect internal systems directly to Miro boards — creating switching costs measured in engineering rebuild effort, not subscription dollars.
Mural has 50+ integrations focused on enterprise meeting tools (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, Slack) and project management (Jira, Asana). Mural's integrations are well-executed but narrower in scope — they optimize for the meeting workflow rather than the persistent workspace.
FigJam's primary integration is Figma itself — and this is its strongest moat. The FigJam-to-Figma pipeline (sketch in FigJam, convert sections to Figma files, polish designs) creates a one-way door for design teams. Once a design team adopts FigJam+Figma, switching becomes nearly impossible. FigJam also integrates with Jira, Asana, and GitHub for developer handoff.
| Integration Category | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project management | Jira, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Trello, Linear | Jira, Asana | Jira, Asana |
| Communication | Slack, Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Meet | Teams, Zoom, Webex, Slack | Slack (via Figma) |
| Design tools | Figma, Sketch, Adobe CC | — | Figma (native, bidirectional) |
| Developer platform | REST API, Web SDK, App Framework | REST API (limited) | Figma Plugin API |
| SSO / Identity | Okta, Azure AD, OneLogin, Google Workspace | Okta, Azure AD, OneLogin, Google | Okta, Azure AD (Figma Enterprise) |
| Embedding | Embed boards anywhere + Live Embed | Embed murals | Embed FigJam files |
4. Collaboration & Facilitation
Mural is the clear winner for facilitated workshops. Its native facilitation toolkit is unmatched: a timer visible to all participants, private mode (facilitator can see all sticky notes; participants can't see each other's — crucial for unbiased brainstorming), voting sessions (dot voting, ranking, multiple rounds), summon (bring all participants to a specific area of the board), and guided presentation mode. Mural is built for the facilitator persona — someone running a structured session with 5-50 participants.
Miro excels at async collaboration. While Miro has voting and timer features, its strength is enabling collaboration that doesn't require everyone to be in the same room at the same time. Comments, @mentions, talktracks (recorded walkthroughs), and the ability to create persistent team rooms make Miro the best choice for distributed teams working across time zones.
FigJam excels at playful, synchronous collaboration. FigJam's unique features — stamps (use a cat stamp to approve, a thinking face to indicate uncertainty), cursor chat (type messages that appear at your cursor location), emoji reactions, music (background lo-fi beats) — make collaboration feel fun and low-stakes. This is intentional: FigJam wants to lower the barrier to participation, especially for quieter team members who might not speak up in a traditional meeting but will place a sticky note or stamp on a FigJam board.
| Collaboration Feature | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real-time collaboration | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent |
| Async collaboration | Best (comments, talktracks, @mentions) | Good (comments, @mentions) | Good (comments, @mentions) |
| Facilitation toolkit | Good (voting, timer) | Best (timer, voting, private mode, summon, presentation) | Basic (timer, voting in beta) |
| Video chat | Zoom/Teams integration | Zoom/Teams integration | Figma audio chat (beta) |
| Guest access | Unlimited free viewers/commenters | Unlimited free visitors | Unlimited free viewers (FigJam) |
| Board permissions | Granular (view, comment, edit by user/team) | Granular (view, edit by user/team) | Granular (view, edit by user/team) |
5. Enterprise & Security
Miro and Mural are both enterprise-grade, with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR compliance, SSO, SCIM provisioning, and dedicated enterprise sales teams. Miro has slightly broader enterprise adoption (99% of Fortune 100) and longer-tenured large deployments. Mural has deeper enterprise compliance in some areas and a stronger European presence (headquartered in Buenos Aires and Amsterdam).
FigJam inherits Figma's enterprise security posture. Figma has SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and FedRAMP in progress. For design-forward enterprises already on Figma Enterprise, adding FigJam is frictionless — it's already included in the Figma subscription. For non-design enterprises, FigJam's enterprise features are less mature than Miro's or Mural's.
| Enterprise Feature | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II | Yes | Yes | Yes (via Figma) |
| ISO 27001 | Yes | Yes | Yes (via Figma) |
| GDPR | Yes | Yes | Yes (via Figma) |
| SSO / SAML | Yes (Okta, Azure AD, OneLogin, etc.) | Yes (Okta, Azure AD, OneLogin, etc.) | Yes (Figma Enterprise) |
| SCIM provisioning | Yes | Yes | Yes (Figma Enterprise) |
| Data residency | US, EU, Australia | US, EU | US, EU |
| Audit logs | Yes | Yes | Yes (Figma Enterprise) |
| FedRAMP | In progress | — | In progress (Figma) |
6. AI Features
All three tools have invested in AI, but their approaches differ:
- Miro AI: Generate mind maps, sticky note clusters, diagrams, and presentations from prompts. Summarize boards. Remove image backgrounds. Translate sticky notes. Miro's AI is the most feature-complete, integrated across the entire product.
- Mural AI: Generate ideas, cluster sticky notes, summarize sessions, and suggest next steps. Mural's AI is focused on the facilitation workflow — helping facilitators prepare, run, and synthesize workshops faster.
- FigJam AI: Generate brainstorming prompts, summarize boards, sort sticky notes by theme. FigJam's AI is the newest but benefits from Figma's broader AI investment. Deeply integrated into the design workflow.
| AI Capability | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generate content from prompt | Yes (mind maps, diagrams, sticky notes, presentations) | Yes (ideas, sticky notes) | Yes (sticky notes, prompts) |
| Summarize boards | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cluster / theme grouping | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Image generation | Yes (DALL·E integration) | — | — |
| Translate sticky notes | Yes | — | — |
7. Pricing Comparison
| Plan | Miro | Mural | FigJam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3 editable boards, unlimited viewers, core integrations | 3 murals, unlimited members, basic facilitation | Unlimited files, unlimited collaborators, full feature set |
| Team / Starter | $8/user/mo (annual). Unlimited boards, custom templates, voting, timer | $12/user/mo (annual). Unlimited murals, full facilitation toolkit, private mode | $3/user/mo (Figma Professional, annual). Everything in FigJam Pro |
| Business | $16/user/mo (annual). SSO, advanced security, admin controls, smart diagramming | Custom pricing. SSO, advanced security, admin dashboard, dedicated support | $5/user/mo (Figma Organization, annual). Org-wide libraries, branching, analytics |
| Enterprise | Custom. Everything + dedicated CSM, advanced admin, data residency, audit logs | Custom. Everything + dedicated CSM, advanced compliance, custom integrations | $5/user/mo (Figma Enterprise, same as Org). SSO, SCIM, audit logs, dedicated support |
| Annual discount | ~15-20% vs monthly | ~20% vs monthly | Included (Figma annual pricing) |
FigJam wins on price. At $3-5/user/mo (as part of Figma), it's the most affordable for design teams already on Figma. Miro wins for non-design teams — you don't need to pay for Figma to get the whiteboard. Mural is the most expensive but justified if you run frequent facilitated workshops and need the full facilitation toolkit.
Verdict by Use Case
Cross-Functional Team Collaboration
Miro — The widest range of widgets, templates, and integrations. A product team can have engineering architecture diagrams, design wireframes, and marketing campaign plans all on different boards in the same Miro workspace. No other whiteboard tool handles this cross-functional diversity as well.
Facilitated Workshops & Design Sprints
Mural — The native facilitation toolkit (timer, private mode, voting, summon) is purpose-built for structured workshops. If you have a facilitator running design sprints, retrospectives, or innovation sessions with 10-50 participants, Mural is the right tool.
Product Design & UX Workflows
FigJam — The FigJam-to-Figma pipeline is unmatched. Sketch in FigJam, convert to Figma files, polish designs, and hand off to developers — all within the same platform. For design-forward teams, this is a game-changer.
Async Visual Documentation
Miro — Persistent team rooms, talktracks, cross-board links, and board search make Miro the best tool for async collaboration across time zones. Miro boards become living documents; FigJam boards tend to be ephemeral.
Free / Budget Option
FigJam — Unlimited files on the free tier is unbeatable value. Miro's 3-board free limit is restrictive. Mural's 3-mural limit is also tight. If cost is your primary constraint, FigJam is the answer.
Enterprise Deployment
Miro or Mural — Both are enterprise-ready with SOC 2, ISO 27001, SSO, and SCIM. Miro has broader adoption; Mural has deeper facilitation-specific enterprise features. FigJam inherits Figma's enterprise posture but is best suited for design-forward enterprises.
Miro is the best general-purpose whiteboard. It's the tool you give to every team in your organization — product, engineering, marketing, sales, HR — and expect them to find value. Mural is the best facilitated-workshop tool — if your core use case is structured sessions with a facilitator, Mural's toolkit is worth the higher price. FigJam is the best choice for design teams already invested in Figma — the integration is seamless, the UX is delightful, and the free tier is extraordinarily generous. Many organizations use two tools: Miro for persistent cross-functional workspaces and Mural or FigJam for specific workflows.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better: Miro or Mural?
Miro is better for cross-functional teams, async collaboration, and visual documentation. Mural is better for structured, facilitator-led workshops and enterprise design thinking sessions. Miro has 60M+ users and a larger template marketplace; Mural has stronger native facilitation features (timer, voting, private mode) and deeper enterprise compliance.
Is FigJam better than Miro for designers?
Yes, FigJam is better for design teams that already use Figma. FigJam-to-Figma integration is seamless — sketch in FigJam, finalize in Figma. FigJam's UX is playful and designer-native (stamps, cursor chat, emoji reactions). However, Miro is better for cross-functional collaboration with non-designers and for building persistent visual documentation.
What is the cheapest whiteboard tool?
Google Jamboard and Apple Freeform are completely free. Microsoft Whiteboard is included with Microsoft 365 (no additional cost for existing subscribers). FigJam has a generous free tier with unlimited files. Miro's free tier allows 3 editable boards. Mural's free tier allows 3 murals and unlimited members.
Can Mural replace Miro?
Mural can replace Miro for facilitation-heavy use cases (workshops, design sprints, retrospectives). However, Mural is weaker for async visual documentation, cross-functional team rooms, and complex diagramming. Organizations often use both: Mural for live workshops and Miro for persistent visual workspaces.
Which whiteboard tool integrates with the most apps?
Miro has the largest integration ecosystem with 130+ marketplace apps plus a Developer Platform (REST API, Web SDK, App Framework). Mural has 50+ integrations focused on enterprise meeting tools. FigJam integrates deeply with Figma and has connectors for Jira, Asana, and GitHub. Microsoft Whiteboard integrates with the Microsoft 365 suite.
Do I need both Miro and Mural?
Most teams don't need both. Pick one based on your primary use case: Miro for broad cross-functional collaboration, Mural for facilitated workshops. Large enterprises with both use cases sometimes deploy both — Miro for general use across the organization, Mural specifically for the innovation/design-thinking team. But for most companies, one tool + training is sufficient.
Is Microsoft Whiteboard a viable alternative?
For basic brainstorming and quick sketches within a Microsoft 365 environment, yes. Microsoft Whiteboard is free for all M365 users, integrates with Teams, and has AI Copilot features. However, it lacks the template marketplace, integration ecosystem, and advanced facilitation features of Miro, Mural, and FigJam. Teams that start with Microsoft Whiteboard often upgrade to Miro or Mural as their needs grow.