Draft1 vs Mermaid Chart

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Entry price: Draft1 from $24/mo, Mermaid Chart from $80/yr — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan: Both have one
Public API: Draft1 has one; not confirmed by us for Mermaid Chart
Higher Trust score: Mermaid Chart — 92 vs 87 for Draft1
Best fit: Draft1: Engineers who need architecture diagrams from Terraform or docker-compose they already have · Mermaid Chart: developers already writing Mermaid syntax who want a hosted editor

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

Draft1Turns plain English, Terraform or a SQL schema into an editable draw.io diagram in about 20 seconds

Mermaid ChartTurns text, code, or prompts into flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and Gantt charts, from the Mermaid.js team.

Side by side

Fact	Draft1	Mermaid Chart
Category	Diagramming & Whiteboards	Diagramming & Whiteboards
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	$24/mo	$80/yr
Public API	Yes	Not confirmed
Trust score	87 / 100	92 / 100
Platforms	Web, API	Web, VS Code extension
Company	Draft1	Mermaid Chart
Launched	—	2022
Last verified	Oct 16, 2026	Oct 15, 2026

What our research says

Draft1

The useful decision here is the output format: a draw.io file you can keep editing, not a PNG you have to regenerate every time something changes. Accepting Terraform, docker-compose and SQL as input means the diagram can be derived from the actual infrastructure rather than someone's memory of it. The documented API with a PATCH endpoint for iterating in plain English makes it viable as a docs-pipeline step rather than a one-off toy.

Pros

Accepts Terraform, docker-compose and SQL as input, not only prose
Output opens in draw.io and stays editable rather than being a flat picture
Covers ER, UML, Kubernetes, network, cloud, flowchart and database diagram types
Documented REST API with key auth, an OpenAPI spec and an endpoint for iterating on an existing diagram

Cons

Quotas count prompts, so failed attempts and refinements cost the same as successes
Only three free diagrams before a card is needed
Collaboration and GitHub version control are held back for the $99 per user Enterprise tier
No company registration number published, only a Paris street address in the terms

Mermaid Chart

Being built by the Mermaid.js maintainers themselves is the real edge here: diagrams-as-code that developers already write in markdown get a proper collaborative editor and AI-assisted generation on top, instead of a third party reverse-engineering the syntax. The free tier's five-diagram cap is tight, and the vendor's recent rebrand from mermaidchart.com to mermaid.ai makes some third-party pricing pages describing it look slightly out of date.

Pros

built and maintained by the original Mermaid.js open-source team
generates diagrams from plain text or AI prompts, or direct syntax editing
real-time multi-user collaboration
integrations with VS Code, Confluence, and similar developer tools

Cons

free plan is capped at five diagrams
recent domain move from mermaidchart.com to mermaid.ai has left some third-party listings referencing the old pricing page
per-user annual billing can add up for larger teams versus flat team pricing

Which one fits

Choose Draft1 if you need

Engineers who need architecture diagrams from Terraform or docker-compose they already have
Teams keeping diagrams in docs that must stay editable in draw.io
Anyone automating documentation generation through an API

Choose Mermaid Chart if you need

developers already writing Mermaid syntax who want a hosted editor
teams wanting diagrams generated from text or code with light AI assistance