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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. Draft1 starts at $24, Mermaid Chart at $80. Both have a free tier. Only Draft1 ships a public API.

Draft1Turns plain English, Terraform or a SQL schema into an editable draw.io diagram in about 20 secondsMermaid ChartTurns text, code, or prompts into flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and Gantt charts, from the Mermaid.js team.

Side by side

FactDraft1Mermaid Chart
CategoryDiagramming & WhiteboardsDiagramming & Whiteboards
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$24 month$80 year
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, Vscode Ext
CompanyDraft1Mermaid Chart
Launched—2022
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 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recent rebrand from mermaidchart.com to mermaid.ai makes some third-party pricing pages describing it look slightly out of date.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

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