9 Best Jamboard Alternatives for Teachers in 2026

On December 31, 2024, Google shut Jamboard down for good and stopped exporting any boards that hadn't been migrated. Teachers lost a tool that was free, fast, and built right into Google Classroom. Many of them are still figuring out what to use instead.

If you're searching for Jamboard alternatives, you probably want the same things Jamboard gave you: a collaborative whiteboard students can join in seconds, with sticky notes, drawing, and live cursors. You also want it free, or close to it, with a student-friendly login.

This guide compares 9 tools real teachers are moving to in 2026. You'll get the honest pros and cons of each, a quick-pick verdict by use case, and notes on which platforms still let students join without an account. By the end, you'll know which one fits your grade level, your tech stack, and your patience for setup.

What to Look for in a Jamboard Replacement

Not every "online whiteboard" is built for a classroom. Before you migrate 200 boards into the first tool you find, run any candidate through these five checks.

Student account rules. Jamboard worked because students signed in with their school Google account. Some replacements require their own logins, which means new accounts for every kid, parental-consent paperwork under COPPA for K-5, and IT review for FERPA. Tools like Whiteboard.fi and Excalidraw skip that pain — students join with a code.

Real-time collaboration that scales. A whiteboard that lags with 30 cursors is useless on Monday morning. Test with a full class before you commit. Free tiers often cap the number of editors per board.

Persistence vs. ephemeral. Jamboard saved boards forever. Some replacements (like raw Zoom Whiteboard) wipe boards when the meeting ends. If you reuse boards across periods or want students to revisit them at home, persistence matters.

LMS integration. Does it embed into Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, or Moodle? If yes, you'll save 10 minutes per lesson. If no, you're back to sharing links over Slack and prayer.

Templates for the actual thing you teach. Generic "blank canvas" tools are slower to use than ones with KWL charts, exit tickets, math grids, brainstorm webs, and sentence-stem boards already built in. If you'd rather have a virtual study room or interactive classroom games instead of yet another whiteboard, consider whether you need a whiteboard at all.

The 9 Best Jamboard Alternatives for 2026

Each tool below covers a different teacher need. Pick the one that matches your grade level, your LMS, and how much setup you can stomach.

1. FigJam — Best free option for verified educators

FigJam is the tool Google itself recommended when it sunset Jamboard. It's an infinite-canvas whiteboard with stamps, sticky notes, voting dots, and 300+ classroom templates. Figma's education program gives free access to verified educators and students, with the specific plan depending on institution type: Enterprise for high schools, Professional for higher ed. Renewal terms vary, so check Figma's current education docs for the latest details.

Best for: Teachers who want a Jamboard-like feel with much richer templates and don't mind the verification step.

Watch out: Figma requires users to be at least 13, which limits K-5 use unless your district sets up managed access. The exact education plan you get also depends on whether you're K-12 or higher ed, so confirm before rolling out school-wide.

2. Miro — Best for university and team teaching

Miro is the enterprise whiteboard the rest of the working world uses. It has 2,500+ templates, a huge integrations library (Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack), and AI features that auto-summarize sticky notes. The Miro Education plan gives verified educators unlimited active boards, with a cap on team members per educator team rather than on board count.

Best for: Higher-ed seminars, design studios, project-based learning, anything where students will use a similar tool in their future jobs.

Watch out: The interface is heavier than Jamboard. Expect a 20-minute onboarding for students who haven't seen it before.

3. Whiteboard.fi — Best K-12 purpose-built option

Whiteboard.fi was built for teachers from day one. Every student gets their own private whiteboard, and the teacher sees all of them in a live thumbnail grid. Per Whiteboard.fi's current limits, the no-account free option supports up to 10 students per session. Registering a free teacher account raises that to 20. Paid plans go higher.

Best for: Math practice, formative assessment, exit tickets, anything where you want to see every student's work at once.

Watch out: It's a single-student-per-board model. If you want students working together on the same canvas, this isn't it.

4. Lucidspark — Best for diagramming and structured work

Lucidspark is the whiteboard half of the Lucid suite (Lucidchart's sibling). It's strong on sticky notes, voting, timers, and breakout boards, and integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams. The free tier gives 3 editable boards. Lucid for Education provides free upgraded access to verified schools.

Best for: Engineering, business, computer science, any class that uses flowcharts, swim lanes, or structured diagrams alongside ideation.

Watch out: Three free boards is tight if you want one per unit. Most teachers will need the school license.

5. Excalidraw — Best open-source, no-account option

Excalidraw is a free, open-source, hand-drawn-style whiteboard with no sign-up required. Share a room link and students draw together instantly. It's also self-hostable, which makes it appealing for IT-cautious districts. It has fewer templates than the commercial tools, but does the core "messy collaborative sketch" thing as well as anything.

Best for: Quick brainstorms, low-friction sessions with no logins, schools with strict data-privacy rules.

Watch out: No teacher dashboard, no built-in classroom features, no live student monitoring. It's a whiteboard, not a classroom tool.

6. Mural — Best for design-thinking workshops

Mural is Miro's main rival and arguably better for guided, facilitator-led sessions. It has stronger built-in workshop facilitation features (timers, voting, summons, private mode). Mural for Education is free for verified K-12 and higher-ed faculty and students.

Best for: Design-thinking units, agile/scrum classes, structured workshop-style teaching.

Watch out: Less third-party integration than Miro. The free non-edu tier is also tighter than competitors.

7. Limnu — Best for natural drawing on tablets

Limnu has the smoothest pen feel of any whiteboard on this list. It's especially nice on iPads with Apple Pencil and on touchscreen Chromebooks. The free tier supports up to 3 boards with unlimited collaborators.

Best for: Art classes, math tutoring, handwriting practice, any subject where you actually need to draw rather than drop stickies.

Watch out: Fewer collaboration features than the bigger tools (no voting, fewer templates).

8. Conceptboard — Best for long-form project boards

Conceptboard is a German-made whiteboard with strong GDPR compliance and infinite canvas, designed for longer projects rather than 50-minute lessons. It supports document review with comments, which is unusual for whiteboards.

Best for: Long-running senior projects, capstones, faculty research collaborations, European schools needing GDPR-first tools.

Watch out: Not designed as a classroom-first tool. Templates skew business, not K-12.

9. Flat.social — Best when you want a whiteboard plus the rest of the classroom

Flat.social is a spatial virtual room where your class actually exists as a space. Drop a whiteboard inside it, add breakout pods, throw in a study area, and your students walk between them with spatial audio. This means the whiteboard isn't a separate tab — it's part of the classroom.

Best for: Online classes, hybrid teaching, virtual office hours, anything where you want a persistent room your students can drop into beyond just one whiteboard session. See how it compares for online classroom engagement generally.

Watch out: If your only need is a single static board for one lesson, a dedicated whiteboard tool is simpler.

Most teachers end up with two tools: a daily whiteboard (FigJam, Miro, or Whiteboard.fi) and a classroom space (Flat.social or Zoom). The right pair depends on whether you teach mostly in-person with digital assist, or mostly online.

Picking Your Jamboard Replacement

The right Jamboard alternative depends on three things: your students' ages, your school's tech stack, and whether you want a pure whiteboard or a whole classroom space.

For most K-5 teachers, Whiteboard.fi wins because students don't need accounts. For middle and high school, FigJam is the most Jamboard-like with the cleanest free education tier. University faculty teaching design, engineering, or business should look at Miro or Mural first. If your strict-IT district needs an open-source option, Excalidraw is the answer.

If you teach online or hybrid and find yourself running a whiteboard plus Zoom plus a chat tool plus a separate breakout system, that's where a spatial platform like Flat.social earns its keep — one room with everything in it, persistent between classes.

Whichever you choose, pilot it with one class before rolling it out school-wide. Tools that look great on a demo video sometimes crumble under 30 simultaneous cursors. For more on this transition and what's working in online classrooms generally, see our virtual classroom tools guide and the distance learning engagement playbook.

Google's decision left a real gap in teachers' toolkits. The good news: the replacement tools are richer than Jamboard ever was. The hard part is just picking one.

Jamboard, Google Classroom, and Google Drive are trademarks of Google LLC. FigJam and Figma are trademarks of Figma, Inc. Miro is a trademark of RealtimeBoard, Inc. Mural is a trademark of Tactivos, Inc. Lucidspark is a trademark of Lucid Software Inc. All other product names are trademarks of their respective owners. This article is independent editorial and not affiliated with Google or any vendor listed.