A free Miro alternative for personal use, tutors and families

How Miro's free plan works now

Miro's help center says a free team can create as many boards as it wants, but "only three most recently created boards in your team are available for editing and collaboration." The rest are locked in view-only mode until you delete active boards or upgrade. In September 2026, teachers on Miro's community forum reported that Miro stopped letting them create a fourth board at all, and the help center briefly said so too. By early October the old wording was back. Miro never announced either change.

• Free boards are never private. Everyone you invite joins the team and sees all of its boards.
• Free visitors can only view. Letting someone edit by link without an account needs a paid plan.
• Video calls are paid. They come with Starter and up, are still labelled beta, and aren't on the Free or Education plans or in the phone app.

Miro now belongs to Bending Spoons. Should you back up your boards?

On September 10, 2026, Bending Spoons agreed to buy Miro for $1.355 billion, and on October 26, 2026 it announced that it had completed the acquisition. Bending Spoons also owns Evernote and WeTransfer. As of November 9, 2026, we haven't found any announced change to Miro's plans or prices.

Nothing is forcing you to move. But if your Miro boards hold lessons or plans you'd hate to lose, a backup costs a few minutes. Miro's own help center explains how, and we have a step-by-step guide to exporting a Miro board:

• Image or PDF of a board: open the board menu (the three dots next to the board name) and choose Save as image or Save as PDF. Each frame becomes one PDF page. On Free, exports are low resolution only.
• The whole board on one page: select everything (Ctrl+A or ⌘A), wrap it in a frame, then export that frame.
• The text: select the content and choose Export to CSV, available on every plan in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and the desktop app.
• No bulk export on Free. You export board by board, from a computer or tablet; phones can't export.

An exported image or PDF is a picture, not editable sticky notes. If you move to Instaboard, import the PDF as pages you write on, or drop the image on a board and rebuild the parts you still use as cards.

Tutoring on Miro: what it costs with many students

A tutor usually wants one board per student, kept between lessons. On Miro Free only the 3 most recent boards stay editable, so a tutor with 10 students runs into the limit in the first week. Students who join by link are visitors, and Miro's help center says visitors on the Free plan can only view: editing and commenting for visitors is "only available" on paid and Education plans.

• Starter ($8 per member a month billed yearly) adds visitor editing: a student can open a public board link and draw without a Miro account.
• What a visitor with edit access can do: use shapes, lines, text, sticky notes and the pen. Miro's help center says they can't upload content, start a video chat, change sharing, duplicate or export (if not registered), and can't edit in a mobile browser.
• Guests are a different role. Guests must be signed in to Miro. Miro's Guests help page lists guest collaboration under Business and Enterprise, with limited availability on Starter and Education.

One tutor's report shows how this can confuse. On Miro's community forum (a tutor with 10 to 15 students, June to September 2025), a Miro reply recommended Starter and said students could be guests with edit access at no extra seat cost. After a couple of weeks on Starter, she wrote, Miro emailed that the 7-day trial had ended and students needed paid seats or guest status, and she found that guests on Starter couldn't edit. A volunteer community moderator answered that guest editors aren't supported on Starter and that she should use the Visitors feature (a public "anyone with the link" board). She then switched the board to anyone-with-the-link editing. That is one user's experience in 2025, and Miro's plans may have changed since, so check the visitors and guests help pages before you pay.

If a call is part of the lesson, Miro's video chat is a paid feature; for tutoring tools built around the call, see our Pencil Spaces and Lessonspace comparisons. On Instaboard Free you get 5 boards, and a student can view a shared board by link without an account. To write, the student signs in free with Google, Apple or email, which is a step Miro's paid visitor editing skips. If your students can't or won't sign in, that is a point for Miro. A free board is shared by link, so use first names only. Invite-only boards need Pro, which is $5 a month billed yearly, and the people you invite join free.

Miro and Instaboard side by side

Where Miro is the better choice

• Workshops and product teams. Voting, timers, presentation mode and diagram libraries for flowcharts, UML and cloud diagrams.
• Integrations. Jira, Asana, Slack, Teams and more than 250 other apps.
• Admin and safety nets. Version history, backups, SSO and audit logs on paid plans.
• No-account editing. On paid plans, visitors can edit a board without signing up at all.
• Schools. Accredited schools can get Miro's Education plan for free.
• Languages. Miro is available in many languages; Instaboard is in English and Simplified Chinese.

If that's how you use Miro, stay with Miro. Coming from Mural instead? See Mural's free plan compared.

When Instaboard fits better

• You plan with people who aren't your coworkers: a lesson, a trip, a wedding, a family move.
• You want to talk while you work. Start a call right on the board, see each other's faces and follow someone's view.
• You write by hand. The pen is pressure-sensitive, works with Apple Pencil and stylus side buttons, and straightens a line if you hold it still.
• You need more than 3 editable boards without paying for every person.
• You work where the signal is bad. Boards keep working offline.

Cards, checklists, calendar lists, places on a map, an expense tracker and equations sit on the same canvas as your drawing, and any card can open into its own board, so a big plan stays tidy.

What Instaboard doesn't do

• No integrations, no Zapier and no AI.
• No version history.
• No reminders or push notifications for assigned cards.
• No Miro import. Export your Miro board as a PDF or image, then import the PDF or drop the image on a board and keep working on top of it.
• People who want to edit need a free sign-in with Google, Apple or email.

Questions