What is the best online whiteboard for teachers in 2026?

Whiteboard.fi does one thing very well. You create a class, students join with a link, a room code or a QR code, and each student gets a personal whiteboard. You see every student board in real time; each student sees only your board and their own. It is the digital version of the mini whiteboards teachers hand out for a quick check, in the room or remotely.

Students do not log in and install nothing: the board runs in the browser of any device. The toolset is built for class work rather than brainstorming: a Math Editor with a visual keyboard for equations, graphs, angles and measurement tools, images and backgrounds you can annotate, and a waiting lobby so you control who enters. You also choose where data is stored, in the United States or in the European Union.

How to read the price: the free plan is real but tight. A session expires after 2 hours, holds 20 students, and you can run one at a time. Lite costs $2.49 a month billed yearly ($29.88) for 30 students and 12-hour sessions. Pro, at $4.99 a month billed yearly ($59.88), is the plan most teachers need: 40 students, 30-day sessions, PDF upload, a library to reuse boards, assignments, co-teachers and the option to join a student's board and draw with them. Premium is $12.99 a month billed yearly ($155.88) for 100 students and 365-day sessions. Prices exclude VAT, and the 14-day trial unlocks Premium.

The limit: a class of 25 does not fit the free plan, and Whiteboard.fi deletes everything once the room is closed, so save the boards first. Plan the class size before you pick a plan.

Canva Whiteboards is an infinite canvas inside Canva, the design tool many schools already use for slides and posters. You draw, drop sticky notes, add images or video and start from ready templates, then share the board with your class. Students can work on a board even without a Canva account, and the board has timers, comments and stickies they can react to. Because it sits next to presentations, docs, videos and websites, a single lesson can move from a slide to a whiteboard and back without changing tool.

How to read the price: Canva Education calls itself "the 100% free interactive learning platform built for every classroom". The catch is verification. You sign up with your education email or upload proof of employment, and Canva verifies you within a few days. The free promise covers K-12 (primary and secondary) educators, their students and qualified school districts, not college instructors. Once verified, teachers create and assign work, and Canva Education connects to Schoology, D2L, Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom, Canvas and Microsoft Teams, so you share and review assignments from your LMS.

The limit: the teacher view is a shared board, not a grid of private student boards. For a quick individual check, Whiteboard.fi does that job better; for a class project, Canva is hard to beat at zero cost. To go beyond templates, see our Canva training courses.

Classroomscreen is the front-of-class whiteboard, not a collaboration canvas. You project it on your board or interactive display and build the screen for the lesson: a timer, a sound-level meter, a group maker, a randomizer, a scoreboard, a PDF viewer and the rest of its 26 widgets, with an annotation bar to draw on top. Remote poll voting lets students answer from their own devices.

How to read the price: Basic is free and already includes all 26 widgets, the annotation bar, remote poll voting, three saved name lists, your own widget bar layout and the template library. Pro costs $3 a month, billed yearly at $36, and is about keeping your work: saved and shared screens, folders, unlimited name lists, custom themes and 30 days of undo. The Pro subscription runs for 365 days from purchase, not for the school year, which matters if you buy in the spring.

Tip: build one screen per routine (entry task, group work, exit ticket) and reuse it each day. That is where Pro pays for itself.

The limit: students do not each get a board to write on. Pair it with Whiteboard.fi or Canva when they need to answer in writing.

Whiteboard.chat is built for online teaching. Like Whiteboard.fi, it gives each student their own copy of the board: students cannot see or disrupt each other's work, and you get a bird's-eye view of every board in real time, up to 100 students per class. You can join a student's board, or switch to group boards with breakout groups. Students join without registration or an app to download, and the board comes with built-in audio and video conferencing, so a tutor does not need a separate meeting tool. It works with Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom and Cisco Webex.

How to read the price: the free Educator plan gives most features, with limits that matter. You get 10 class boards, each board lives 7 days unless you refresh it by hand, the teacher's board shows ads (students see none), and audio and video calls are capped at 30 minutes. Starter is $30 a year for unlimited boards with no ads, co-teachers, a 4-week board life and 60 minutes of calls. Basic is $70 a year, keeps 20 boards with no expiry and adds student-engagement metrics. Gold is $150 a year and keeps every board. Paying monthly costs $3, $7 or $15 a month instead. Schools and districts start at $150 a month. Subscriptions renew automatically until you click Unsubscribe on your Manage Boards page.

The limit: boards on the free and Starter plans expire, so refresh the ones you reuse before a holiday, and engagement metrics only start at Basic.

Microsoft Whiteboard is a free-form canvas with inking, sticky notes and templates. Its strength is where it lives: in Microsoft Teams meetings, so a hybrid or remote lesson can open a shared board without sending students to another site, on the web, and in apps for Windows, iOS and Android.

How to read the price: there is no plan to buy. You sign in with a free Microsoft account (Outlook, Hotmail, Live, Xbox) or with a Microsoft 365 work or school account. In a school, the second option is the one to use, because the board then belongs to your school tenant and your IT admin can manage it.

Tip: ink works best with a pen on a touch screen or a tablet. On a laptop with a mouse, students write slowly; give them sticky notes and text instead of handwriting.

The limit: it is a meeting whiteboard, where the whole class writes on the same canvas. That shows you a crowd rather than 25 separate answers, so pair it with Whiteboard.fi or Whiteboard.chat for individual checks. If you are leaving it for that reason, our Microsoft Whiteboard alternatives page goes through the options.

FigJam is the digital whiteboard from Figma: stickies, shapes, a marker, stamps, a timer and voting on one board. Figma pitches it for group learning, where students brainstorm and test ideas in the same file while the teacher facilitates. Figma adds new ready-made FigJam templates to its education library every week.

How to read the price: Figma says "Figma & FigJam are 100% free for students, educators and schools". The path depends on age. Teachers and students over 13 sign up themselves, verify their education status and get the Professional tier for free. For students under 13, the school must sign Figma's terms for schools, which unlocks the Enterprise tier, also free. Figma also runs bi-weekly live trainings and can host a free training session at your school.

Tip: open sessions let anyone with the link edit a board for 24 hours, without a Figma account, and you can add a password.

The limit: it is one shared board, so you watch a crowd rather than separate answers. Visitors in an open session cannot comment or join the audio, and FigJam AI is off during the session.

Miro is the heavyweight of online whiteboards: an infinite canvas with templates, diagrams, sticky notes, voting, timers and many integrations. In class it shines for group projects and research boards that a team builds over several weeks.

How to read the price: Miro has a free Educator plan, "Free forever", for up to 100 team members, with unlimited boards, one workspace with unlimited projects, unlimited external visitors, templates, core integrations and 100 Miro AI credits per month per team. You apply as an educator; students apply for their own plan. Schools that want SSO and admin control buy the Institution plan, priced by sales, "starting at 50% off the regular price". Outside education, team plans start at $8 per member per month billed yearly.

Tip: upload a PDF of an old lesson (30 MB at most) and use Extract pages to spread its pages across the board. For larger sessions, you can invite students without having them register.

The limit: the interface is dense for younger students, and a 30-student board gets messy fast. Our full Miro review scores it 3.8 out of 5, and if its density is the problem, our Miro alternatives page lists lighter boards.

Explain Everything is a whiteboard made for explaining: you draw, import PDFs, documents, images and slides on an infinite canvas, then record your voice and strokes as a video lesson. It runs on iPads, iPhones, Chromebooks, Android devices and in a desktop browser, which makes it a favorite for flipped classrooms.

How to read the price: the free education plan is a sampler. You get up to 3 projects, 1 slide per project, 3-minute videos, collaboration with 1 person for up to 15 minutes and 500 MB of storage. Advanced costs $69 a year and lifts projects, slides and video length, adds Promethean engagement apps (polling, timer, spinner), collaboration with 1 person for up to 30 minutes and 7.5 GB of storage. School plans with LMS integrations and sessions of up to 8 people are priced on request.

Tip: record lessons in short chunks of a few minutes; students watch to the end, and editing is easier.

The limit: live collaboration is narrow on the individual plans, so it is a teacher's recording tool more than a class whiteboard.