Best Online Whiteboards for Teaching English (2026)

The best whiteboard for online teaching is the one your student can edit in seconds, that keeps the board for next week, and that sits beside your video call instead of in a second tab. No single tool wins on all three. Excalidraw is the easiest free place to start, Miro and FigJam are strong if you already use them, and a board built into your classroom, like the Space, removes the tab juggling altogether.

This guide compares six options on what matters in an English lesson. Every price and plan limit comes from the vendor's own page, read in November 2026, and is marked "as of November 2026". Plans change, so check the page before you commit.

What makes a whiteboard work for English lessons?

A good English-lesson whiteboard is a shared surface where you and one student can type fast, drop in a picture, and come back to it next week, because language work is mostly short pieces of text rather than diagrams. Most whiteboards were built for workshops with ten people and a facilitator. You have one adult learner, one sentence on screen and four minutes to fix it.

Judge any board on six things:

Free plan limits. How many boards can you keep editable at once?
Student access. Can a student edit with no account, or must they sign up first? A learner who has to register during a trial lesson loses ten minutes of it.
Text speed. Can you type a sentence, correct it and move on without hunting through menus?
Images. A picture description task at A2 or B1 needs a photo on the board in seconds.
Saving. Can you reopen the board next lesson and see last week's corrections?
Placement. Does the board sit beside the video call, or in a second tab you flip to?

How do the six whiteboards compare?

The six options differ most on student access and saving, so those two columns matter more than any feature list. The table uses each vendor's own pages, as of November 2026.

Tool	Free plan	Student edits with no account?	Board kept for next lesson?	Beside the video?	Suits
Miro	3 editable boards, unlimited members	No. Visitors are view-only on Free; visitor editing is a paid feature	Yes, but only the 3 most recent boards stay editable	Separate tab or window; works with Zoom, Google Meet and Teams	Tutors who already use Miro and want a huge canvas
FigJam	Free with unlimited collaborators in 3 editable files	Open sessions (no account, 24 hours at a time) need a paid plan	Yes, inside the 3-file limit	Separate tab; Google says it can launch inside a Meet call	Tutors who like sticky-note boards
Excalidraw	Free and open source (MIT); free editor needs no account	Free editor needs no account; collaboration works from a shareable link	Save as a file or image; cloud saving is a paid Plus feature	Separate tab	Quick sketches with zero setup
Microsoft Whiteboard	Part of Microsoft 365	Outside people can join only during a Teams meeting	Stays with the owner; outside guests get temporary access	Inside a Teams meeting; otherwise its own app	Tutors who already teach on Teams
Google (after Jamboard)	Jamboard is retired	Depends on the partner tool	Depends on the partner tool	Partner tools launch inside Google Meet	Meet users who need a board
The Space (Tuton)	Built into the Tuton classroom, not a stand-alone tool	Student needs a free Tuton account (email invite or 6-character code)	Yes, saved with the lesson	Yes, same browser tab as the video	Tutors who want board, video and lesson notes in one room

Sources: Miro pricing, Miro's online whiteboard page, Figma's open sessions help page, the FigJam page on figma.com, Excalidraw's GitHub page and plus.excalidraw.com, Microsoft Learn's "Manage sharing for Microsoft Whiteboard", and Google's Workspace announcement on the end of Jamboard.

Is Miro good for teaching English?

Miro is an infinite online canvas with sticky notes, images and templates, and it is good for English lessons because you can lay a whole lesson out in one view. On the pricing page, the Free plan lists three editable boards and unlimited team members, with 7,000+ templates as of November 2026. Starter is listed at $8 per member per month, billed yearly.

The catch for tutors is access. The same page lists visitors, people who open a public link without an account, as view-only on Free. So a student who just clicks your link can look but not type. They need a free Miro account and an invitation first. Miro also has a lighter tool, Miro Lite, which needs no sign-up, but its boards expire after 24 hours unless you create a free Miro account. That suits a one-off task, not a board you want next week.

The short verdict: great canvas, awkward for a student with no account, and one more window to manage.

What about FigJam?

FigJam is Figma's whiteboard for team brainstorming, and it works for English lessons when you want sticky notes and quick voting-style activities. Figma's FigJam page says it is free with unlimited collaborators in 3 editable files, and paid plans start at $3 per user per month, as of November 2026.

Account-free editing is where it gets tight. Figma's help page says visitors can join an open session without a Figma account and edit the file, but open sessions are supported on Professional, Education, Organization and Enterprise plans, and each lasts 24 hours at a time. On the free plan, plan on your student having an account.

FigJam suits a tutor who already pays for Figma or likes its sticky-note feel. It adds nothing special for words, sentences or corrections, so you build those tasks yourself.

Is Excalidraw enough for a free English lesson board?

Excalidraw is a free, open source whiteboard with a hand-drawn look, and it is enough for many one-to-one lessons because it asks for nothing up front. Its GitHub page says it is released under the MIT license and lists real-time collaboration, image support and export to PNG and SVG. Its Plus page says the free editor needs no account and shows the shareable link for collaboration.

Two limits matter. First, saving: the Plus plan, listed at $6 per user per month as of November 2026, adds unlimited scenes and automatic cloud saving, which tells you the free version leaves saving to you. In practice you export the board as an image or file at the end of the lesson. Second, there is no lesson structure. It is a clean sheet of paper, which is perfect for an A2 learner drawing a map of their street and awkward for anything you want to reuse.

Pick Excalidraw if you want zero setup and you are happy to screenshot the board afterwards.

What replaced Google Jamboard?

Jamboard was Google's classroom whiteboard, and it is gone: Google wound it down in late 2024. If you used it, you will not find it now, so export any old Jams you still have before you assume they exist.

Google's own announcement said it would rely on partner tools for whiteboarding in Workspace, and named FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro. Those tools can launch a whiteboard inside a Google Meet call. So the honest answer is that Google no longer has its own tutor-friendly board. If you teach on Meet, you are choosing between the partner tools above or something outside Google.

Does Microsoft Whiteboard work for private tutors?

Microsoft Whiteboard is a free-form canvas inside Microsoft 365, and it works best when everyone is in the same organization or in a Teams meeting together. Microsoft's Learn documentation describes an infinite canvas for pen, touch and keyboard with real-time collaboration.

The sharing rules are the problem for a private tutor. Microsoft's admin page says links can be shared inside an organization and that sharing with external users is not supported outside a Teams meeting. During a meeting, outside people can view and collaborate temporarily, but no link is created and they do not get access to the file. The page is written for organizations, so check what your own account allows. For a tutor whose students are all outside, it is hard to build a board the student can reopen.

Where does the Space fit?

The Space is the shared board inside the Tuton classroom: an infinite canvas where you and your student work together while the video call runs in the same browser tab. It is not a stand-alone tool. You get it as part of a Tuton classroom, and your student joins from a free Tuton account, by email invite or a 6-character code, in the browser. Nothing to install.

What it covers in an English lesson:

Text and sticky notes. Click the Text tool, click or drag on the board and type. A+ makes the text bigger for a screen share or a small laptop.
Pictures. Add an image, or use the built-in photo search for a quick visual prompt.
Live pages and vocabulary cards. Documents on the canvas are lesson pages you both type in, and vocabulary cards go into your student's review deck.
Videos and PDFs. Drop in a YouTube video or a PDF worksheet.
Drawing and following. A pen for quick corrections. Your student can jump to where you are on the board with one click.
Saving. Each lesson has its own board, saved with the lesson. When the lesson ends it becomes read-only and you both can reopen it. You can also save a whole board and reuse it, and each student gets a fresh copy.

The honest trade-off: it only exists inside Tuton, so it makes sense if you want the classroom, not if you just need a board today. The Space has the full tool list.

Which whiteboard should you pick?

The right whiteboard depends on one question: how much do you want to manage? Use this as a quick guide:

You need a board in the next five minutes, free: Excalidraw. Screenshot it at the end.
You already pay for Miro or Figma: use what you have. Ask students to create the free account before the first lesson, and test that they can edit.
You teach on Teams: Microsoft Whiteboard, inside the meeting.
You teach on Meet: a partner tool launched from Meet, since Jamboard is gone.
You want video, board and notes in one place, and want boards saved by lesson: a classroom with a built-in board, like Tuton's. For the wider trade-off, see purpose-built classroom versus generic video calls.

Whichever you choose, run a two-minute test before the first lesson: can your student type, can they add an image, and can you both find the board again tomorrow?

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free whiteboard for teaching English online?

For a free board with no sign-up, Excalidraw is the simplest, as its free editor needs no account (Excalidraw's own site, November 2026). Miro and FigJam both have free plans limited to three editable boards or files, so they suit a small number of students.

Can my student use an online whiteboard without making an account?

It depends on the tool and plan. Excalidraw's free editor needs no account. On Miro's Free plan, visitors without an account are view-only. FigJam's no-account open sessions need a paid plan. Check the vendor page for the plan you use.

What replaced Google Jamboard?

Google wound Jamboard down in late 2024 and named FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro as partner whiteboards that can launch inside Google Meet. Google no longer has its own free board for tutors.

How many boards do you get on Miro's free plan?

Miro has a free plan with unlimited team members and three editable boards, as of November 2026. Visitors without an account are view-only on that plan. Paid plans start at $8 per member per month billed yearly. Check Miro's pricing page for current numbers.

Do I need a whiteboard for one-to-one English lessons at all?

No. A shared document works for text-only lessons. A whiteboard earns its place when you want pictures, sorting tasks, sentence building or a drawing on screen, especially at A2 and B1 where visuals carry meaning.

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