Comparison
Mermaid turns code into diagrams, and it’s free. diagramkit turns a sentence into a diagram you’d publish. Here are the same three prompts, with the Mermaid written by Claude.
“How a CDN serves a web page: the browser requests the page from the nearest edge server. On a cache hit, the edge returns its stored copy in milliseconds. On a cache miss, the edge fetches the page from the origin server, stores a copy, and returns it.”
“How a pull request gets merged: a developer opens a pull request, CI runs the tests, and a reviewer either approves it or requests changes. Requested changes send it back to the developer. Once tests pass and it is approved, it merges into main and deploys.”
“How RAG answers a question: the user's question is turned into an embedding, the vector database returns the most similar document chunks, and those chunks are added to the prompt so the LLM writes an answer grounded in them, with citations.”
| Mermaid | diagramkit | |
|---|---|---|
| You write | Mermaid code | A sentence |
| Looks | Mermaid’s default theme | Finished, with icons, in your brand |
| Animation | — | MP4 and GIF |
| Editing | Edit the code | Click any label, or ask for a change |
| Price | Free and open source | Free, Pro $29, Team $49 a seat |