Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Apple Keynote

Doory is a design editor that runs entirely in the browser. It covers the same everyday design jobs as Canva - posters, social posts, stories, slides, invitations, resumes, YouTube thumbnails and business cards - and lets you start from a template or a blank page and edit everything on it. There is no paid plan, no locked features, no ads, and no account is required to start designing: guest work is saved in the browser, and signing up moves it to your server in one step.

The editor ships text tools (headings, curved text, effects, font pairings, an open-licensed font catalogue and your own fonts), shapes, lines and arrows, about 25,000 icons, emoji, illustrations and stickers, and QR codes. Photos can be uploaded, cropped, masked and filtered, with background removal running in the browser via an ONNX model, and stock photo search wired to your own Unsplash or Pexels key. Designs are multi-page, each page with its own size, with layers, groups, alignment guides, snapping and rulers. Motion covers 27 enter and exit animations, 12 emphasis animations, 16 page transitions, 24 music loops and 88 CC0 sound effects, plus voiceover recording; finished designs export as PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, MP4, WebM or GIF, with print PDFs supporting bleed and crop marks.

Sharing mirrors the paid tier of commercial tools like Canva for free: share links that view, comment or edit with an optional password, pinned comments, version history and real-time co-editing, plus a present mode with speaker notes, timing, auto-advance and a second presenter window. Brand kits keep your colours, fonts and logos at hand. Under the hood it is React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Fabric.js, Yjs and Zustand in the browser with Django 5, Django REST Framework, Channels and PostgreSQL on the server. Self-hosting is a docker compose up --build away (the web container forwards /api and /ws to the backend), or you can run it without Docker using the nginx and systemd files in the deploy folder. Ten starter templates ship with the project, admins can add more through the admin site, and uploads can live on a local volume or S3-compatible storage. It is a young project - the editor is complete but the template library is small, so expect fewer templates than Canva offers.

What is Bento?

Bento is a privacy-friendly, open-source office suite that ships as a single self-contained HTML file. It bundles a slide editor, a word processor, and a spreadsheet tool into one app that runs entirely in the browser, with no server, no account, and no tracking.

Slides without the bloat

Bento's slide editor is the headline feature: a clean, modern deck builder inspired by tools like Pitch and Notion, with smooth animations, easy layout, and inline media. It is designed to feel lightweight while covering the everyday needs of pitch decks, internal presentations, and slide-based storytelling.

A whole office in one file

Beyond slides, Bento includes:

• A document editor for long-form writing
• A spreadsheet tool for quick data work
• A local-first data model: everything you create lives in your browser's storage or in a .bento file you can save, share, and open anywhere

Why choose Bento over PowerPoint?

• Truly open source under MIT, with no premium tier gating features
• No cloud lock-in — your files are just HTML, so they are portable and future-proof
• Privacy by default — nothing leaves your device unless you choose to share it
• Single file — share a deck by sending the file itself; no signups, no installs for viewers
• Modern UX — built with contemporary web tech instead of decades of accumulated PowerPoint features

How it compares to PowerPoint

What is Slidev?

Slidev (slide + Vite) is a Markdown-based slide deck framework aimed at developers. You author slides in plain .md files with --- separators, and Slidev turns them into a polished, web-presentable deck with code highlighting, animations, and embedded interactive components.

Key features

• Markdown-first with first-class support for code blocks, code groups, and live coding via Shiki and Monaco
• Themable — switch between built-in themes or install any npm-published Slidev theme
• On-demand styling with UnoCSS utility classes
• Embedded Vue components for interactive slides (demos, charts, forms, etc.)
• Presenter mode with a separate window and even phone control
• Drawing and annotations on slides during talks
• LaTeX math equations via KaTeX
• Mermaid diagrams rendered inline
• Icon sets from any Iconify collection, used directly in Markdown
• Built-in recording with camera view and audio
• Portable export to PDF, PNGs, and PPTX
• Hackable — extends via Vite plugins, Vue components, and any npm package

Why Slidev?

Slidev is the most popular Markdown-based slide tool for developers, with 47k+ stars and an enormous theme ecosystem. Unlike PowerPoint or Keynote, your deck is plain text in Git, code-reviewed, version-controlled, and reproducible. Run npm init slidev to get started, or try it in the browser at sli.dev/new.

What is Marp CLI?

Marp CLI is the command-line interface for the Marp (Markdown Presentation Ecosystem) project. You write your slide deck in plain Markdown with Marpit's directives, and Marp CLI converts it to HTML, PDF, PPTX, PNG, or JPEG — perfect for sharing on the web, printing, or importing into PowerPoint.

Key features

• Plain Markdown authoring with a simple --- separator between slides
• Local front-matter and global directives to control theming, pagination, sizing, and more
• Built-in and custom CSS themes — including the official default and gaia themes
• Math typesetting via KaTeX, plus Mermaid diagrams, emoji shortcodes, and syntax highlighting via Prism
• Multiple output formats — HTML (with web UI), PDF, PPTX, PNG, JPEG
• Watch mode for live preview while authoring
• Plugin system to extend directives, themes, and output formats
• Bundled VS Code extension for in-editor preview and export

Why Marp?

Marp is one of the original and most widely used Markdown slide tools, with a stable CLI, a thoughtful ecosystem of themes, and bindings for React and Vue if you want to embed slides in a web app. If you want to write your talk in Markdown and ship it anywhere — Markdown source in Git, HTML on the web, PDF for handouts, PPTX for stakeholders — Marp CLI is the most batteries-included option.

HyCanvas is a free, open-source, AI-native design platform from HyScaler. It covers social graphics, presentations, video, whiteboards, docs, and print in a single browser-based editor, with a built-in template catalog, brand kits, and export to PNG and PDF — with no paywalls and no watermarks. Documents live in an open format: any design can be downloaded as a portable .hyc file (readable JSON) and imported on any HyCanvas instance, so your work is never locked in.

Where Canva ties AI features to paid tiers, HyCanvas takes a bring-your-own-key approach: AI provider keys are configured per workspace (or per user) at runtime, stored encrypted, and used directly against your chosen provider. A generation API turns a prompt into a complete, editable presentation — with optional grounding sources, language, and brand palette — and every instance serves an MCP endpoint so AI agents get the same generate, fetch, export, and share capabilities. Scoped API keys, budgets, and a 90-day audit trail are built in for workspace admins.

Self-hosting is deliberately simple: the production bundle is a single self-contained Go binary with the statically-exported Next.js frontend embedded, serving the UI, REST API, and realtime WebSocket on one port — no Node runtime required. Prebuilt binaries ship for Linux (amd64/arm64), macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon), and Windows, alongside a Docker Compose setup and a first-run setup wizard that configures PostgreSQL, storage (local or S3/MinIO), SMTP, and reverse-proxy settings. Compared to Canva, you trade the hosted convenience and stock-content library for full data ownership, an open file format, and AI you control — realtime collaboration and AI media generation are still on the roadmap.

What is Kova?

Kova is an open source desktop application that turns plain Markdown into polished slide decks. It pairs a live-preview editor with auto layouts, themes, and PPTX export, giving you a PowerPoint-style workflow without the lock-in or the price tag.

Key features

• Markdown-first authoring — write slides in plain text, separated by ---
• Auto layouts — title, section, split, two-column, grid, quote, full-bleed, and more, applied automatically based on your content
• Live editor with synced preview — see your slides update as you type
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks via highlight.js
• LaTeX math support (inline and block) via KaTeX
• Mermaid diagrams — pie, bar, line charts and flowcharts inline
• Themes — 11 built-in themes, community themes, and custom YAML themes
• Focus mode for writing, plus fullscreen presentation with speaker notes and keyboard navigation
• PPTX export to PowerPoint (16:9 and 4:3)
• YouTube and poll embeds for richer decks
• File watcher that reloads when your file is edited externally
• Configurable keybindings via ~/.kova/keybindings.yaml

Why Kova?

Unlike Reveal.js or Slidev, which require you to run a web server and present in the browser, Kova is a native desktop app you can launch like PowerPoint or Keynote. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, with official .dmg, .msi, .deb, and .rpm packages, and is built on Tauri (TypeScript + Rust) so it's lightweight and fast.