What Kleki Is, and What It Is Not
Kleki (kleki.com) is a small browser paint tool made by one person, and it has been around since 2010. You open the site and you are drawing. No install, no account, no payment. It gives you brushes, a pencil, shapes, a text tool, and filters like blur and hue. It also gives you layers, with opacity controls and blend modes like multiply and screen, so you can build a picture in stacked parts and change one part without touching the rest. That is real painting power in a page that loads fast.
What Kleki does not do is share. One person draws on one canvas. There is no room code, no second cursor, no teacher view. A child can download their picture as a PNG or JPEG and show it afterwards, but nobody else can watch it take shape or add a stroke of their own. For a teenager working on digital art alone, that is plenty. For a class of eight-year-olds, or two siblings on a rainy afternoon, the solo canvas is the limit. The tool is not broken. It just answers a different question from the one a teacher or a parent is asking.
pairPaint vs Kleki: Feature Comparison
Here is the honest side-by-side for a family or a classroom choosing between the two:
| Feature | Kleki | pairPaint |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, no account | Free, no account |
| Draw together | No, solo only | Yes, Realtime Sync on a shared canvas |
| Joining a session | Nothing to join | 5-letter room code, display name only |
| Teacher Mode | No | Yes, live previews of every student board |
| Layers | Yes, with opacity and blend modes | No, one flat canvas by design |
| Filters | Yes, blur, hue, and more | No filters |
| Colouring pages | No built-in pages | Yes, ready outlines plus bucket fill |
| Canvas and export | Free-size canvas, PNG/JPEG export | A4 multi-page canvas, true-A4 PDF export |
| Drawing tools | Brushes, pencil, shapes, text, smudge | 14 tools, 24 brushes, shapes, stickers, bucket fill |
| Devices | Browser, mouse, pen, touch | Browser, Chromebook, iPad, touch, stylus, mouse |
Why Drawing Together Changes the Lesson
I built pairPaint because the drawing itself was only half of what I wanted. The other half was watching it happen. When two kids share a canvas, they talk while they draw. One starts the sun, the other adds the rays. One draws the house, the other colours the roof. A teacher watching live can see a child go wrong in the first minute, not at the end of the lesson when the picture is already finished and the mistake is baked in. That live view is what a solo tool cannot give you, however good its brushes are.
The setup stays simple on purpose. The teacher or parent opens pairPaint, starts a room, and shares a 5-letter code. Kids join with a display name. No emails, no passwords, no accounts to set up for a class of thirty. Everyone draws on the same canvas and sees each other's strokes as they happen. When the session ends, the work exports as a true-A4 PDF, one page per canvas, so it prints cleanly on the school printer and goes home in a school bag. Kleki exports a picture file, which is fine for one artist. pairPaint exports a printable set, which is what a classroom actually needs.
Colouring Pages, Not Just a Blank Canvas
Younger kids do not always want a blank page. A blank page can feel like a test. pairPaint ships with colouring pages, ready outlines a child can fill with the bucket fill tool or colour in with a brush. That matters for the youngest painters, the four- and five-year-olds who are still learning to hold a stylus, and for a teacher who needs thirty children busy in the first two minutes of a lesson. Kleki has no built-in colouring pages, so a teacher using it has to find or draw an outline first, then hand it to the class.
The rest of the toolset follows the same idea: keep it within reach of a child. There are 14 tools and 24 brushes, but the toolbar stays plain enough that a seven-year-old can find the brush, the eraser, and the colours without a grown-up leaning over their shoulder. Shapes and stickers cover the fiddly bits, like a neat circle or a star, so a child who cannot yet draw one freehand still finishes a picture they are proud of. Nothing here needs a manual, and that is the point. A paint app for kids should get out of the way.
A Classroom Session, Start to Finish
Picture a Tuesday art lesson with twenty children on Chromebooks. The teacher opens pairPaint, starts a room in Teacher Mode, and writes the 5-letter code on the board. The children join with first names only. On the teacher panel, twenty small boards light up live, one per child. The task is simple: draw your house and colour it in. The teacher watches the boards fill up, spots one child who has drawn the roof inside the walls, and taps into that board to draw a quick hint over the child's work. The child fixes it on the spot. Nobody waits for the teacher to walk over. At the end of the lesson, the teacher exports the whole class as one multi-page PDF and prints it for the wall display.
Try that same lesson on Kleki and the shape of it changes. Each child still draws, and each child still finishes a picture. But the teacher cannot see any of it until the children download their files and hand them in, one by one. The hint comes after the lesson, not during it. The printout is twenty separate files, not one set. Kleki is not doing anything wrong here. It was built for one artist at a time, and it does that job well. The classroom job just needs a second person in the room, and that is what pairPaint adds.
What Kleki Still Does Better
This page would be dishonest if it pretended Kleki had nothing to offer. Layers are the big one. A child who has outgrown flat colouring and wants to build a picture in parts, sketch on one layer, colour on another, shade on a third, will learn real digital art habits in Kleki that pairPaint cannot teach, because pairPaint has no layers at all. The filters help too. A blur or a hue shift can rescue a picture or change its mood in one click, and Kleki has them built in.
Kleki also suits the older child who wants to be left alone with a picture. No room, no other cursors, no teacher watching. Some children draw better that way, and they should have a tool that respects it. If your child is ten or older, asks for layers by name, and likes to spend an hour on one drawing, Kleki is probably the right pick, and I would say so even on my own site. pairPaint is the pick for the younger child, the shared drawing, and the classroom. The two tools overlap less than their home pages suggest.
What pairPaint Does Not Do
A lighter tool is honest about its edges, so here are mine. pairPaint has no layers, no filters, and no blend modes. If a picture needs stacked parts or a blur, Kleki wins that round without a contest. pairPaint has no photo editing, no gradient tool, and no way to open a Kleki file. It is a paint and whiteboard app, not an image editor. It also has no student roster, no grading book, and no archive of past sessions. A room serves one session, you export the PDF, and the next session starts fresh. That keeps the tool fast and free of accounts, and it is a trade I made on purpose. If you need a record of every lesson across a term, pairPaint will not keep it for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is pairPaint a good Kleki alternative for kids?
It depends on what the child wants to do. Kleki is a strong solo paint tool with layers, filters, and blend modes, and it suits an older child who wants to work on one picture alone. pairPaint is the better pick when kids want to draw together: two or more children share one canvas in real time, a teacher can watch every board live, and the finished work exports as a true-A4 PDF. For a classroom or a family drawing night, that shared canvas is the whole point.
Does pairPaint have layers like Kleki?
No. pairPaint has no layers, and that is a deliberate choice. Kleki lets you stack layers, change their opacity, and blend them. pairPaint keeps one flat canvas so young kids never get lost in panels and settings. You pick a brush, pick a colour, and draw. If layers are the feature your child needs most, Kleki is the better tool for that job.
Can kids use pairPaint without an account?
Yes. Nobody needs an account, an email, or a password. A child opens pairpaint.com and starts drawing, or joins a room with a 5-letter code and a display name. Kleki works the same way, with no sign-up either. Both tools keep the front door open, and neither asks a child for personal details.
How does Teacher Mode work in pairPaint?
The teacher starts a room in Teacher Mode and shares the 5-letter room code with the class. Each child gets their own board, and the teacher sees live previews of every board on one panel. The teacher can tap into any board and draw a hint or a correction right over the child's work. At the end of the lesson, the whole class exports as one multi-page PDF.
Can kids draw together at the same time in pairPaint?
Yes, that is what pairPaint is built for. Everyone in a room draws on a shared canvas and sees each other's strokes as they happen, through Realtime Sync. Two siblings can colour the same picture from two devices, or a whole class can work on one big drawing. Kleki is a solo tool, so it cannot do this.
Does pairPaint work on school Chromebooks and iPads?
Yes. pairPaint runs in the browser on Chromebooks, iPads, tablets, and laptops, with touch, stylus, and mouse input. There is nothing to install, which matters on school devices where children cannot install apps. Kleki is browser-based too, so it runs on the same devices.
Related: paint app for kids · MS Paint online · draw together online · whiteboard for teachers
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