Presentations & Decks

Slide decks for talks, design reviews, and pitches. The dev-leaning code-first picks vs. the polished WYSIWYG free tiers.

Code-first / Markdown decks

• ★ Slidev — free OSS (MIT); Vue-based; Markdown + components + presenter mode + code highlighting + recording. The default for developer talks in 2026.
• ★ Marp — free OSS (MIT); Markdown → HTML / PDF / PPTX; Marp for VS Code is the easy on-ramp.
• Reveal.js — free OSS (MIT); the long-running HTML-presentation framework.
• MDX Deck — free OSS; React/MDX-based; less active.
• Spectacle (Formidable) — free OSS; React-based.
• Remark — free OSS; minimal Markdown deck.
• @deckdeckgo/core — free OSS web-component decks.

Visual / WYSIWYG with generous free tiers

• ★ Pitch (free) — closed source; very generous free tier; the modern "Keynote in a browser." Real-time co-editing.
• ★ Canva (free) — closed source; freemium; massive template library.
• Google Slides — free with a Google account; the boring-but-fine default.
• Beautiful.ai (free) — closed source; very limited free tier; AI-templated layouts.
• Tome — closed source, freemium; AI-narrative deck builder.
• Prezi (free) — closed source; freemium; zoom-based decks; mostly legacy in 2026.
• Gamma — closed source, freemium; AI deck generator.

"Slides as a website" (decks that ship to the web)

• ★ Slidev + Vercel / Cloudflare Pages — see above; build to static site, deploy.
• Reveal.js + same — works equally well.
• Notion — yes, you can present a Notion page; underrated for design reviews.

Designer-favorite / native apps

• ★ Apple Keynote — free with a Mac / iCloud; still the polish ceiling. Closed source.
• Microsoft PowerPoint — paid (M365). The corporate default.
• LibreOffice Impress — free OSS; the open Keynote/PowerPoint alternative.

Specialized

• Deckset (macOS) — closed source, paid; Markdown → polished decks.
• Big by tsoding / big.js — minimalist huge-text decks; OSS.
• HTML5 Slides (Google IO 2011) — still the spirit-animal of code-decks.

Embed code / live demos in decks

• ★ Slidev — has built-in <Tweet />, <iframe />, <TwoSlash />, and Monaco editors.
• Sli.dev with Shiki — code highlighting with line transitions.
• Revealjs Highlight plugin — same.
• See Code Playgrounds for embedded sandboxes.

Pick this if…

• Developer talk, want to write Markdown: Slidev.
• Single Markdown file, fast turnaround: Marp.
• Designer-polished, free, browser-based: Pitch or Canva.
• Need to share with non-technical reviewers, free: Google Slides or Pitch.
• Polished native, you're on a Mac: Keynote.
• Fully OSS desktop: LibreOffice Impress.