Guides › Best Free Design & Diagramming Tools
Best Free Design & Diagramming Tools
Published 8/29/2026
13 of the 15 design & diagramming tools in our directory offer a genuine free plan (87%). Here is what each one actually includes, checked against the vendor's own pricing page.
We track 15 design & diagramming tools in the OfficeToolGuide directory. Of those, 13 (87%) offer a real free plan — not a trial that expires, but a tier you can keep using indefinitely.
Every entry below was checked against the vendor's own official pricing page rather than a third-party roundup. Where a free plan carries a meaningful limit, that limit is stated explicitly instead of being glossed over.
The free options
Cacoo
Team diagramming (flowcharts, wireframes, network diagrams) with tight integration into Nulab's Backlog/Cacoo suite for dev teams.
Free plan includes: Unlimited users, 6 sheets, PNG-only export, up to 3 users for built-in video chat
Coggle
Lightweight mind maps and flowcharts for note-taking, brainstorming, and simple process diagrams.
Free plan includes: 3 private diagrams, unlimited public diagrams, real-time collaboration and full change history included
Creately
Visual collaboration combining diagramming with structured data (linked shapes/databases) for planning and process mapping.
Free plan includes: Unlimited canvases and collaborators, but capped at 45 items per canvas, 1 folder, and 2 imports
draw.io (diagrams.net)
No-cost, no-account technical and flowchart diagramming that saves directly to Google Drive, OneDrive, or local files; popular for engineering/IT documentation.
Free plan includes: Free forever, no sign-up required, no feature paywall or enterprise-only tier; open source under Apache 2.0. diagrams.net now redirects to drawio.com.
Open source — no paid tier to upgrade into, and self-hostable.
Excalidraw
Quick sketch-style diagrams and whiteboards embedded in docs/apps; favored by developers for its open-source, hand-drawn aesthetic.
Free plan includes: The core hand-drawn-style whiteboard at excalidraw.com is free with no sign-up required; the separate Excalidraw+ product (plus.excalidraw.com) adds hosted team workspaces/collaboration as a paid subscription with a 14-day trial (exact current price not confirmed live).
Figma
UI/UX design and prototyping, plus FigJam for lightweight diagramming/whiteboarding alongside product design work.
Free plan includes: Unlimited file storage, 3 projects, 2 editors/seats, 30-day version history; free for individuals
Gliffy
Diagramming embedded directly inside Confluence and Jira for teams already standardized on Atlassian tools.
Free plan includes: Free for up to 10 users with unlimited diagrams and no time limit; paid per-user pricing kicks in for 11-100 users
Lucidchart
Structured flowcharts, org charts, and process/IT diagrams for business teams, with strong Microsoft/Google Workspace integrations.
Free plan includes: A free tier exists (Individual/Team/Enterprise tiers shown on the pricing page) capping the number of editable documents and objects per document; exact current figures were not confirmed live in this pass because the pricing page renders its detail tables via JavaScript, so treat the free tier as 'limited documents/shapes' rather than a specific number.
Miro
Team whiteboarding, workshops, and collaborative brainstorming/mapping at scale; the most widely adopted online whiteboard for cross-functional teams.
Free plan includes: 3 editable boards (older boards lock but stay viewable), unlimited members/viewers, 10 AI credits/month
Mural
Facilitated workshops and design-thinking sessions with built-in facilitation tools ('Facilitation Superpowers'), aimed at enterprise teams.
Free plan includes: Unlimited members, 3 editable murals at a time, unlimited view-only visitors
tldraw
Minimalist, fast, infinite-canvas sketching/whiteboarding, and as an embeddable open-source canvas SDK for developers.
Free plan includes: The hosted whiteboard app is free to use with no signup required; tldraw also licenses its underlying SDK to companies embedding the canvas in their own products (commercial licensing terms not itemized on the marketing homepage checked).
Whimsical
Lightweight flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps, and docs for product/startup teams that want a fast, opinionated whiteboard.
Free plan includes: Up to 50 board objects/month and up to 50 doc blocks/month, watermarked exports, 7-day version history; viewers always free
yEd Graph Editor
Free, powerful automatic-layout diagramming (large graphs, UML, network/organization diagrams) for technical users comfortable with a desktop app.
Free plan includes: Completely free desktop application with no usage limits or feature paywall, including for commercial use; yWorks monetizes separately via its yFiles developer SDK and consulting services
How to read this list
This is not a ranking. Tools are listed alphabetically because "best" depends entirely on what you are trying to do — a free plan that is generous for a solo user is often the wrong fit for a ten-person team, and vice versa. Read the free-plan limits, not the position in the list.
Pricing and free-plan terms change without notice. We re-check these against official sources on a schedule, but always confirm on the vendor's own pricing page before committing a team to a tool.
No vendor pays to appear in this directory, and none of the links above are affiliate links.