Best Free Org Chart Makers 2026: 7 Options Compared

An org chart is a small drawing with a big maintenance problem: the picture is easy, but people change roles every quarter, so the tool you pick matters less for how the first chart looks than for how painful the tenth edit is. General diagramming tools such as draw.io, Lucidchart and Miro let you drag boxes and lines wherever you like and cost nothing at small scale, but every reorganisation means moving shapes by hand. If your company has more than about thirty people, check whether a tool can build the layout from a spreadsheet or CSV before you commit, because retyping names is where free plans quietly stop being worth the trouble. Free plans also cap the number of files or shapes, so a chart that lives in one document is safer than one split across many. For a chart you present once, a design tool like Canva gives the nicest result; for a living chart that other people edit, pick something that keeps working files you own, such as draw.io, whose files stay in storage you choose. The list below covers seven tools with a free tier or free licence, with each limit stated so you know where it bites. None of them is a dedicated HR directory, so expect to maintain the data yourself.

draw.io (diagrams.net)

Free with no sign-up, and files stay where you save them, so a chart never gets locked in a vendor account. It is a general diagramming tool, so you lay out the hierarchy by hand rather than from an HR import.

Price: Free (Free with no sign-up; open files from local storage or your own cloud account) (draw.io (diagrams.net) pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, Windows, macOS, Linux. Apache-2.0 (open source).

Project activity: 9k GitHub stars · latest release v32.6.1 (Oct 23, 2026) · last commit Oct 23, 2026

Best for: Small teams that want to own their chart files.

Compare: draw.io (diagrams.net) alternatives

Lucidchart

The free plan allows 3 editable documents and 75 shapes per document, which fits a chart for a team of roughly thirty but not a whole company. It is a polished web diagramming tool with 100 templates.

Price: Free (3 editable Lucidchart documents, 75 shapes per document, 100 templates); paid from $9 per month, billed annually (Individual) (Lucidchart pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary SaaS.

Best for: Teams that want a clean, shareable web chart.

Compare: Lucidchart alternatives

Canva

Free plan exists and gives the best-looking result for a one-off chart in a deck or handout. Free limits were not captured, and the chart is drawn manually, so it suits charts that rarely change.

Price: Free (Free plan available; see the pricing page for its current limits) (Canva pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android. Proprietary.

Best for: One-off charts for presentations.

Compare: Canva alternatives

Miro

Free plan allows 3 editable boards with unlimited team members, so a whole department can edit a chart together on a board. It is a whiteboard, so layout is manual and boards get cluttered.

Price: Free (Free plan: 3 editable boards with unlimited team members); paid from $8 per per member/month, billed yearly (Starter) (Miro pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary.

Best for: Collaborative workshop-style reorgs.

Compare: Miro alternatives

yEd Graph Editor

Free desktop editor, including commercial use, that imports Excel and XML and can arrange nodes into a hierarchy automatically. The interface looks dated and the licence forbids redistribution.

Price: Free (Free including commercial use; may not be redistributed or used in automated processes) (yEd Graph Editor pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Windows, macOS, Linux (Java). Freeware (proprietary).

Best for: Larger charts built from spreadsheet data.

Worth knowing: Imports Excel and XML; exports PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF. Visio export is a separate paid yFiles add-on.

Whimsical

Free plan caps you at 50 board objects per month and 1 GB of storage, so it only suits small charts. The interface is fast and tidy for flowcharts and simple hierarchies.

Price: Free (Free plan: up to 50 board objects per month, 5MB per file, 1GB total storage); paid from $10 per editor/month (the page defaults to annual billing, which it says saves 17%) (Whimsical pricing, checked 2026-10-23).

Platforms and license: Web, macOS, Windows. Proprietary.

Best for: Quick, tidy charts for small teams.

Compare: Whimsical alternatives

Excalidraw

Free MIT-licensed web whiteboard with a hand-drawn look. It has no org-chart templates or data import, so it is best for informal sketches of who reports to whom.

Price: Free (Free web app with real-time collaboration and end-to-end encryption); paid from $6 per user/month, Excalidraw+ (Excalidraw pricing, checked 2026-10-22).

Platforms and license: Web. MIT (open source).

Project activity: 134.7k GitHub stars · latest release v0.18.1 (Apr 21, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026

Best for: Rough sketches during planning.

Worth knowing: Excalidraw+ has a 14-day trial; annual billing saves 14%. Hand-drawn look, not a formal-shape library.

Which one to pick

• You have a ten-person team and want to keep the file yourself: draw.io (diagrams.net)
• You are presenting a chart in a pitch or all-hands deck: Canva
• Your team will edit the chart together live in a workshop: Miro
• Your headcount sits in a spreadsheet and you want the layout built for you: yEd Graph Editor