--- title: "Best Org Chart Software in 2026: 11 Tools Compared" description: "Eleven org chart tools compared on what they model, who updates them and what they cost. Prices, free tiers and ratings checked on 1 August 2026." url: "https://rolebase.io/en/blog/best-org-chart-software" --- [Rolebase](/) ⟩ [Blog](/en/blog) # The best org chart software in 2026, and what each one actually models Eleven org chart tools compared on what they model, who updates them and what they cost. Prices, free tiers and ratings checked on 1 August 2026. August 1, 2026 Key takeaways * Rolebase publishes this article and comes first in the role-based group. The criteria that put it there are in the second section, and every tool named links to its own site. * Free tiers checked on 1 August 2026: the draw.io editor is uncapped, GlassFrog covers 10 users, Peerdom 10 members, Rolebase every feature for 5 active members with unlimited people in the chart. Lucidchart caps at 3 documents of 75 shapes each. * Holaspirit stopped publishing prices. Its domain now redirects to talkspirit.com, while the app stays online at app.holaspirit.com. * Per-seat entry points, each in its vendor's own currency: ChartHop Core and Visio Plan 1 at $5, Rolebase at €5, Peerdom at 5 CHF, GlassFrog at $7 before its $1.50 add-ons. Watch the floors instead of the rate: Functionly bills at least three seats, OrgChart at least 100 employees, Peerdom at least 10 members. Search for org chart software and three different products answer to the same name. One draws a picture. One refreshes that picture from your HR system. One turns the chart into the structure your teams work in every day. Lining them up in a single column would say more about the writer than about the tools, so this article ranks eleven of them inside three groups. Rolebase publishes this article, and Rolebase is one of the eleven. It comes first in the role-based group. The criteria that put it there sit in the next section, and every tool named here links to its own site so you can check us. Read the third group first if what you need is a clean chart in a slide deck by Friday. Lucidchart, Visio and draw.io do that better than anything else here, and no governance feature changes that. Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, read on 1 August 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, the entry says so instead of quoting a number from a roundup. Ratings come from Capterra with the review count beside the score, because 5.0 from 16 reviews and 4.5 from 3,279 are two very different claims. ## How this ranking works Six criteria shape this comparison. The first one decides most of the shortlist on its own: what the chart models. Job titles and reporting lines, roles with a purpose and accountabilities, or a headcount plan with open positions and their cost. Those are three different data models wearing one name. The second is who keeps the chart current and from what source, whether that means manual editing, a CSV import, a live HRIS sync, a directory sync or the teams themselves. Then comes the real entry cost rather than the headline. Seat minimums, employee-count floors and paid add-ons move the bill a long way, and OrgChart bills a minimum of 100 employees whether you have 100 or 30. The free tier counts for what it allows rather than for the word. A time-limited trial is a different thing, and a plan capped at three documents is closer to a trial than to a free tier. Portability comes fifth, through export formats, API access, licence and self-hosting. The Capterra rating and its sample size close the list, and the table carries both. A caveat on the fifth one. Export formats and licences are published unevenly across this market, so that criterion separates the tools that advertise it from the ones that stay quiet rather than from the ones that lack it. The three groups run from the tools that model responsibility to the ones that model a reporting line, which is the first criterion and nothing else. Inside a group the first criterion usually ties, so the order there falls to what the tool does around the chart and to how easily you can walk away with your data. Be clear about what none of that claims. Group two keeps its chart current with less human effort than group one, because a nightly sync beats a person every time, and a 12-person studio that redraws its chart twice a year belongs in group three. ## The comparison Tool What the chart models Who keeps it current Free tier Entry price Open source Capterra Rolebase Roles with purpose, domain, accountabilities Each member, on their own roles All features, 5 active members €5/user/month MIT 5.0 (16) Peerdom Roles with purpose, accountabilities, domains Each member, plus directory sync 10 members, unlimited roles 5 CHF/person/month, 10 minimum No 4.8 (8) GlassFrog Holacracy circles, roles, policies Governance meetings 10 users, unlimited viewers $7/user/month No 4.3 (60) Holaspirit Circles, roles, domains, policies Governance meetings Not published Quote only No 4.6 (122) OrgChart Positions and reporting lines Automatic HRIS refresh None From $105/month, 100 employees No 4.6 (25) ChartHop Reporting lines, headcount plan, pay Two-way HRIS sync None $5/employee/month No ~4.7, count unconfirmed Organimi Reporting lines, matrix, accountability charts CSV, or directory sync None $13/month No 4.3 (137) Functionly Positions, roles, accountabilities, FTE Manual, or paid HRIS add-on None $48/seat/month, 3 seats minimum No No reviews Lucidchart Job titles and reporting lines Whoever owns the document 3 documents, 75 shapes $9/month No 4.5 (2,246) Microsoft Visio Job titles and reporting lines Whoever owns the file, or a data link None $5/user/month No 4.5 (3,279) draw.io A drawing, with no employee record Whoever owns the file The editor, uncapped Free Apache 2.0 4.6 (772) ## Group one: the chart is data your teams maintain These four model roles rather than job titles. A role carries a purpose, a domain and a list of accountabilities, one person holds several of them, and the chart follows from that data. Nobody owns the master file, because there is no file. They separate on what happens around the chart. Rolebase, GlassFrog and Holaspirit run the meetings and record the decisions against the roles, while Peerdom maps and staffs the structure and leaves the meeting to your calendar. Only Rolebase publishes its source under an open licence, and only Peerdom syncs its people list from a company directory. ### 1\. Rolebase ![Rolebase homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Frolebase-homepage.KT9NOuEf.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Rolebase](/en/features) ships under the MIT licence and models roles with a purpose, a decision domain, accountabilities and indicators. Roles nest into teams, one person holds as many as they need across as many teams, and the [org chart](/en/docs/org-chart) renders four ways from the same data, with no second drawing to maintain. What separates it inside this group is that the meetings run on the chart. A meeting has a shared agenda, reusable templates and automatic minutes. Governance decisions stay recorded with their date and author. Tasks, threads and the news feed attach to the role rather than to a person's mailbox, so a handover becomes an assignment and the day-to-day work sits where the responsibility does. Calendars sync over iCal, Google and Outlook, structures import from Holaspirit, and everything exports as PNG, XLSX or JSON. You can run the whole thing on your own servers. Two customers publish what they did with it. The Scop EVEA cooperative says it maps 140 people across Nantes, Lyon and Troyes, and [Lonestone](/en/client-cases/lonestone) runs a 35-person studio on it. Capterra rates it 5.0 from 16 reviews, a small sample, and gave it Best Value and Best Ease of Use in 2023. The gaps sit on the HR side rather than in the daily work. Headcount planning, compensation, peer feedback and elections all live in other tools, no HRIS sync feeds it, and free drawing is out of reach. Self-hosting means running Nhost, Hasura and PostgreSQL yourself. Free for all features up to 5 active members, with unlimited people in the chart who need no account, then €5 per user per month on [the Startup plan](/en/pricing). ### 2\. Peerdom ![Peerdom homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fpeerdom.BKx6ZdvF.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Peerdom](https://peerdom.com) is a Swiss product from Wabern, near Bern, born inside the design agency Nothing AG in 2017 and incorporated on its own at the end of 2021. It claims more than 1,200 organisations across almost twenty countries, with Greenpeace, Médecins sans Frontières, the Swiss Army and Mobiliar among the names it publishes. Its map is the prettiest in this group and the most flexible: circles, trees, pyramids and a 3D layout, with customisable vocabulary for organisations that do not say "circle". Roles carry purpose, accountabilities and domains, and a person holds a portfolio of them. Two capabilities stand out. Drafts let you build parallel what-if structures and compare them before committing to a reorganisation. Contribution allocates a percentage, a number of hours or an FTE share per role, which turns the map into a staffing model with turnover and retention analytics. Directory sync with Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace and Okta keeps the people list current, and an MCP server exposes the structure to AI agents. The July 2026 release added an org rewind of up to a year. Free up to 10 members, with unlimited roles and groups. Peerdom+ costs 5 CHF per person per month billed yearly with a 10-member floor, and each of the nine apps adds 1 CHF per person per month, so taking every one of them reaches 14 CHF. The Pro plan includes them all at 15 CHF, which lands a franc above assembling them yourself. Capterra rates it 4.8 from 8 reviews, a small sample. ### 3\. GlassFrog ![GlassFrog homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fglassfrog.uF0Yef43.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [GlassFrog](https://www.glassfrog.com) comes from HolacracyOne, and Brian Robertson, who wrote Holacracy, is its CEO. That lineage is the whole product: it encodes the Holacracy constitution rather than a generic role model, with circles, roles, policies, linked roles and governance records. It claims 1,000 organisations and 15,000 active users, including Siemens, Danone, Engie and ABN AMRO. The free plan is the most generous in this group and it is not a trial. Ten users, forever, with unlimited circles, roles and policies, governance and tactical meetings, unlimited projects and actions, a tension inbox, Google SSO and an API. Above that, Premium costs $7 per user per month and adds role templates, custom meetings, full data download, Slack, Asana, Jira and SAML. People who hold no role get a viewer account at no cost, so the billed headcount stays close to the number of people actually doing governance. Two add-ons sit outside that price. Goals and Targets, which is the OKR module, costs $1.50 per user per month, and the FrogBot AI assistant costs the same. FrogBot turns a complaint into a governance proposal checked against your own policies, which is a genuinely good idea. Methodology comes bundled through the Habit Support Program, fifty email micro-lessons plus live coach sessions. Capterra rates it 4.3 from 60 reviews. The API reached version 5 in public beta in May 2026. ### 4\. Holaspirit ![Talkspirit homepage, where holaspirit.com now redirects](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fholaspirit.BaGmgzzN.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) On 1 August 2026, `holaspirit.com` returns a permanent redirect to [talkspirit.com](https://www.talkspirit.com), and the public pricing page has gone with it. The [app keeps running](https://app.holaspirit.com), signup included, and the help centre still reads "Holaspirit by Talkspirit". The standalone brand is being folded into its parent, which is worth knowing before you put it on a shortlist. Philippe Pinault and Olivier Ricard created Holaspirit in 2016, and it merged into Talkspirit under Mandarina Group. Talkspirit claims more than 900 organisations and 150,000 users, with 100% European hosting and a data sovereignty pitch that lands well with public bodies and European groups. The governance model is complete: circles and roles with purpose, accountabilities, domains and policies, supporting hierarchical, flat or hybrid structures, with a twelve-week Holacracy lesson programme built into the product. What no other tool in this group offers is the rest of the suite around it. Chat, video, a news feed and document management ship in the same platform, so governance and intranet arrive as one purchase. Pricing is now a sales conversation. The billing help page still names Rise and Scale plans and lists no figures, and the public pricing page is gone. Older published rates circulating in roundups are dead, so ask for a quote rather than trusting them. Capterra rates it 4.6 from 122 reviews, the deepest sample in this group. ## Group two: the chart is built from your people data These four build the chart from people data you already hold rather than from a drawing, whether that data sits in an HRIS, a directory or a spreadsheet. The chart becomes a view over that source, often with headcount planning and cost on top. ### 5\. OrgChart ![OrgChart homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Ftheorgchart.CkRV34B7.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [OrgChart](https://theorgchart.com) has been at this since 2013 from Novato, California, with more than 2,000 customers, and Resurgens Technology Partners became its primary investor in January 2026. One navigation note, since the names invite it: the product lives at `theorgchart.com`. The pitch is connector depth. More than fifty HR data sources feed it, including Workday, ADP, UKG, isolved, Paychex, BambooHR, Dayforce, Oracle Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Active Directory and Azure AD, plus SFTP and ODBC for the systems nobody built a connector for. It merges several sources into one chart, which is how it wins finance, government and education accounts where the people data sits in four places. On top of the refreshed chart it does headcount and cost modelling, scenario planning, and analytics overlays for salary, span of control and diversity data. It has held ISO 27001 since September 2025. Pricing starts at $105 per month for Core, $157 for Plus and $263 for Pro, billed annually, all with a 100-employee minimum. At that floor it works out between $1.05 and $2.63 per employee per month. There is no free plan, and a trial is available on request. Capterra rates it 4.6 from 25 reviews. ### 6\. ChartHop ![ChartHop homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fcharthop.Bzh18DqN.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [ChartHop](https://www.charthop.com) opened in New York in 2019, raised $74.4M and runs with around 60 employees. It is the most complete people-analytics model in this comparison, and the org chart is the surface rather than the product. Its two-way HRIS sync is the real feature. Deep integration with ADP Workforce Now, plus Greenhouse, Ashby and a broad connector library, means a scenario you model on the chart can write back to the system of record. Headcount planning carries open requisitions and their cost, compensation data layers onto the boxes, and ChartHop AI, launched in March 2025, answers questions about the workforce in plain language. The pricing is modular and adds up quickly. Core costs $5 per employee per month billed annually and covers people analytics, org charts and profiles. Each workflow module costs $4 per employee per month on top, and there are four of them: HRIS, Headcount Planning, Compensation and Performance. Engagement and Goals cost $3 each. There is no free tier and no advertised trial, so Core plus the HRIS and Headcount Planning modules lands at $13 per employee per month, and taking everything reaches $27. Capterra rates it around 4.7, without a review count we could confirm. Gartner Peer Insights shows 4.6 from four ratings, which is too small to mean anything. ### 7\. Organimi ![Organimi homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Forganimi.Xcaeejq7.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Organimi](https://www.organimi.com) is the tool people actually name when someone asks on Reddit, across HR, consulting and sysadmin threads alike. It comes out of Toronto and it wins on price for what it does. Its charts go past the classic hierarchy. Matrix and project-team charts come standard on the paid tier, and it draws accountability charts, which is unusual for a tool in this group. Photos, custom fields and a directory feel make it a comfortable everyday reference rather than a document filed away. Basic costs $13 per month billed annually and covers three admins, custom fields, CSV and Excel import and unlimited traditional charts, hosted on AWS US-East. Premium at $25 per month adds unlimited admins, SSO, unlimited matrix and accountability charts, reporting, a choice of American, European or Australian hosting, and Organimi Connect, which pulls from Active Directory, Google, Salesforce and sFTP. Enterprise adds the API on an annual quote. One caveat on those figures: the price scales with the number of people you chart, and those are the entry positions on the slider. Published roundups quote $18 to $39 because they picked a higher point on it. Starting an account needs no credit card. Capterra rates it 4.3 from 137 reviews. ### 8\. Functionly ![Functionly homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Ffunctionly.B9IrRfbf.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Functionly](https://www.functionly.com) launched in 2018 out of Western Australia and aims at organisations from 100 to 10,000 people. It is the closest thing in this group to a role model rather than a headcount view, and org designers are its audience. Positions hold people, roles attach to positions with a workload allocation percentage, and accountabilities come from a reusable Functions library that you assign across the organisation. Dedicated Functional and Accountability views show the structure by work rather than by reporting line. Around that sit scenario modelling, FTE and cost forecasting, vacancy planning and delegated change actions, plus OrgPilot, an AI agent that applies bulk structural changes from a plain-language instruction. Forbes Advisor named it best for ease of use in February 2026. The pricing needs care. The site shows $29 as a headline on all three cards, and the real rates are per seat. Starter costs $48 per seat on monthly billing with a three-seat floor, so $144 a month buys the smallest monthly configuration, and annual billing is published at $240 a month for ten seats, which works out at $24 a seat. Advanced costs $98 per seat monthly, or $490 a month annually for ten. Enterprise costs $79 per seat per month billed annually, from twenty seats. HRIS connectors are a paid add-on tiered by employee count, on top of the seats. The trial runs 22 days and there is no free tier. Capterra carries no meaningful rating, with zero reviews on its main listing. ## Group three: the chart is a drawing someone maintains These three produce a picture. That is a feature when the picture is the deliverable, and it is the reason the chart ages the moment the next person joins. ### 9\. Lucidchart ![Lucidchart homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Flucidchart.C-FyKSo1.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Lucidchart](https://www.lucidchart.com) is the best all-round diagram editor on the market and it has earned that position since 2010. The canvas is fast, the shape libraries run from AWS architectures to BPMN, and several people edit the same document at once with their own cursor. Lucid claims 99% of the Fortune 500 as customers. For org charts it goes well past a blank page. Import employee data from CSV, Excel or Google Sheets and it generates the chart for you, with smart shapes that reconnect direct reports when you move someone. The Enterprise plan imports straight from BambooHR and overlays HR fields such as department, hire date or pay rate on the boxes. Integrations with Microsoft 365, Confluence, Jira and Slack put the chart where the work already happens. The free plan gives 3 editable documents, 75 shapes each and 100 templates, which one 40-person org chart consumes on its own. Individual costs $9 per month billed annually, Team $10 per user per month, and Enterprise is a quote. The 7-day premium trial asks for a payment method up front. Capterra rates it 4.5 from 2,246 reviews, the second largest sample here. Note that the marketing site now sits under the Lucid brand and pricing links redirect to `lucid.app`. ### 10\. Microsoft Visio ![Microsoft Visio product page](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fvisio._herLwV5.png&w=1920&h=985&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [Visio](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/visio/flowchart-software) has drawn diagrams since 1992 and joined Microsoft in 2000. In a company already standardised on Microsoft 365, it is often the answer to "what do we already own". Its Org Chart Wizard builds a hierarchy from an Excel sheet, a CSV file, Exchange or Active Directory. Plan 2 adds two-way data connectivity, which binds shapes to rows in Excel, SharePoint lists or SQL and refreshes them, so the chart genuinely tracks a source of truth rather than a memory of one. The stencil library passes 250,000 shapes, and Power BI integration puts the chart into reporting. Visio in Microsoft 365 comes at no extra cost with commercial plans, limited to the web and Teams apps with basic diagramming. Plan 1 costs $5 per user per month paid yearly and unlocks advanced org charts. Plan 2 costs $15 and adds the Windows desktop app, offline work and the data connectivity. Perpetual Standard and Professional 2024 licences still exist. First-time users with a work or school account get 30 days free, and there is no standalone free tier. Capterra rates it 4.5 from 3,279 reviews, the largest sample in this article. ### 11\. draw.io ![draw.io homepage](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fdrawio.D-CYU0QU.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) [draw.io](https://www.drawio.com), formerly diagrams.net, is the only tool here whose editor costs nothing, asks for no account and runs fully offline. The editor and the desktop app ship under Apache 2.0 in the `jgraph/drawio` repositories, and version 31.1.5 landed on 30 July 2026, which tells you the pace. The company behind it, JGraph Ltd since 2004, renamed itself draw.io Ltd in September 2025. For an org chart it has a serious data path that most people miss. Paste a CSV block with a `# connect` configuration naming the manager and name columns, add `# layout: verticalflow`, and it builds and arranges the hierarchy for you. It runs one way, with no refresh and no round trip, so treat it as a generator rather than a sync. Files stay yours. The desktop app keeps them on your disk, the web app writes to your Drive or OneDrive, and the `.drawio` format is XML you can read without the tool. It imports Visio, Gliffy and Lucidchart files, which makes migrating off a paid editor close to free. The money lives in the Atlassian apps, free up to 10 Confluence Cloud users, then $975 a year at 50 users and $1,950 at 100. Capterra rates it 4.6 from 772 reviews. The project takes no pull requests, so read the licence as a right to fork and self-host rather than as an invitation to contribute. ## Also on the shortlist Seven more tools came close and lost on scope rather than on quality. [SmartDraw](https://www.smartdraw.com) automates layout well and Forbes named it best for succession planning, at $9.95 a month for one person and $8.95 per user with a three-seat floor. [Creately](https://creately.com) carries the most ambitious data layer of any drawing tool, with 201 workforce fields and two-way spreadsheet sync, free up to 45 items per canvas and $5 a month after. [Miro](https://miro.com) ships a real org chart widget with a node data model and CSV import, free for three editable boards, then $8 per member per month. [Sift](https://www.justsift.com) charges for logins rather than for people charted, from $150 a month for a minimum of 20 users, with a native Workday connector. [Workleap Pingboard](https://pingboard.com) still exists, and its price now sits inside the Workleap platform rather than on its own, so ask for a quote. [Nestr](https://nestr.io) lets an AI agent hold a role in the chart from its Starter plan at 6 per user per month, in euros or dollars depending on your region, and imports from Holaspirit, GlassFrog and Peerdom. [Maptio](https://maptio.com) maps initiatives as nested circles for a pay-what-you-want minimum of $10 a month covering 300 people. ## How to choose between them Five questions settle it faster than a feature matrix. **Where does your people data already live?** In a real HRIS with clean records, group two pays for itself, and OrgChart or ChartHop turn that system into a chart nobody maintains by hand. Group one is the wrong shelf for that job, and Rolebase in particular reads no HR system at all, so its chart is only ever as current as the teams editing it. In a spreadsheet somebody updates monthly, an import into any of these works and none of them will save you. **Does one person legitimately own the chart?** If yes, a drawing is the right answer and Lucidchart or draw.io will serve you for years. If the answer is that six team leads all know their part better than any central owner, a drawing turns that person into a bottleneck, and group one exists for exactly this. **Do you need job titles or responsibilities?** A box holding a name and a title cannot say what someone is accountable for or which decisions they can take alone. When people hold several roles across several teams, group one, Functionly and Organimi's matrix charts are the options here that handle it without duplicating a person. **What is the real bill at your size?** Watch the floors rather than the rates. Functionly bills at least three seats at $48, OrgChart a minimum of 100 employees, Peerdom 10 members, Sift 20 users. For a 40-person company where five people maintain the structure, several of these tools cost nothing and several cost four figures a year. **How much do you care about leaving?** draw.io and Rolebase are the two you can run yourself, under Apache 2.0 and MIT. Everywhere else, check the export formats before the demo, not after. If your shortlist has narrowed to one name, we wrote a deeper comparison for [Lucidchart](/en/blog/alternative-lucidchart), [Peerdom](/en/blog/alternative-peerdom), [GlassFrog](/en/blog/alternative-glassfrog) and [Holaspirit](/en/blog/alternative-holaspirit). If licence terms are what you are checking, we opened the licence file of six tools in [our open source roundup](/en/blog/open-source-org-chart-tools). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best program to create an org chart? It depends on what happens after you create it. To produce a clean chart today, Lucidchart is the strongest general-purpose editor and draw.io does the same job for free with no account. To keep the chart true without anyone redrawing it, the answer changes. If your people data lives in an HRIS, OrgChart refreshes from more than fifty HR sources and ChartHop syncs both ways. If your teams hold roles rather than job titles, Rolebase, Peerdom, GlassFrog and Holaspirit model that directly and each team maintains its own part. ### Is Visio good for org charts? Yes, and it is better than its reputation suggests. The Org Chart Wizard builds a hierarchy from Excel, CSV, Exchange or Active Directory instead of leaving you to draw boxes, and Plan 2 binds shapes to a data source that refreshes. Two limits matter. Plan 1 costs $5 per user per month and Plan 2 costs $15, so the version with the data connectivity is the expensive one. And Visio models job titles and reporting lines, with no way to express that someone is accountable for three things across two teams. ### Does Microsoft have a free org chart tool? Not a real one. Visio comes at no extra cost inside Microsoft 365 commercial plans, limited to the web and Teams apps with basic diagramming, so it is free only if you already pay for Microsoft 365 at work. PowerPoint SmartArt draws a hierarchy for free and stops being usable somewhere around thirty boxes. For something genuinely free with no Microsoft subscription, the draw.io editor opens in a browser under the Apache 2.0 licence, with no account and no cap on what you draw. ### What is the best free org chart software? Four free tiers are worth the name in 2026, and they differ by what they cap. The draw.io editor is uncapped and free, and only its Atlassian apps carry a price. GlassFrog covers 10 users with unlimited circles, roles and meetings, plus free viewer accounts. Peerdom covers 10 members with unlimited roles. Rolebase covers 5 active members with every feature, and people who need no account appear in the chart at no cost, so a company of any size can map its whole structure as long as five people hold the accounts. Lucidchart's free plan caps at 3 documents of 75 shapes, which one mid-sized org chart uses up. ### Can I build an org chart in Excel? You can, and for a stable team under thirty people it is a reasonable answer. SmartArt inside Excel draws a hierarchy, and a clean sheet of name, title and manager columns is the input every tool in this article accepts. Keep the sheet even after you pick a tool. Lucidchart, SmartDraw, Organimi, Miro and draw.io all generate their chart from exactly those columns, so a tidy spreadsheet is the cheapest migration insurance you can hold. ### Can ChatGPT make an org chart? It writes the structure, and something else has to draw it. A language model produces a clean hierarchy in text, in Mermaid syntax or in the CSV format draw.io imports, which saves real time on a first draft. What it cannot do is know your organisation. It has no access to who joined last month or who took over the recruitment role, so the output is a starting point that ages immediately unless it lands in a tool connected to your people data. ### What is the most effective organizational chart? The one somebody corrects on the day a responsibility moves. Effectiveness here is a maintenance question rather than a layout question, and the tools that win are the ones where updating costs almost nothing. On layout, match the shape to how you actually work. A pyramid suits a stable reporting line. Nested circles suit an organisation where teams contain teams. A flat operational view suits a company where people hold several roles at once, and a tool that offers only one of those layouts forces you to maintain a second document for the other views. ## Where to start Pick your group before you pick your tool. If the chart is a picture you publish a few times a year, group three costs the least and does the job, and draw.io does it for nothing. If your HRIS is the source of truth and you want the chart to follow it, group two is worth its price. If the chart is supposed to answer "who decides this", groups one and two are the only ones that model responsibility at all. Rolebase is [free for 5 active members](/en/pricing) with every feature, and people who need no account appear in the chart at no cost. That is enough to map your whole organisation and see whether roles describe your work better than job titles do, before anyone pays anything. ![Best Org Chart Software in 2026: 11 Tools Compared](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fthumbnail.DO1KAbZA.jpg&w=1200&h=669&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) Table of contents [1\. How this ranking works](#how-this-ranking-works) [2\. The comparison](#the-comparison) [3\. Group one: the chart is data your teams maintain](#group-one-the-chart-is-data-your-teams-maintain) [4\. Group two: the chart is built from your people data](#group-two-the-chart-is-built-from-your-people-data) [5\. Group three: the chart is a drawing someone maintains](#group-three-the-chart-is-a-drawing-someone-maintains) [6\. Also on the shortlist](#also-on-the-shortlist) [7\. How to choose between them](#how-to-choose-between-them) [8\. Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) [9\. Where to start](#where-to-start) Table of contents 1\. How this ranking works 2\. The comparison 3\. Group one: the chart is data your teams maintain 4\. Group two: the chart is built from your people data 5\. Group three: the chart is a drawing someone maintains 6\. Also on the shortlist 7\. How to choose between them 8\. Frequently asked questions 9\. Where to start Rolebase is the open-source platform for self-managed organizations. Clarify roles, run efficient meetings, and make better decisions as a team. [Discover Rolebase](/en) [Book a demo](/en/contact) Try Rolebase for free Clarify roles, run efficient meetings, and make better decisions as a team. [Book a demo](/en/contact) [Create an organization](/signup) ## Continue reading [![Open Source Org Chart Software: 6 Tools Compared](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fthumbnail.BQr2WRrX.jpg&w=1376&h=768&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) May 25, 2025 ## Open Source Org Chart Software: 6 Tools Compared Six open source tools for your org chart, with their license, best use and limits. Some tools on the usual lists are open source in name only. ](/en/blog/open-source-org-chart-tools)[![Lucidchart Alternative for a Living Org Chart](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Flucidchart-homepage.Coj-J6kJ.png&w=1920&h=1080&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) August 1, 2026 ## Lucidchart Alternative for a Living Org Chart Rolebase replaces the org chart you redraw by hand rather than the diagram editor. Here is how it compares to Lucidchart on features, price and migration. ](/en/blog/alternative-lucidchart)[![The dynamic organisational chart, or the org chart of the future](/.netlify/images?url=_astro%2Fthumbnail.Cev1psgf.jpg&w=1376&h=768&dpl=6a79c2fa1f463a0008b8b68f) January 23, 2026 ## The dynamic organisational chart, or the org chart of the future A 21st century business needs a 21st century organisational chart : one that allows it to be proactive, nimble, decentralised yet plugged into the bigger organisation, and that makes leaders out of every team members. ](/en/blog/dynamic-org-chart)