Free Gantt chart tools compared

"Free" covers a lot of ground when it comes to Gantt charts. A spreadsheet template is free. A mature open-source desktop program is free. The starter tier of a polished web app is free, up to a point. And a browser tool that runs entirely on your machine is free in yet another sense. They are not interchangeable, and the one that suits a freelancer sketching a three-week project is rarely the one that suits a team coordinating thirty people.

Rather than rank them — a ranking would be dishonest, because the "best" depends entirely on your situation — this guide groups the free options into four families and tells you, plainly, what each is good and bad at. Gantt Chart Maker, the tool this blog belongs to, sits in the fourth family; we will be just as candid about where it does not fit.

The four families at a glance

Family	Strength	Main catch
Spreadsheets	Free, familiar, on every machine	Manual; dependencies are painful
Free desktop apps	Real scheduling engine (critical path, baselines)	Dated interface; you install software
Free SaaS tiers	Polished, collaborative, integrated	Account required; data on their servers; limits
Browser tools	No signup, private, instant	Focused single-purpose, not full PM suites

Spreadsheets: Excel and Google Sheets templates

The most common starting point, because almost everyone already has a spreadsheet open. You list tasks down the rows, put dates across the columns, and shade cells — or use a stacked horizontal bar chart with an invisible "offset" series — to fake the bars. There are countless free templates that do the shading for you.

Who it suits: someone with a small, fairly static plan who wants zero new tools, or who needs the chart to live inside a workbook that already holds budgets and other data. If you live in spreadsheets anyway, the friction is near zero.

• Pros. Free and already installed. Infinitely customisable. Easy to share as a file or a Google link. No learning curve for the basics.
• Cons. Everything is manual. Move one task and nothing downstream shifts — you re-shade by hand. There is no real notion of a dependency, so the spreadsheet cannot tell you that a slip in task three pushes the launch. The bar-chart trick is fiddly and breaks easily. And large plans become a maintenance chore that quietly stops being updated.

Free desktop apps: GanttProject and ProjectLibre

This is the most underrated family. GanttProject and ProjectLibre are free, open-source desktop programs that have been developed for many years. They are not toys: both support genuine dependencies, automatic rescheduling when a task moves, the critical path, baselines for comparing plan against reality, and resource assignment. ProjectLibre in particular aims at compatibility with Microsoft Project's way of working and can open many .mpp files.

Who it suits: anyone who needs proper scheduling logic without paying for it — a student, a contractor, a small business, or someone who has outgrown spreadsheets but cannot justify a commercial licence. If you want critical path and baselines for nothing, start here.

• Pros. A real scheduling engine. Dependencies recalculate automatically. Critical path and baselines included. Your file lives on your own disk. No subscription, no account.
• Cons. The interfaces feel dated next to modern web apps, and the learning curve is closer to desktop project software than to a friendly web tool. You install a program (Java-based, in both cases), which some locked-down work machines disallow. Collaboration is file-based — you email versions around — rather than live. Mobile use is essentially nil.

Free tiers of SaaS PM tools

Many cloud project-management products offer a free tier, and several include a Gantt or timeline view. TeamGantt is built specifically around Gantt charts and has a free option for small projects. General PM tools such as Asana, ClickUp, and others include a timeline or Gantt-style view, sometimes on the free plan and sometimes only on a paid one — this is exactly the kind of thing that changes, so check the current plan details before committing.

Who it suits: a team that needs shared boards, comments, assignments, notifications, and integrations, and is comfortable with their work living in a vendor's cloud. If collaboration and a wider workflow matter more than the Gantt view alone, this family is the natural home.

• Pros. Polished, modern interfaces. Real-time collaboration, comments and assignments built in. They connect to the rest of your stack — calendars, chat, file storage. The Gantt view is usually one of several linked views (board, list, calendar), which suits teams that work in more than one mode.
• Cons. The free tier is deliberately limited — caps on members, projects, or the very features (dependencies, baselines, exports) you may want; treat the free plan as a trial rather than a permanent home, and check what is actually included today. You need an account, and your project data lives on the vendor's servers under their terms, which matters for sensitive or confidential plans. There is real lock-in: exporting a clean, reusable schedule out of one of these tools is rarely as easy as getting it in.

Browser tools that run on your machine

A newer family: web apps that do the scheduling entirely in your browser rather than on a server. Gantt Chart Maker — this site — is one of these. There is no account and no signup for the core tool; you open a page and start dragging bars. Because the work happens client-side, your chart data stays on your own device unless you deliberately choose to save it to the cloud, which makes it a sensible option when a plan is private or you simply do not want to register for anything to draw a quick chart.

Who it suits: someone who wants to make a real Gantt chart in the next sixty seconds without an install or a sign-up — a freelancer, a student, a small-team lead, anyone planning a single project or a handful of them. See how to make a Gantt chart for the practical steps.

• Pros. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. Instant — open and build. Private by default, since the chart lives in your browser. Modern, drag-and-drop interface with dependencies, milestones, progress, and export. Free, with a deliberately generous no-account tier.
• Cons — and these are real. It is a focused tool: a strong single-page Gantt builder, not an enterprise suite. It does not do deep resource management or levelling, portfolio roll-ups across many projects, time tracking, or the dense workflow features of a full PM platform. If you need a team-wide system of record with permissions, audit trails, and integrations, a browser Gantt tool is the wrong shape — a SaaS platform or desktop project software fits better. Honest about its lane, it is excellent within it and out of its depth beyond it.

How to choose

Match the tool to the job, not to the feature list:

1. Just need a clear picture of a plan, fast, on your own? A browser tool or a spreadsheet template. The browser tool wins if dependencies matter; the spreadsheet wins if the chart must live beside other workbook data.
2. Need real scheduling — critical path, baselines, auto-rescheduling — for free? A free desktop app (GanttProject or ProjectLibre). Accept the dated interface as the price of a proper engine.
3. Coordinating a team day to day, with comments and integrations? A free SaaS tier, eyes open about the limits and about where your data sits.
4. Running large, complex programmes with heavy resource and portfolio needs? You have likely outgrown "free" — see whether you actually need Microsoft Project.

One more piece of advice that costs nothing: do not over-buy. A great many projects that reach for an enterprise tool would be served just as well by a free desktop app or a browser Gantt — and a great many spreadsheet Gantts that have become a weekly chore would be happier as a proper scheduling tool. The right answer is usually smaller than people expect.

Frequently asked questions

What is the easiest free way to make a Gantt chart?

For most people the quickest path is a browser tool that needs no install or signup — you open it and start dragging bars. A spreadsheet template is a close second if you are already comfortable in Excel or Google Sheets, though dependencies are manual there.

Are free Gantt chart tools good enough for real work?

Often, yes. Free desktop apps like GanttProject and ProjectLibre include critical path and baselines, which is genuine project-scheduling capability. The honest limit is at the top end: very large programmes with heavy resource levelling and portfolio reporting are where paid, enterprise tools start to earn their cost.

Do free SaaS Gantt tools keep my data private?

Your data lives on the vendor's servers under their terms, so for confidential plans read the privacy policy first. If keeping data on your own machine matters, a browser tool that runs client-side or a desktop app that saves a local file is a better fit.

Can I move my Gantt chart between tools later?

Sometimes, but plan for friction. Spreadsheets and some desktop apps share common formats, and ProjectLibre can read many Microsoft Project files. SaaS tools vary widely and lock-in is real, so check the export options before you invest much work in any one tool.