FlowSimp — Free Flowchart Maker and Online Whiteboard

What is the best free flowchart maker?

FlowSimp is a completely free flowchart maker and online whiteboard. Open the editor, place a rectangle for a step and a diamond for a decision, connect them, and download PNG or SVG. You can also paste a Mermaid flowchart or a plain step list and edit the boxes it builds. No account is required to draw, generate, export, or copy a read-only share link. Choose it for a process, a lesson sketch, or a template you can rename. Choose another tool if you must open a Microsoft Visio .vsdx file, import a Lucidchart board, or run a workshop with live cursors.

The canvas above is the product. This page under it is the explanation: what the three modes do, how a first flowchart gets onto the page, which template matches which job, and the mistakes that make a diagram look finished when it is not. Longer versions of each answer live on the flowchart maker, text to flowchart, whiteboard, and how to make a flowchart pages.

How do you make a flowchart in the editor?

1. Open flowsimp.com. The flowchart canvas is the full window. The mode switcher at the top left is Flowchart, Whiteboard, and Network Diagram. Leave it on Flowchart.
2. Pick Rectangle, Rounded, Diamond, or Circle from the toolbar and click the canvas to place it. Double-click the shape and type a short label. A step is a verb phrase. A decision ends with a question mark.
3. Choose Connect and click two shapes. The arrow stays attached when you drag either shape. On a diamond, connect twice and label the arrows Yes and No.
4. Use the Text button if you already have the words. Paste a Mermaid flowchart or an indented outline. FlowSimp builds the diagram in the browser. Sequence diagrams and other non-flowchart Mermaid types are refused.
5. Download PNG or SVG. PNG is rendered at 2× on a white background. SVG is the shapes and arrows. Neither file adds a watermark. Share stores a snapshot at /v/<id> if you want a link instead of a file.

Undo and redo are on the toolbar, and Cmd or Ctrl+Z undoes as well. Delete removes the selection. Guest drawings stay in this browser. Optional Google sign-in saves the board to your account. The account is not required to finish the picture. A blank canvas can feel slower than a template: the checkout flowchart and the approval workflow are already connected, so you rename labels instead of placing the first five shapes.

What does a worked example look like?

This support flowchart is real Mermaid that FlowSimp imports. The diamond is “Known issue?” The Yes arrow goes to “Send the saved answer.” The No arrow asks one clarifying question, writes the answer, and then joins the same send step. Paste it into the Text button or into Mermaid to flowchart. You should see six shapes and a join, not an error about sequence diagrams.

flowchart TD
  A[Customer writes in] --> B{Known issue?}
  B -->|Yes| C[Send the saved answer]
  B -->|No| D[Ask one clarifying question]
  D --> E[Write the answer]
  E --> C

After it opens, double-click any label that does not match your team’s words. Drag a shape if two boxes overlap. The arrows follow. If your list is prose instead of Mermaid, use one line per step and indent the branches. The flowchart generator page shows that outline form side by side with Mermaid. Styles, subgraphs, and click handlers in a Mermaid file are ignored. The shapes and the labeled arrows are what you get.

Which mode should you open?

Whiteboard mode is pen, eraser, and text. Colors are black, red, blue, green, yellow, and orange. The stroke thickens and thins along its length. That is not stylus pressure. Strokes do not stay attached to anything, so a procedure you will rearrange belongs in flowchart mode. Network mode places a router, switch, server, firewall, cloud, or PC. It is not a general icon library.

Which template matches the job?

Templates are editable diagrams, not file formats. The templates page lists every starter. Open one, double-click the sample words, and export. The swimlane template is a refund: Customer requests it, Support reviews it, the diamond asks “Within policy?”, the No path emails the policy, and Finance issues the refund. The approval template loops back when someone asks for a revision. Onboarding, a decision tree, a user flow, an org chart, a data flow, an algorithm, and a BPMN-style process are the other starters. The BPMN picture is not BPMN 2.0 XML. There is no parallelogram tool.

If you are choosing among tools rather than templates, the alternatives page compares the kind of job each one is for, without prices or invented benchmarks. FlowSimp stays the short path when you want a diagram in the tab you already have open. A larger stencil library is a reason to use a different editor, and that is a fine reason.

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Two arrows leaving a rectangle. That step is a decision. Change it to a diamond and label both answers. The symbols guide is the short version of this rule.
• A diamond with one outgoing arrow. Add the other path or change the shape to a rectangle.
• Pasting a sequence diagram, a class diagram, or a Gantt chart and expecting boxes. FlowSimp imports flowchart and graph syntax only.
• Sketching a process in pen and then trying to move one box. Ink does not reconnect. Use Connect on a flowchart.
• Assuming Share is a live meeting. The link is a snapshot. There are no live cursors.
• Putting a department name on the chart instead of the trigger. “Refund request” tells the next reader whether they opened the right file. “Operations” does not.

How do export, share, and saving work?

PNG and SVG are downloads of the current board. Share writes a snapshot and gives you a read-only link. Anyone with the link can view it. The shared page is not in the sitemap. An older compressed /view# link still opens. An editable /?board= link carries the diagram in the hash. Guest data stays in local storage on that browser. Signing in with Google is optional and stores boards on the account. Nothing here requires an account to draw or export.

If you want a script or an assistant to create a flowchart, the MCP connector at https://flowsimp.com/mcp exposes create_flowchart and list_templates with no auth. The same text can be posted to /api/flowchart. Limits are about 30 requests a minute per IP, 16,000 characters, and about 80 shapes. Those calls do not write to the database. The response includes a view link and an editable link.