The best free floor plan creators in 2026
Every floor plan tool claims a free tier, so the useful question isn't "is it free?" — it's what free actually includes: whether you can export the plan, whether it's watermarked, and where the meter starts. Here are eight tools compared on exactly that, checked against each vendor's own pricing pages. Full disclosure: Gridsnap is ours — it's in the list on the same terms as everyone else, and each tool gets the job it's genuinely best at.
What each free tier really includes
| Tool | Free tier | Free exports |
|---|---|---|
| Gridsnap | Full drafting workflow: millimetre-exact walls, doors and windows, automatic elevations, 3D walkthrough, core plan checks. Unlimited local plans; 1 cloud-synced project. | True-vector PDF sheets at standard scales, layered R12 DXF, PNG — free, no watermark |
| Sweet Home 3D | Everything, forever: open source under the GPL. Desktop app (Windows/macOS/Linux), an online version, 10,000+ furniture models, 400+ textures. | Plans, 3D photos and video renders — no watermark, no meter |
| Planner 5D | Unlimited projects with about half the furniture catalog (~5,000 items). Renders and AI features are paid (Premium $59.99/yr; Professional $399.99/yr adds 4K renders and CAD export). | On the free tier, your designs stay in the app — renders and CAD export are paid |
| Homestyler | Cloud 3D floor planner with 100,000+ free models and unlimited 1K renders. 4K renders are pay-per-render; watermark removal is a paid (Pro+, from $6.8/mo) feature. | Unlimited 1K renders free; higher resolutions purchased per render |
| Floorplanner | Up to 5 projects and 3 floors free. Exports are SD (960×540) with a watermark and a cooldown; better exports cost per-project credits (≈ $1.63 each). | SD watermarked images free; PDF/DXF unlock via paid per-project levels |
| RoomSketcher | Free tier has a limited furniture library and watermarked 3D snapshots — 2D/3D floor plan export, measurements and area calculations need Pro ($12/mo billed annually). | Watermarked 3D snapshots free; floor plan exports on Pro |
| SketchUp Free | Browser-based 3D modeling with 10 GB cloud storage and the 3D Warehouse model library. Imports SKP/JPG/PNG; exports SKP, PNG and STL. | SKP, PNG, STL — no scaled PDF sheets or DXF on the free plan |
| magicplan | 2 projects free with full features: scan rooms with the phone camera or LiDAR (iOS Pro devices), laser-meter support, photos and estimating. Paid plans are sized by project volume. | Full features on the 2 free projects |
Compared as of 2026-08-19, against each vendor's own pricing and documentation. Corrections welcome via the editor's feedback form.
Eight free tiers, honestly reviewed
Ordered by how much you can actually do without paying — with the caveat that "best" depends entirely on whether your end product is a drawing, a render, or a measurement of an existing building.
Gridsnap
Best for accurate drawings you can hand to a builder
Gridsnap is ours, so judge this entry against the table like the rest. It’s a drafting tool, not a decorating app: everything is measured in millimetres, dimensions stay anchored to the geometry as you edit, all four elevations generate themselves, and a plan checker flags real layout errors — blocked doors, rooms without daylight, circulation problems. The free tier is the whole drafting workflow including exports; Pro ($9/mo) adds the expert checks, AI assistance and auto-dimensioning.
Free tier verdict: The free tier to pick when the plan itself is the deliverable — a renovation, an extension, a garage — and the output needs to be measurable.
Open the editor — free →Sweet Home 3D
Best fully-free tool — open source, no tiers at all
The only tool on this list with no paid tier to upsell you into. Two decades of steady open-source maintenance, a big free model library, and a desktop app that works offline. The trade-off is the shape of the tool: it’s aimed at furnishing a home and previewing it in 3D, not at producing dimensioned drawings — there are no generated elevations, no plan checking, and the interface shows its age.
Free tier verdict: Unbeatable if the budget is exactly zero and furnishing plus 3D preview is the whole job.
Full comparison: Gridsnap vs Sweet Home 3D →Planner 5D
Best free tier for casual 3D home design
The most generous free tier among the consumer design apps by project count — unlimited, across browser, desktop and mobile. You feel the limits at the output end: renders, the full catalog, AI features and CAD export all sit behind the paid tiers. As a free sandbox for playing with layouts and furniture it’s hard to fault.
Free tier verdict: Pick it to experiment freely with home design; expect to pay the moment you want the pretty picture out.
Full comparison: Gridsnap vs Planner 5D →Homestyler
Best free renders
If what you want out of a free tool is furnished pictures, Homestyler’s free tier is the strongest: unlimited renders at 1K with a very large model library. Like the other design apps it’s an interior visualisation tool at heart — plans are the input, renders are the output — so accuracy tooling (real dimensioning, elevations, checking) isn’t the point.
Free tier verdict: The free-render champion for decorating and moodboarding a real room.
Floorplanner
Free for quick furnished mock-ups
One of the longest-running tools in the category, with a huge furniture library and renders up to 8K — on paid project levels. The free tier is a trial in practice: fine for sketching a furnished layout, but the moment you want a clean export you’re in the credit system. Read the export column before committing an afternoon to it.
Free tier verdict: Good free sandbox for furnished layouts; the usable outputs are where the meter starts.
Full comparison: Gridsnap vs Floorplanner →RoomSketcher
Free to try; floor plan outputs are paid
RoomSketcher’s polished, branded floor plans are aimed at real-estate marketing, and that polish is what the subscription buys. The free tier lets you draw and look around, but the things a floor plan is usually for — exporting it, measuring it — are Pro features. Notable extra: a draw-it-for-you service at $38 per level.
Free tier verdict: Try-before-you-buy for a presentation-plan subscription rather than a working free tier.
Full comparison: Gridsnap vs RoomSketcher →SketchUp Free
The free 3D-modeling route
SketchUp Free is a genuinely capable free 3D modeler — but it’s a modeler, not a floor plan tool. Walls are geometry you construct, not objects that know they’re walls; there’s no door schedule, no elevations, no plan checking, and the free plan’s exports (SKP/PNG/STL) don’t include CAD or scaled sheets. People who love it tend to be modeling the whole house in 3D for its own sake.
Free tier verdict: Choose it to learn 3D modeling on a real project — not for producing a floor plan quickly.
magicplan
Free for capturing 2 existing floor plans by phone
A different animal from everything above: magicplan measures existing buildings rather than designing new ones. You walk the rooms with a phone and a floor plan comes out — which makes its 2-free-projects tier genuinely useful for a one-off: survey your own house, then design in another tool. It pairs naturally with a drafting tool that can trace over the captured plan.
Free tier verdict: The free pick when step one is “measure the building I’m standing in”.
Full comparison: Gridsnap vs magicplan →Common questions
Want the head-to-head detail? Every tool above with a link has a full dated comparison. New to plan drawing? Start with how to draw a floor plan.
What is the best completely free floor plan creator?
Sweet Home 3D is the only mainstream tool that is entirely free — open source, every feature, no tiers. Among freemium tools, Gridsnap’s free tier is the most complete for drafting: the whole drawing workflow including vector PDF, DXF and PNG exports is free, where most competitors meter or watermark exports.
Can I make a floor plan for free and give it to a builder?
Yes. The catch to watch for is the export: many free tiers watermark images or paywall PDF/CAD output. Gridsnap exports true-vector PDF sheets at standard scales and a layered DXF for free; Sweet Home 3D prints its plans free as well. Floorplanner, RoomSketcher and Planner 5D all gate their useful export formats behind payment.
Which free floor plan tools have no watermark?
Gridsnap and Sweet Home 3D export without watermarks on their free tiers. Floorplanner’s free exports are watermarked SD images, RoomSketcher’s free 3D snapshots carry a watermark, and Homestyler removes watermarks on its paid Pro+ plan.
What is the catch with free floor plan apps?
Almost always the output, not the drawing. The common patterns: watermarked or low-resolution exports (Floorplanner, RoomSketcher), per-export credits or per-render fees (Floorplanner, Homestyler), paywalled CAD export (Planner 5D at $399.99/yr), or a project cap (Floorplanner’s 5, magicplan’s 2). Check the export column for the tool you’re considering before you invest hours in a drawing.
What is the best free floor plan app for measuring an existing home?
magicplan — its free tier covers 2 full projects and it captures rooms with your phone’s camera or LiDAR. For redrawing an existing paper plan instead, Gridsnap’s free trace mode lets you import a photo or scan, calibrate the scale against one known measurement, and draw over it in real millimetres.
Test the first row of the table
Gridsnap's free tier is the full drafting workflow — draw a room in real millimetres and export the vector PDF, free, right now.