Infographics are everywhere. They’re hugely popular on the internet, especially on social media, and their appeal is obvious: infographics make it super easy to condense a lot of information into a fun, easy-to-read image. Like any design, a professionally designed, custom infographic will get you the best results. But if your business is just starting out, your budget for something like infographic design may be next to nothing. That’s where infographic makers come in.

While infographic makers have their limits, they can be a quick and easy solution for your infographic design needs. Here we’ve listed the top 9 infographic makers of 2021 for those who need an affordable DIY infographic solution.

What makes a good infographic?

An infographic is more than just a graphic with some information on it. It’s a clear representation of data that supports a thesis, kind of like a visual version of an essay—but fun and easy to scan. A well-designed infographic is:

• On-brand
• Aesthetically pleasing
• Provides valuable information
• Presents information logically
• Shareable

The concept of displaying data visually dates back thousands of years, starting with cave paintings that depicted locally available resources. Modern infographics data back a few hundred years, with Florence Nightingale credited with one of the first comprehensive infographics that used charts and graphs to illustrate the number and causes of Crimean War deaths each month.

When you need to communicate data clearly, effectively and appealingly, do it with an infographic. Ideally you want a custom, eye-catching design but not every entrepreneur or small business can afford to hire a designer just yet. If this sounds like you, we recommend trying out an online infographic maker, which tend to be a lot cheaper.

So, we’ve compiled the top 9 best infographic makers out there on the internet according to their price, functionality and how easy they are to use. Without further ado, here are our findings.

Here are 9 top infographic makers:

Canva

Canva is one of the most well-known, go-to graphic makers available. They’ve got templates for everything—infographics included. Canva is popular with non-designers because it makes it so easy to create great-looking graphics.

With social media scheduling and lots of different (animated and not-animated) template options, Canva feels like it’s made specifically for social media. It’s not the only infographic maker that offers a range of templates formatted for different social media platforms—in fact, most do—but it definitely feels like posting to social media is the primary focus here. This is especially apparent for Enterprise users, who get features like unlimited storage and built-in workflow tools.

Canva also offers a full library of educational content that includes tutorials, blog posts and full courses—all for free.

Price range

Free

Pro: $9.99/mo

Enterprise: $30/mo per person on a team

Ease of use

Very easy—just click, drag and drop

Pros

• Lots and lots of free images, fonts, backgrounds and other design elements—even with the free version, you have a ton to choose from
• Available as an app or in your browser
• Every design saves automatically to the cloud, so you can easily keep working across devices
• You can get right into Canva and start creating, no signup required
• Lots of file formats: PNG, JPG, PDF Standard and PDF Print, as well as gif, MP4 and PPT
• Cloud storage: 5gb for free users, 100gb for Pro users, unlimited for Enterprise users
• Lots of sub-categories for infographic templates, like charity infographics, education infographics and infographic resumes

Cons

• Lots of attractive images and features are restricted to paying users
• No hand-holding or suggested templates/designs
• Design elements feel fairly generic
• The infographic template comes in one size. You can always create an infographic from scratch on a custom-sized project, but if you want template suggestions, you need to stick with Canva’s predetermined size

Venngage

Venngage advertises itself as “the free infographic maker.” But this is a bit of a misnomer—they’re not the only free infographic maker around, nor do they offer everything they’ve got for free.

Like other infographic makers, Venngage offers more than just infographics. You can also make flyers, presentations, reports and other types of static visual content using Venngage.

To help you get the infographic design you want, Venngage starts your session by asking you questions like what the infographic is for and whether it’s for a personal, professional or school project. Then, much like some logo generators, you choose from a few sample infographics to determine the style you like best. Once you’ve done that, you’re offered up a collection of templates that honestly, felt fairly generic. You choose one and get to work. If you’re not familiar with their infographic maker, you also get the option for a quick walk-through at this step.

Price range

Free

Premium: $19/month

Business: $49/month

Enterprise: custom price

Ease of use

Very easy—when you use the free infographic maker, Venngage does a lot of the groundwork for you and suggests templates you might like, then offers up help through the design process.

Pros

• Lots of icons, photos, maps and even media elements like videos to choose from
• Infographic templates are divided into clear categories like statistical, timeline and process

Cons

• Page size options are kind of limited
• Watermarks on your designs if you use the free version
• Free users, unless they’re signed up as K-12 students, cannot download their infographics
• Premium users have the following options for downloadable file formats: PDF, PNG and PNG HD. Business users get these plus Interactive PDF

Infogram

Infogram is another infographic maker that offers more than just infographics. Two unique options Infogram offers that you won’t find on many other infographic makers are maps and reports. Beyond these, you can create Youtube thumbnails, dashboards, posters, slides, email headers and social media posts.

Like Venngage, you start off by answering questions about your employment type. Again, this leads you to suggested templates that feel somewhat in line with the answers you provided, but they’re all so customizable you’ll probably end up veering away from the suggestions.

Price range

Free

Pro: $19/mo

Business: $67/mo

Team: $149/mo

Enterprise: varies

Ease of use

Easy

Pros

• You can create custom graphs, maps and reports—not something you’ll find on most infographic makers
• Integrate media from a variety of sources into your infographic, like Youtube and Google Drive
• Easily integrate data into your infographic from sources like Microsoft SQL, Google Analytics and Oracle
• If you’re looking for an infographic maker focused on data-heavy infographics, go with Infogram
• Clear, intuitive controls
• If you’re a paying user at the Pro, Business or Team level, you can download your infographic as a PNG, JPG, PDF or MP4. Enterprise users get these plus the ability to export HTML files

Cons

• It’s only available on desktop
• In the free version, you don’t have a lot of template options to choose from
• The stock photos feel especially stock photo-ish. Take a look and see what we mean
• Free users can share their content online, but they can’t download it

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is meant for people who are either:

• Designing infographics for clients
• Designing infographics to regularly post for their own brands

That’s because PicMonkey makes it easy to organize your designs. PicMonkey is also a great choice if you plan on using photos of people in your infographics because it has a unique touch-up tool that makes it possible to make cosmetic changes like whitening teeth and smoothing skin. You can also add frames to your projects to make them extra official-looking.

Price range

Basic: $7.99/mo

Pro: $12.99/mo

Team: $33.99/mo

You can use PicMonkey for free by signing up for a free trial, but the trial only lasts seven days.

Ease of use

Straightforward, but can be challenging and slow because of lagginess and frequent pop-ups

Pros

• Lots of project options
• You can draw directly on your infographic, Microsoft Paint-style!
• Create projects for print and digital
• Easy integration with social media and Google Drive
• Easy project filing system with nested folders and subfolders
• Lots of photo editing options
• You can create a custom-sized project
• Lots of branded icons like social media logos

Cons

• Infographic option isn’t immediately obvious—you have to search to find it
• PicMonkey runs considerably slower than other infographic makers in this list
• Laggy
• No free version. There’s the free trial, but that’s for a limited time
• You can only download your creation if you’re subscribed—at the Basic level, you can download them in PNG and JPG forms. At Pro and Team, you can also download them as PDFs

Snappa

Snappa is another one of the top infographic makers available for free.

One of the unique things about Snappa is that its icons library includes famous logos and other images from well-known brands like Nickelodeon and PayPal. Maybe you’re not planning on including SpongeBob in your infographic, but if you’re making an infographic that compares different online payment platforms, you’ve got their logos icon-sized and ready at your disposal.

Snappa is great if you want to make a simple infographic in a short amount of time. The interface is intuitive and the controls are very easy. But you’re limited to what Snappa has to offer—and compared to similar infographic makers, that’s not a whole lot.

Price range

Starter: Free

Pro: $10/mo

Team: $20/mo

Ease of use

Extremely easy

Pros

• Super easy layering tool
• Video tutorials and knowledge base are built-in and easily accessible
• All photos and videos are free—none are restricted to paid users
• You can create custom-sized images
• Lots of brand logos in the icons section, so you can include things like the Instagram and Facebook logos in your infographic
• Four different file formats for the creations you download: web-optimized JPG, high-res PNG and retina JPG/PNG

Cons

• On the free plan, you’re limited to three downloads per month
• Compared to other infographic makers, the effects options are fairly limited
• Graphics-wise, you’re limited to icons. No stock photos or illustrations here. There are photo backgrounds, but that’s what they’re formatted to be—backgrounds.
• Overall, Snappa feels more simple and limited than other infographic makers

Piktochart

Like other infographic makers, Piktochart starts you off by asking about your profession and your organization size. There’s no getting around this. Unlike other infographic makers, Piktochart goes on to ask which updates you want to receive in your inbox, forcing you to either opt in or out of their communications before you can even give the tool a try.

Once you’re in, it’s smooth sailing. Select a template, then customize it with one of the suggested color schemes or create your own. You’ve got lots of illustrations and photos to choose from, ranging from 8-bit style icons to beautiful photographs from Unsplash. Layering is also very simple in Piktochart and overall, this infographic maker feels like the most user-friendly and comprehensive on our list.

Price range

Free

Pro: $29/month

Team: $99/month (includes five accounts)

Ease of use

Extremely simple (and fun to work with!)

Pros

• Aesthetically pleasing purple interface
• Unique tool that makes it easy to find templates based on your infographic’s purpose, like a comparison or a timeline

Cons

• Not a whole lot to complain about—Piktochart is a solid infographic maker
• Your infographics are watermarked if you’re using the free version
• In the free version, you can only download your infographic as a PNG file. PDF is also available for Pro users
• With the free version, you’re limited to five saved designs at a time
• The infographic templates feel like there’s less variety than with other infographic makers

Animaker

Animaker is a video maker first and foremost. In fact, you’re not really making infographics with Animaker…you’re making infographic-style animated videos. It’s often included in roundups of the top infographic makers, but the reality is, it’s more of a presentation maker than an infographic maker. That said, infographics serve a similar purpose to presentations: to make data, facts and figures easy to understand in a fun, accessible way.

Because Animaker is a video maker, you break your project down into scenes. This can be a great tool for surprise facts and statistics or an infographic that has a clear narrative. It can also be an effective choice for lengthy infographics so you don’t end up with an image people have to scroll through for ages to reach the end. With the Starter plan, you can download your videos in full HD quality. With the Pro plan, you can download them in 2K quality and with the Enterprise plan, you get 4K quality.

Price range

Basic: $10/mo

Starter: $19/mo

Pro: $39/mo

Enterprise: Varies

Ease of use

More challenging than its cutesy interface suggests. Moderately challenging

Pros

• Everything is animated—it makes your infographic more dynamic
• Add music and movement to your infographic
• You can create gifs
• Videos are in MP4 format
• Even at the free level, you get five downloads per month

Cons

• It’s not really an infographic maker—it’s a video maker you can use to create animated infographics
• Few graphics options
• It’s not as intuitive as the other programs on our list—there’s a lot of trial and error and a bit of a learning curve
• You have to upgrade to a paid version to create videos without Animaker watermarks

Adobe Spark

Unlike other Adobe products, Adobe Spark is free to use. It also lives on the cloud—nothing to download here. Since it’s Adobe, you know it’s a robust program. And in case you didn’t know that, it’s immediately apparent as soon as you start making an infographic.

In Adobe Spark, your project is highly customizable. In fact, you don’t have to stick to a predetermined template—you can create your own custom-sized project.

Price range

Starter plan: Free

Individual: $9.99/mo after 14-day free trial

Team: $19.99/mo

You can also get customized plans for education and enterprise setups. These are priced according to the plan you create.

Ease of use

Easy. The interface is similar to Canva and Lucidpress

Pros

• Lots (and lots!) of icons
• A large variety of design assets, some of which you can’t find in other infographic makers like textures and overlays
• Access to the Adobe stock photo library
• Available on iOS and Android

Cons

• No animation
• No data integration
• Basically, none of the bells and whistles that make other infographic makers stand out. Rather, Adobe Spark is just a solid infographic maker for anybody who’s not looking for that added pizazz, but wants lots of options when it comes to photos, icons and design elements.
• In the free version, your infographics are watermarked
• Download options are JPG, PNG and PDF (which is still in beta at the time of this writing)

Lucidpress

Lucidpress bills themselves as a “brand templating platform.” From its outset, it has a much more robust, professional look and feel than other infographic makers in this list.

Lucidpress, like other entries in our list of the top infographic makers, isn’t limited to infographics. Instead, you can choose from a variety of project templates like brochures, postcards and resumes.

Once you’re working on your project, Lucidpress has a similar look and feel to other programs. But you’ll quickly notice your options for design elements like fonts and shapes are much more limited. Further, if you want to upload your brand assets, you need to upgrade to Pro. Fortunately, you can get a free trial before making that commitment.

Price range

Free: Free

Pro: As low as $10/month

Team: As low as $12 per user per month (with a three user minimum, so a real minimum of $36/mo)

Business: Varies

Ease of use

Very easy

Pros

• Simple to use
• You get the option to order high quality (300 dpi) prints of your design—with the Pro plan
• Insert tables easily
• It’s very easy to embed YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook videos
• File formats for downloads include PNG, JPG, PDF and advanced export options specifically meant for printing

Cons

• Adding images isn’t intuitive
• No built-in image library. You have to upload your own or take from a source like Unsplash
• Limited design element options

What if a maker isn’t right for you?

Maybe you need more than an infographic maker can give you. In that case, you can work directly with an experienced infographic designer. Take a look at the best infographic designers on our platform to see if you find anyone whose style and experience matches what you’re looking for.

Or start an infographic design contest to get design concepts from multiple designers and pick the one you like best.

When you hire a professional designer, you’re working with an experienced artist who can make design suggestions, custom graphics and thoughtful design choices you might not have considered otherwise. This means you’re getting an infographic that’s a lot more original and better tailored to you and your brand than something created from a template offered by an infographic maker.

Infographic makers are a great choice for a speedy, inexpensive DIY design (or if you need to create a large volume of them to keep up with a rigorous posting schedule). But when you need something truly customized, you’ll always get the best results when you’re working with a professional infographic designer.

Got the info you need to make great graphics?

To sum up, an infographic maker can be a good resource for entrepreneurs, especially as you’re just starting out, or if you need something really quickly. As you can see, there’s a lot of overlap between the most popular infographic makers you’ll find on the web. The key to finding the right solution for creating your next viral infographic is narrowing down which of these options offers the functions you need at a price that fits your budget.

Our advice: go ahead and play around with these infographic makers, and when you’re ready for a polished look, work with a designer to get a truly unique, professional infographic design.