10 Best Free Mind Mapping Software In 2023

FigJam is a digital whiteboard and mind-mapping tool designed to foster collaboration and creativity among teams. It makes it easy to host a brainstorming session online for your team, no matter where they're logging in from. You can use it during your project meetings or weekly standup sessions. Just invite your team members to join your board, then watch as their cursors start to move around in real-time.

Expert tip: For quick collaboration, type “/” and watch a text box appear next to your cursor. Everyone on the board will see what you write in real time! Use it for quick communication.

Features & Integrations

Features worth mentioning include their sticky notes - a personal favorite - which are perfect for jotting down ideas quickly during a brainstorming session. The drawing tool is also pretty neat, allowing you to sketch out ideas or diagrams directly onto the canvas. And the voting feature is a great way to get quick feedback on ideas.

Integrations are available with Asana, Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Slack, Trello, and numerous tools for prototyping, user testing, and developer handoff. Plus, FigJam is fully integrated with it's parent product, Figma. If you're already using Figma for design work, you can easily pull your designs into FigJam for brainstorming or feedback sessions.

What's free: FigJam offers a free forever plan for up to 3 Figma + 3FigJam files, including mobile app functionality, unlimited personal files, and unlimited collaborators.

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that stands out as one of the top tools in this space. Their free version has collaboration and interactive media features that other software options lack and is a very intuitive tool to use if you are new to mind mapping.

My experience with the free version was that all the basic features I needed to make an attractive mind map were there. I was able to build sub-topics, add images directly from Google search, icons, and post-its, and I can invite as many people as I want!

Expert tip: In the left navigation pane, enable quick access to mind maps by clicking on the “more tools” button at the bottom and dragging the “mind map” option to the main toolbar.

Features & Integrations

Features for this free version include bringing all collaborators to your position on the whiteboard with one click and a built-in chat and comment-based convo section so you can easily collaborate with your project team. Then, it has multimedia file attachments and icons so your map gets even more visually attractive. Finally, Miro lets you add notes to your mind map, so everyone can read the ground rules, agenda, to-do lists or whatever you wish to communicate.

Integrations are limited to the core ones. These include Slack, Zoom, Trello, Sketch, Google Drive, and a connector with Zapier so you can access thousands of other apps (you have to pay, though).

What's free: free plan available for a single workspace with 3 editable boards

Canva is a design tool that has become one of the mainstream platforms for building marketing collateral. Despite this, not many people know it can be used to build great mind maps in a collaborative way.

One of the reasons Canva is so popular is because of the vast amount of templates and stock images it offers. The free version of this software is not the exception. Just to give you an idea, I got 292 template options for the keywords “mind map”, which is how I found the one you see in the image above. Other templates require you to upgrade to a paid plan.

Regarding security, Canva offers single sign-on and ISO 27001 compliance and certification as part of their security package. This, unfortunately is included in the Teams plan.

Features & Integrations

Features include a drag-and-drop editor, over 250K free templates, and collaboration through invites to design. The tool offers over a million stock photos and other services, like printing.

Integrations are available as a way to amplify the platform. Therefore, you will find common productivity apps like Slack, Mailchimp, Tumblr, Pardot, Gain, Hubspot, and many others.

What's Free: Free plan available with over 250,000 templates, 5g storage, and 1 million photos and graphics.

Freehand is a collaboration app by Invision that has a free version perfect for creating mind maps and collaborating with up to 30 active users.

The interface is simple, with a bottom navigation bar that has all the options you need to build your first mind map. The free-hand tool will let you create your own visual elements, the chat bubble will give you a view of all comments on the project, and the 3 dots display all other integrations and fun widgets you can add to your boards.

The thing I liked the most about this free version is that the only obvious difference compared to the paid plans is the security features available. Everything else is there. Great experience!

Features & Integrations

Features include custom templates, polling, exporting work as a .png file, version history, and guest permissions. Also, you can post reactions with emojis on any place in the canvas and insert gifs to make your maps more entertaining.

Integrations include Vimeo, Trello, Microsoft 365, Loom, Jira, Asana, Adobe XD, and more.

What's free: Free forever plan with voting features and guest permissions.

Mindomo is a mind mapping software with a free version that will let you work on your project planning in a fun way. Its interface is colorful & minimalistic, leaving most of the functionality hidden in keyboard shortcuts or right-click menus.

The free plan allows you to build a mind map, concept map, organigram, tree organigram, timeline, or Gantt chart with a limit of 3. However, this free version is very limited as uploading multimedia, exporting as a PDF, and collaborating with other people are limited to the paid plans. Therefore, with this software, you will have to go at it solo.

Features & Integrations

Features this free version offers are a playback diagram history that will show a video of all changes the diagram has gone through, a full-screen view if you want to present your map, keyboard shortcuts for anything you can think of (available in the top left menu), and a search feature where you can look for any word in your diagram, and it will be spotlighted.

Integrations mostly focus on your file uploads, so if you get a paid plan, you will be able to upload multimedia files from Dropbox, G Drive, and OneDrive.

What's Free: the free plan is available with 3 diagrams.

Mindmup is a free mind mapping tool where you can create your diagrams in a public environment without the need for an account. The software has a paid version that is account based and makes it possible to create private maps.

This is an odd one, I must say. The fact that I didn’t need to sign up to create my project felt strange. Throughout the entire project, I felt like I was doing something wrong. Anyway, the tool is great! Although maybe it's because it presents itself so badly both on the security and UI front.

However, when it's time to download your map, they explicitly mention that the file is sent to their servers and secured using Amazon standard S3 security mechanisms, so your information is transferred safely to a server for conversion and download. That file then lives on the server for the next 24hrs before being deleted.

Features & Integrations

Features included in this tool are multimedia embedding within any node, placing multimedia as child nodes, reactions to nodes using emojis, and exporting to popular file types such as PDF and JPG.

Integrations include the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, Dropbox, Zapier, LUMA Workplace, Slack, Google Calendar, Webex, Jira Cloud and more.

What's Free: a free plan with unlimited mind maps + Google Drive storage for your files.

Coggle is an online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts. As an online tool, they focus on ways to improve collaboration across teams, whether it’s in the same or different time zones.

The free plan gives you up to 3 private diagrams so you can safely test the tool. Honestly, this version is very limited and not as friendly as you would expect. Adding images or changing to bolded text will make the app display code that will turn into the real thing once you click outside of the element you’re editing.

The one thing I will say I enjoyed is the search feature on the chat window. It becomes very useful to find parts of your conversation as the interactions between your team increase.

Features & Integrations

Features included are an unlimited number of multimedia uploads, auto-arranged branches, a full change history log, and exports to PDF and image files.

Integrations have not been developed for this tool so far.

What's Free: a free plan with 3 private diagrams.

Venngage is an infographics builder that can easily be used to create mind maps. Their free version allows you to create up to 5 designs and share them publicly once you are done. This infographic maker could be your best ally if you need to present your work to project stakeholders.

Creating your mind map is simple. Their drag-and-drop interface allows you to upload texts, icons, data, or images and collaborate with other users through comments. Once you are done, you can download your design in different formats, like PDF, PNG or Powerpoint.

Features & Integrations

Features included in the free version are the minimum needed for a mind-mapping tool. Therefore, you will only find the option to drag elements into the canvas (including images), and templates that you can choose from to get a quick start on your project.

Integrations are unfortunately only part of their Enterprise plan, at which point there are other software solutions with much more functionality.

What's Free: a free plan with 5 Designs, Public Shares, Free Diverse Icons and Widgets, 6 Image Uploads

Gitmind is a mind mapping and brainstorming tool for PC and mobile devices that helps capture ideas in a single place. Their free software has 2 great things: one, it has all the features available and two, it has support for all platforms.

Using the tool was a unique experience because it looks like it’s an unrestricted tool when in reality, it’s a bit of the opposite. The interface is based on objects that serve as containers. Therefore, any element you want to add to the canvas has to be associated with a container. For example, an image or icon cannot be placed in an empty space, it has to be placed within a text box.

Features & Integrations

Features that I noticed are available include image uploads, a focus mode that hides all toolbars and leaves you to create everything with left and right clicks, an option to reverse the mouse click behavior for left-handed people, and a version history log.

Integrations have not been developed at this moment.

What's Free: a free plan with 10 mind maps.

Mural is a digital whiteboard tool that offers over 300 different templates and collaboration tools, so you and your team can collaborate in real time or asynchronously, and get the most out of your experience.

The free forever plan is suggested for individuals as it limits the number of murals (3) that you can have, and visitors to your mural can only view your work. Despite that, the drag-and-drop intuitive interface helps you build in minutes and add loads of visual elements to your mind maps.

Features & Integrations

Features included in the free version are facilitator tools like a timer, voting sessions, and a laser pointer. Also, a bunch of collaboration features like sticky notes, drawings, content library, and reactions. Finally, Figma offers a resizable and infinite canvas option, plus a little map on the bottom right to keep you aware of your overall position on the whiteboard.

Integrations include the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, Dropbox, Zapier, LUMA Workplace, Slack, Google Calendar, Webex, Jira Cloud and more.

What's free: free plan available with 3 murals and unlimited members