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Top SmartDraw Alternatives for Creating Timelines
By Matt Mazur · Last updated October 3, 2026
If you’re in the market for timeline software, you may have come across SmartDraw, or you may already be using it. Either way, it’s worth knowing how its competitors compare.
This guide covers the best SmartDraw alternatives, including their key features and pricing.
Pricing: SmartDraw's Standard package costs $197, its Business package is $297 and its Enterprise edition is available for $497.
Comparison Chart
Here are the 10 best SmartDraw alternatives on the market. There are more details on each of them further down the page.
| Tool | Price | Key features |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Preceden | Preceden is free to try, with paid plans starting at $10/month billed annually. |
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| 2. Timeline Maker Pro | One-time purchases ranging from $49 for students to $535 for enterprise teams. |
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| 3. Tiki-Toki | Tiki-Toki's free plan is limited to 1 timeline with paid plans starting at $9.50/month that support multiple timelines and additional features. |
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| 4. Aeon Timeline | Free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase of $64.99. |
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| 5. Timeline JS | TimelineJS is free to use. |
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| 6. Venngage | Plans range from free to $49/month depending on desired features, with quarterly and annual plans at a discount. | |
| 7. Creately | Creately has a free plan that is limited to 3 documents with paid plans starting at $4/month. |
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| 8. Edraw Timeline | Edraw timeline is free to download and try. A 3 year license costs $179, a lifetime license costs $245, and subscription license (yearly) costs $99 for the first year and $69 per year to renew thereafter. |
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| 9. LucidChart Timeline Maker | Lucid Chart's Basic membership is $4.95/month, Pro (single user) membership is $8.95/month and Team (for 3 users) membership is available for $20 per month. |
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| 10. Office Timeline | Office Timeline's PowerPoint plugin ranges from $59/year (for students and home use) to $149/year (for project experts). Their cloud-based tool costs $99/year. |
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Choosing a SmartDraw Alternative
Knowing your options is a good place to start when looking for an alternative to SmartDraw. Before you settle on one, though, it helps to dig a little deeper.
Ask yourself these 3 questions:
- What can I afford? Most timeline tools have a free option that may be all you need. If it is not enough, pick a tool that fits your budget, which looks very different for a student than for a project manager at a Fortune 100 company.
- What features are non-negotiable? Some tools support collaboration and others don't. Some create interactive timelines, others only graphical ones. Some are web-based and work from any device, others only run on Windows or Macs.
- What style would I prefer? Every tool creates a different style of timeline. A cartoon-looking one might be fine for a homework assignment but a poor fit for a presentation to your board of directors.
Once you have answered them, narrow your list to a few tools and try them out. Hands-on time is the fastest way to tell how easy each one is to use and whether it does what you need.
Features and style are not the whole picture. Some tools have not been updated in years and are poorly supported, so it is worth emailing a company's support team to see how quickly they reply. If you like several tools, the depth of their documentation and the quality of those replies can be the deciding factor.
Top 10 SmartDraw Alternatives
1. Preceden
Best SmartDraw alternative for creating timelines quickly.
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Preceden is a web-based timeline maker that lets you quickly create, customize, and share professional-looking timelines. It offers a variety of templates to help you get started and makes it easy to adjust your timeline's style with its variety of appearance settings. It's actively developed and provides fast customer support.
As an alternative to SmartDraw, you’ll find that Preceden is easier to use, has more customization options, and gives you more ways to share your timeline. It strives to have all features you need (and nothing you don't) including:
- Layers to organize events
- Variety of customization options
- Privacy settings to control who can see your timeline
- Multiple ways to share, collaborate, and export
Pricing: Preceden is free to try, with paid plans starting at $10/month billed annually.
2. Timeline Maker Pro
Best SmartDraw alternative for private investigators.
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Timeline Maker Pro is a Windows program helps private investigators, researchers, and planners create timelines in a variety of formats. It's one of the oldest timeline makers (it launched in 1995), but does not appear to be under active development.
Unlike SmartDraw, it is Windows software so you'll need a PC in order to use it.
Pricing: One-time purchases ranging from $49 for students to $535 for enterprise teams.
3. Tiki-Toki
Best SmartDraw alternative for multimedia heavy timelines.
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Tiki-Toki is a cloud-based timeline generator that lets you create timelines with a distinctive stylish graphical background. Unlike most other tools, Tiki-Toki lets users embed videos (YouTube, Vimeo, or MP4) directly in timelines.
Pricing: Tiki-Toki's free plan is limited to 1 timeline with paid plans starting at $9.50/month that support multiple timelines and additional features.
4. Aeon Timeline
Best SmartDraw alternative for writers.
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Aeon Timeline is a Mac and Windows app that helps users create data-rich timelines. Unlike SmartDraw, it lets users sync their timelines with Scrivener and Ulysses to avoid copy-pasting data between applications.
Pricing: Free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase of $64.99.
5. Timeline JS
Best SmartDraw alternative for open source enthusiasts.
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Timeline JS is one of the few open source timeline creators, meaning you can view and even customize its source code if you'd like. It's somewhat limited in features and customization options, but might be a good option if you like the style as-is or want to support an open source project.
Unlike SmartDraw, Timeline JS has you enter your data in a Google Sheet which is then read by your timeline.
Pricing: TimelineJS is free to use.
6. Venngage
Best SmartDraw alternative for creating infographic timelines.
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Venngage is a tool for marketers looking to create compelling visual content online. Its drag-and-drop design editor is easy to use, beginners will be up and running and no time. They also have a large collection of 100+ professionally designed & beginner-friendly timeline templates (many of which cost nothing to use) that can be customized in just a few clicks.
Pricing: Plans range from free to $49/month depending on desired features, with quarterly and annual plans at a discount.
7. Creately
Best SmartDraw alternative for teams needing a variety of visualization capabilities.
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Creately is a suite of visualization tools that includes a timeline maker product. Unlike dedicated timeline maker tools, Unlike SmartDraw, Creately's timelines are purely graphical and therefore non-interactive.
Pricing: Creately has a free plan that is limited to 3 documents with paid plans starting at $4/month.
8. Edraw Timeline
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Edraw Max can be applied as an easy vector timeline software with rich examples and timeline templates. It has the tools to make it easy to create a professional-looking timeline infographic, history, schedules, timetables and PERT diagram.
Free Timeline is simple yet very powerful - it allows entry of both events and time periods; it scales automatically; it color-codes collapsible timeline groups; it also supports links and images. It can export to PDF, PowerPoint, Word and Graphics.
If you're looking for a great vertical timeline maker, this is the one for you.
Pricing: Edraw timeline is free to download and try. A 3 year license costs $179, a lifetime license costs $245, and subscription license (yearly) costs $99 for the first year and $69 per year to renew thereafter.
9. LucidChart Timeline Maker
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Lucid Chart is a charting tool that supports creating timeline visualizations.
Pricing: Lucid Chart's Basic membership is $4.95/month, Pro (single user) membership is $8.95/month and Team (for 3 users) membership is available for $20 per month.
10. Office Timeline
Best SmartDraw alternative for project managers creating PowerPoint presentations.
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Office Timeline is a PowerPoint plugin with accompanying web app for creating timelines. Unlike SmartDraw, this combination of PowerPoint plugin plus web-app might be appealing for some users. Its key features include:
- Build a timeline directly in PowerPoint
- Web application for building timelines online
- Templates to help get you started
Pricing: Office Timeline's PowerPoint plugin ranges from $59/year (for students and home use) to $149/year (for project experts). Their cloud-based tool costs $99/year.