Top 10 free graph makers for a science fair

Peabody's Graph Maker is on this list, and it's ours. Every other row is what that tool's own page, or a review of it, showed on 30 October 2026. Canva's and Desmos's pages wouldn't open for our reader, so those two rows rest on what others report.

How it's ordered: Made for children first, then free graph sites, then a spreadsheet and a maths grapher, then lab apps built around sensors, and last a design tool.

The ten, in order

NCES Kids' Zone: Create a Graph: A US government tool for children: bar, line, area, pie and XY graphs, up to six groups, with your own labels and colours. TeachersFirst lists it for grades 2 to 5. It takes numbers only and doesn't average tries, keeping a graph to edit later means giving an email address, and printing or downloading needs pop-ups allowed.
Peabody's Graph Maker (ours): Built for a science fair: tap each try on a number pad and it works out every mean, draws a bar or line graph with the spread of the tries on it, and prints the table and graph for the board. A try timer and a tally counter fill the boxes. No account and no email, and nothing is sent. The catch: bar and line graphs only, and a project of your own gets three to five levels, three to five tries and one of eight units.
ChartGo: Says it's completely free, with no sign-up: bar, line, combo, pie, area and XY graphs, from numbers you type or an Excel or CSV file, downloaded as an image or SVG. It draws the numbers you give it, so work the means out first.
Meta-Chart: Free, with twelve kinds of chart, including tally charts and box-and-whisker plots (a way to show spread for older students). It has a register and log-in link, and we didn't check what needs an account. Like ChartGo, it graphs numbers you've already worked out.
Virtual Science Teachers' graph makers: Every resource on the site is free: line, bar (with more than one set), pie and scatter graph makers, next to lab report tools. The page doesn't describe turning repeated tries into a mean, so bring your means.
Google Sheets: A spreadsheet with a chart tool; Google lists its education edition, which includes Sheets, at no cost for qualifying schools. The catch is the chart editor's words: a Michigan teaching guide notes that bar versus column trips children up, and we found nothing that makes error bars simple for a child.
Desmos: Free and powerful: it plots a table, fits a line to it and works out the mean of a list. Built for maths classes in middle and high school, with no science fair steps for a young child. Its pages wouldn't open for us, so this is from its app store listing and search summaries.
Vernier Graphical Analysis (Basic): The Basic version is free, with graphing, statistics and simple curve fits; its main trick is reading Vernier's own sensors live. The catch for a fair: bar graphs, histograms and error bars are in Pro, a school site licence at $149 for a year on Vernier's page.
PASCO SPARKvue: Free on every platform with all its features, no trial and no tiers: graphs, tables, curve fits and statistics, saved as a PNG or CSV. It's built around PASCO's sensors, and one reviewer found it dated and happiest with one probe at a time.
Canva's graph maker (free plan): Charts inside a drag-and-drop design tool with a huge template library. Canva's pages wouldn't open for us, so this is from others: many templates and icons need Pro (a rival's June 2026 article says $18 a month or $144 a year), and Canva for Education is free only when a teacher adds the child to a class.

👨‍👩‍👧 For grown-ups and teachers: how much to help, the safety rules, and running a school fair. Science fair v0.16.1 · Checked 6 November 2026.