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Lucidchart vs Lucidspark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Lucidchart
Ranking in Visual Collaboration Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (2nd)
Lucidspark
Ranking in Visual Collaboration Platforms
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Visual Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Lucidchart is 11.9%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lucidspark is 9.6%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Visual Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

MichaelChirinian - PeerSpot reviewer
Intuitive, integrates well, and is a great way to change text into visual ideas
I'm not a super user, and there might be a way of doing it that I haven't explored, but I was looking for some specific icons that are just standard icons, and I found the icon library to be very focused on architecture icons. It didn't have as many standard or generic icons. Another thing that somewhat irritated me is the fact that there is a paste function in the menu, but when you right-click and select paste, it tells you that you can't use paste. You must press Command-V or Apple-V to paste. They give you a menu option to paste, but every time you use that, they say, "We don't accept it." On top of that, normally, you'd have an option for paste or paste values, but when you use the paste function, you don't have that capability. So, to copy text from one place, I have to use Command-V to paste it, but if I don't like the format, I've got to go back and do copy style and then paste style on top of that. It is a small detail, but when you're doing diagrams, it is annoying that they don't support paste values. It is a small irk. I'm not penalizing it, and I still think it is a five-star product. In terms of other bigger things, I don't really have any comments or criticism so far.
MS
Encourages collaboration with our clients, and reactions help to prioritize ideas, but automation to make things more consistent would be helpful
This is a feature-rich product and I would like to see more opportunities for teaching new users how to learn and use the breadth of the platform. Ideally, it would be nice if there were a set of guidelines to explain what it is capable of. I know that there are videos online, and I've watched a few. But, I know that when I first started, just playing around, there were things I didn't discover that I could do until much later. This is why I get surprised by certain integrations I learn that they have. It would have been great to know right from the start, with a guided tutorial on how to use the various options. As it is now, we have invested internally in the educational resources needed to learn how to use it. A tool that can be very self-serving in that way, and enable its users to use it to the breadth of what it is capable of doing, is always a great thing. Whatever they can do to help make the visual look a little cleaner would be great because it can get a bit messy, or inconsistent. If there were automations to do things like making sure that elements are of the same size and correct alignment, it would help to make the visual more presentable. This is important because, at the end of what you create, it can have a very positive impact on what is ultimately shared with the client.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I really like the drag and drop feature because it makes the work easier. It is very easy to use. All the pieces are very good. All the icons and all the fields are available in the left panel. So, I just click, drag, and then edit a piece. When I showed it to my managing director, he was very inspired, and he also got a premium account for himself."
"Lucidchart enables me to put down on paper what I was visualizing in my head. It makes it more shareable than only using words."
"I've been using Lucidchart for quite simple things, but it's definitely much easier making process maps using Lucidchart than it is using Google Docs for basically everything. It's much simpler in terms of how easy it is to use Lucidchart. The way that you can get the arrows on the flow charts, based on the process mapping, you can drag the arrows from one box to another and it automatically shows you where you can put it. It makes decisions for you in terms of if you have a decision diamond, then the line is automatically a yes or no. This just makes it so much easier."
"The interface is very good and easy to use. We don't need documentation on how to use it. It is self-explanatory, which is very convenient for a new user."
"Ease of use is especially critical because if I am conducting brainstorming sessions with my team, I have to be able to quickly put things on the monitor so that I don't lose their attention and focus. Ease of use is definitely helpful when I do that... The fact that I don't get lost within the software and am able to quickly generate visuals onscreen, so that it doesn't break the momentum, is a huge win."
"It is important that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because if you support Mac, that means you also support the mobile applications on the iPad... Some of the other employees have access to an iPad, but not all of them do. When we're trying to talk through a process with them on-the-fly, or at the point of occurrence, it's so much nicer if we can both have it up on the iPad. That's why I would say the Mac support is essential."
"Documenting things such as processes, systems, and new teams has been my primary use case. Lucidchart is really, really valuable for its ability to create a process chart from start to end. The web app makes it easy because everything is similar to other tools like Visio but Lucidchart feels a little bit more intuitive. It has been easy to use the web app. I definitely have learned a lot about how to bring in my own graphics or images in place of some of the shapes and I'm able to create and use the arrows within the processes, so it definitely has been useful for me."
"Lucidchart's capabilities for understanding workflows is high. I use a couple of different programs, like MindManager, and what I like about using Lucidchart is that it is all web-based. So, I can quickly go into a web browser, drag and drop a bunch of files, pictures, or notes, draw some flow lines, and rapidly be able to create a visual representation of what I am trying to do. As a product manager, I can quickly organize thoughts that way and show people what we are working on."
"The online collaboration with the teammates and being able to represent things in a visually attractive way are the most valuable features. It has been a really nice experience to make such beautiful and visually attractive flowcharts by using Lucidspark. The best thing was that I could collaborate online with my teammates. Overall, it was a nice experience."
"The time is no longer spent trying to get everybody to be in one document or sending documents back and forth so that everybody is on the same page. Those things add up, especially as a team gets larger. Also, there are errors that come with that, e.g., sending the wrong version of a document. If the document is held somewhere, then it is easy to determine who made the last correction. Everybody is a part of the team so I can remove people as an administrator who need to be removed or add them to a specific thing. It is very straightforward and worth it in that manner."
"How easy it is to use is the best feature."
"The virtual whiteboard is also absolutely fantastic. It has streamlined all of those aspects that we would have done via PowerPoints and other types of on-the-fly screen sharing that were used in the past. Now, everyone can be in the same space. That part of it really helps us to feel confident and allows us to be more engaged with the client and vice-versa, with the client being engaged with us."
"The Whiteboard session feature could be the most helpful feature. It can help my organization through brainstorming and design sessions for technical tools, systems, and solutions. It's hard to brainstorm remotely and this tool will help to facilitate that."
"The whiteboard has been very helpful. It's a nice tool. At least for me, as a teacher, that's been very helpful and it's an easy tool. There are specific tools within the whiteboard for drawing. It makes things easier, so I like that."
"The virtual whiteboard is useful for brainstorming and quickly drawing and getting your thoughts out without having to do a formal, formatted drawing. For example, if I am doing a Zoom call, I can just share my screen and I can draw freehand, and change colors."
"I am a visual person, which is why I like Lucidspark. Its user interface and intuitiveness are pretty good. It is pretty intuitive to understand how we are moving forward and drawing things on the whiteboard. It's very simple, not complicated. The things that I use are mainly the post-it notes and containers, where I can grab a group of post-it notes, then put them in a container and move them around."
 

Cons

"A couple of times when I tried to move a line, connecting two shapes on an organizational chart, occasionally the line doesn't move as intuitively as I think it should. I have to fiddle around with it a few times to get it to do what I want it to do."
"I'm not sure if this feature is already there, but it would be good if we can import a cloud database in the web version."
"It would be helpful if there were different options available for organizing the folders, such as having a high-level display with pictures."
"As far as I know, LucidChart can’t be automated with Visual Basic .Net like Visio."
"I am not quite sure what different functionalities it provides as well as the difficulties other people are facing. When I have a better understanding of the solution, I will increase my rating of it. No solution is perfect, so I am sure that I will be facing some problems in the future."
"When I download a flowchart as a PDF file, it breaks it up. I would like to see the continuous display of flow charts, even if they are larger than one page."
"I've had an issue is when you create, let's say, a rectangle box. You can write some text in it and give it a name, and, depending on how you shape the size of the box, the text will rearrange itself to fit. That is, except if your box is very, very narrow, but very long, like a long, narrow rectangle in a vertical position. In this case, the text will always go out of the rectangle."
"I'm not a super user, and there might be a way of doing it that I haven't explored, but I was looking for some specific icons that are just standard icons, and I found the icon library to be very focused on architecture icons. It didn't have as many standard or generic icons."
"Using my iPad, it seems clunky and isn't as responsive as my PC."
"There is an emphasis on Google as a set of cloud apps and cloud storage but I don't use Google so that doesn't really help. We're a Microsoft shop so we've got a lot of OneDrive. We have been using Box, which I don't like and which we're moving away from, but my legacy storage asset was Dropbox. Some flexibility there would be worthwhile."
"Sometimes, editing text can be confusing. Changing different fonts and subtitles and the shapes that you're trying to use can be confusing. There isn't that much that I would improve other than just nitpicky user differences."
"I would like to have a dark mode, but the option is not available."
"There's a little bit of latency with the collaboration bit. Overall it's not quite as fast as Google docs, however, it's really close."
"I hope that one of the updates will be a zoom-in/zoom-out function that's a little different than what they currently have, just to make it flow better when you're trying to move in and out of the board. I know they're working on it and that would be great, once they get that together."
"One thing that I actually found difficult to do was to introduce video calls. Managing calls and the whiteboards and being all remote is difficult."
"The user interface is not intuitive because I have used other applications previously, and it took a little bit more time. Once I figured that out how to save shapes, that was super helpful, but it did take probably one or two times to get there. Once I understood it, it made a lot of sense."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is very affordable and reasonable for the features that it provides. I am using its basic plan, and for my usage, it is perfectly reasonable. It suits perfectly."
"The pricing is very competitive. It is more cost-effective than some competing products, such as Visio."
"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."
"We signed up for the month-to-month and it charged us all at once for the whole year. I believe we signed up for the $7.99 one. I think that was the price."
"I'm happy with the pricing of Lucidchart but I can't say I'm completely happy with it. It could be cheaper for what it offers, about $5 cheaper, or Lucid could charge $5 more and add more features, like automation. Right now, it's $15 per user per month... On the other hand, they have made their billing super-easy for users, such as for people who have to do expense reports. It is probably the easiest platform I'm using when it comes to billing for software as a service."
"I had a quick glimpse of it. It was about 100 Canadian Dollars a year for just me. I don't know if there are any additional costs."
"Pricing comes in at about $100 for a year's subscription, which is very reasonable if this is a tool that you will use more than once."
"Lucidchart's pricing model is not excessive, as compared to similar products. It is pretty much in line with everyone else."
"It's a very reasonable $8 a month. That makes it really accessible and helps it fill a pretty significant need for virtual collaboration. Just about every leadership team member that I've talked to said, 'Oh, well, that's cheap, just go buy it.'"
"It is not cost-prohibitive. It is well worth it, but we are also a small team. We are definitely planning on having it as part of our onboarding for everyone, but I haven't looked at the pricing for an enterprise level or large set of employees."
"I was using the web version. I don't know what I signed up for, but I don't think I paid anything. It was just free."
"I don't think that the cost is ever something that I considered. It has always been worth it to pay a small payment and help everyone with their tasks. It has definitely helped me become more organized. I don't think that the cost has been a barrier at all, and it is worth it to be able to pay for it."
"It would be better if I didn't use Lucidspark at all and just used Illustrator and Photoshop, but it doesn't make sense for my projects to do that. It would remove a tremendous amount of steps, but it would cost a tremendous amount of money."
"There is room for improvement in terms of the cost. It should all be bundled together. It's becoming like a Microsoft, where you have to buy all the different version features separately. It should just all be bundled with one price."
"The pricing is very reasonable. It is more expensive than some of the free options out there but much cheaper than Visio, and it works much better."
"The licensing is a fair price. We mainly have single users. We chose not to do the team user because of the cost. We didn't see a need for that at this point. We have talked to Lucidchart and Lucidspark salesmen often about that."
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Answers from the Community

KT
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021
Hi @Krista Thompson ​ - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating simultaneously and I've found its ease of use is really helpful when working with clients who likely don't have any previous experience.I use LucidChart for detailed process maps and flow charts (just...
See 2 answers
EB
Jul 7, 2021
Hi @Emilia Maria D'Anzica ​, @Kevin Heires ​,  @Sankalp Nigam, @Kevin Replinger, @Scott Rogers, @Mayank Thakur ​  and @MichaelSmith2. Would you mind sharing your professional experience with these tools? Tnx ​
KR
Jul 8, 2021
Hi @Krista Thompson ​ - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating simultaneously and I've found its ease of use is really helpful when working with clients who likely don't have any previous experience.I use LucidChart for detailed process maps and flow charts (just me, working alone). I used LucidSpark as a virtual whiteboard for dynamic brainstorming (working collaboratively).I hope this helps!
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

LucidChart vs LucidSpark for brainstorming sessions over Zoom
Hi @Krista Thompson ​ - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating ...
Do you recommend Lucidchart?
I definitely recommend Lucidchart. I feel it is one of the top visual collaboration platforms that’s available on the market. Out of all the solutions I have tried, it is by far the best for diagra...
Can we use a product like Lucidchart for "personal" use?
Absolutely! Lucidchart is a clever tool that is fit for purpose for whatever activity you would like - whether it's your thoughts or processes. There is a well-populated library of well-designed te...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks
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Find out what your peers are saying about Lucidchart vs. Lucidspark and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.