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Lucidchart vs Mermaid Chart

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Lucidchart starts at $7.95, Mermaid Chart at $80. Both have a free tier. Only Lucidchart ships a public API.

LucidchartBrowser diagramming for flowcharts, org charts and architecture, with data-linked shapes and AI generation.Mermaid ChartTurns text, code, or prompts into flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and Gantt charts, from the Mermaid.js team.

Side by side

FactLucidchartMermaid Chart
CategoryDiagramming & WhiteboardsDiagramming & Whiteboards
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$7.95 seat_month$80 year
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, APIWeb, Vscode Ext
CompanyLucid Software Inc.Mermaid Chart
Launched—2022
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

Lucidchart

The default choice for team diagramming: data-linked shapes and layers handle diagrams that outgrow a whiteboard tool, and the integration list means the diagram ends up where the work already happens. Per-seat pricing with a three-user minimum on Team makes it expensive for small groups, and Lucid keeps moving the product's URLs around.

Pros

  • Data-linked shapes with conditional formatting
  • Layers for managing dense diagrams
  • Lucid AI generates and summarises diagrams from prompts
  • Over 100 integrations including Jira, Confluence, Slack and AWS

Cons

  • Free tier caps editable documents to a handful
  • Team plan carries a three-seat minimum
  • Per-seat pricing, and published figures differ across Lucid's own pages

Mermaid Chart

Being built by the Mermaid.js maintainers themselves is the real edge here: diagrams-as-code that developers already write in markdown get a proper collaborative editor and AI-assisted generation on top, instead of a third party reverse-engineering the syntax. The free tier's five-diagram cap is tight, and the vendor's recent rebrand from mermaidchart.com to mermaid.ai makes some third-party pricing pages describing it look slightly out of date.

Pros

  • built and maintained by the original Mermaid.js open-source team
  • generates diagrams from plain text or AI prompts, or direct syntax editing
  • real-time multi-user collaboration
  • integrations with VS Code, Confluence, and similar developer tools

Cons

  • free plan is capped at five diagrams
  • recent domain move from mermaidchart.com to mermaid.ai has left some third-party listings referencing the old pricing page
  • per-user annual billing can add up for larger teams versus flat team pricing

Which one fits

Choose Lucidchart if you need

  • Engineering and ops teams documenting systems
  • Org charts driven from an HR spreadsheet
  • Companies already on Jira, Confluence or Teams

Choose Mermaid Chart if you need

  • developers already writing Mermaid syntax who want a hosted editor
  • teams wanting diagrams generated from text or code with light AI assistance

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