Give it the events. It orders them, shortens the labels to something readable at a glance, draws the spine horizontally or vertically, and marks where today sits — for a company history, a roadmap, or a subject that only makes sense chronologically. Free to try, and nothing to install.
Make a timeline freeTimeline
How the internet
got everywhere
1969
First message sent between two computers
1989
The web is proposed at CERN
2007
The internet moves into a pocket
2026
Two thirds of humanity online
Illustrative · Made with Infographic Generator AI
Start to finish
Bullet points, a paragraph of history, a spreadsheet with a date column, or a document containing the sequence. Order does not matter — it gets sorted.
Below four it is a list; above eight it becomes a scroll and loses the shape that made a timeline worth using. Keep the entries that changed what happened next.
Wide gives a horizontal spine that suits a slide or a wall. Portrait gives a vertical spine that reads well on a phone and prints on A4.
Verify every date against your source, and make sure the sheet shows where the present sits so a reader can tell history from plan.
A PNG, the timeline as a self-contained web page, or a share link. If it is going on a wall, take the PNG on a paid plan — it comes out at triple resolution, which holds up to about A2.
Founding, the pivot, the first big customer, the funding, today. Five to eight entries — a company history with twenty entries is an archive, not a story.
Watch out — Do not include an entry only because it was hard. Include it because it changed what happened next.
What shipped, what is shipping, what is planned. Mark the boundary between done and promised clearly, and date the promises loosely.
Watch out — A roadmap read as a commitment is how a timeline becomes a complaint. Say “planned” on the sheet.
Phases with owners and dates, so everybody looking at the wall knows what week the project is in.
Watch out — Show dependencies as an order, not as arrows crossing the page. If the arrows cross, it is a diagram, not a timeline.
The history of the internet, of a treaty, of a disease. The classic educational timeline, and the one people share most.
Watch out — Cite the dates. A shared timeline that gets a date wrong travels further than the correction.
Ten quiet years and one decisive month should not get space in proportion to their length — unless the passage of time is itself the point, in which case say so on the sheet.
Below four, a timeline is a list. Above eight it becomes a scroll, and the reader loses the shape that made the format worth using.
The label is a headline, not a summary. If an entry needs three lines, it wants its own sheet.
Years for decades of history, months for a year of a project. Mixing “2019” with “14 March” makes the reader do conversion work.
Every timeline that runs to today should show where today is. Without it, a reader cannot tell history from plan.
A list of events with dates, in any form — bullet points, a paragraph of history, a spreadsheet with a date column, or a document that contains the sequence. It will order them and shorten the labels.
Choose the wide shape for a horizontal spine suited to slides, or portrait for a vertical spine that reads well on a phone and prints on A4.
Technically many, usefully four to eight. If you have thirty, split them into eras and make one sheet per era, or make one sheet of the eras themselves.
Yes — ask for the planned entries to be shown as planned and they are drawn distinctly from the ones that have happened.
Yes. Save a brand kit and the spine, nodes and labels are all drawn in your palette.
A PNG at up to triple resolution, the timeline as one self-contained HTML file, or a share link that opens without an account. There is no SVG or PDF export; if you need a PDF, print the share page to one from your browser.
Yes to start. The free plan needs no card and is exactly one timeline to try, with both orientations and every shape available — enough to build a real one and decide. The download is standard quality and a small badge sits in the footer. Paid plans go from about 80 pieces a month upward and add brand kits, editing by asking, best-quality downloads and removal of the badge.
No. It runs in a browser on Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, iPad and phone — there is nothing to install, nothing to license and nothing to update. A timeline you make is reachable from any machine you sign in on, and a share link opens for people who have no account at all.
No, and that is a deliberate boundary. A Gantt chart tracks overlapping task bars, durations, dependencies and resources — it is a project-management artefact that wants a project-management tool. What this makes is a timeline for an audience: milestones on a spine, readable at a glance, sized for a slide or a wall. If your rows have start dates, end dates and dependencies, you want the other kind of tool.
No. The output is a composed sheet — an image, a web page or a share link — rather than something a reader clicks through. That is the right trade for a timeline that lands in a feed, a deck, a report or on a wall, where most people look once and never click. For a timeline someone is meant to explore, a dedicated interactive timeline tool suits you better.
Yes, and it is one of the formats this does best. Give it the events for a period, a movement or a life, and keep it to one topic per sheet — a timeline covering a whole module is one nobody revises from. Cite the dates on the sheet: a shared timeline that gets a date wrong travels further than the correction ever does.