10 Best FREE UX card sorting tool

10 Best FREE Card Sorting Tools

If you are thinking about what card sorting software to choose, take a few notes in mind. There are not many online card sorting tools where you can just share a link and gather data from your target audience. 

Keep in mind, all tools have a FREE version of their products, which is usually enough to perform a simple exercise.

Here is the quick comparison of all online UX card sorting tools in the table.

Best online card sorting tools & software for 2024:

  1. UXtweak
  2. kardSort
  3. Miro
  4. Proven by Users
  5. xSort
  6. Optimal Workshop
  7. Pen & paper
  8. UserZoom
  9. Useberry
  10. Figjam
card sorting tools table
Best card sorting tools

My list of online card sorting tools

I reviewed all tools I was able to discover on the Internet. You can find a brief description and summary for each tool below. I hope it helps you to decide which tool is the best fit for your use-case.

UXtweak⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid

Remote card sort: Yes

Analytics: Advanced

This is one of my favorites. They support all types of card sorting: open, closed, and hybrid. It’s a great online tool to create and manage your card sorting exercise. It’s easy to share with your respondents using their website widget, and you can even motivate people by setting up rewards.

This tool allows you to fully customize messages you show your visitors. It could be a welcome message, instructions, a thank you message, etc.

On top of that, you can create a custom questionnaire and ask people to fill it out before or after your study. Respondents who don’t match your target audience will not be able to proceed to your UX research.

They offer a number of other cool features such as session recording or unmoderated testing that can bring lots of insights about your UX as well.

Respondent Pool and Recruiter Widget available.

UXtweak Pricing:

Free: Max. 30 respondents and 20 cards per study
Paid plan: $99/month

If you want to learn more about conducting card sorting with UXtweak, you can check out their step-by-step video tutorial where they explain how to do card sorting with their tool: 

If you want to learn more about running card sorting studies with UXtweak, they also make step-by-step video guides on how to use their features:  

KardSort⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid Remote card sort: Yes Analytics: Simple It’s a nice free online card sorting tool that covers its purpose. You could hit limitations when you want to analyze data or use images in your card. Overall it could be a good solution if you are on a tight budget and don’t expect to combine your data output with other tools and services.

Kard Sort Pricing:

Free:  It’s completely free.
Kard sort

Card Sorting using Miro⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: None

A digital whiteboard tool, Miro is a great solution for when you want to conduct an online card sort but don’t have the money to pay for expensive tools. Although they don’t offer a dedicated card sorting app, Miro allows for easy collaboration so you’ll just need to invite your testers to your board and ask them to sort the cards. However, keep in mind that there’ll be no analytics generated afterwards. You’ll have to analyze the results yourself. 

Miro Pricing:

Free: Miro offers a free forever plan with some limitations.

Paid: Their Starter plan is $8/member/month, billed annually.

Miro

Proven by Users ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: Simple

This tool looks very old. The UI doesn’t seem very intuitive. However, they are releasing a new version by the end of this year, so we will see. What I like is the working demo. You can try it out without registration. They offer open, closed card sorting, and you can use images in cards as well.

Proven by Users Pricing:

Free:  Only 3 results per project can be collected. Logo uploads are disabled. Image cards are disabled.
Paid plan: starting at $49.95/month (based on how long do you want to keep the data)

proven by users

xSort ⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid
Remote card sort: No
Analytics: Medium

The good news is this tool is free. The bad news is it’s not an online tool. It’s a desktop app for Mac. You can try it out if it fits your use case. They support open, closed, and hybrid exercises. You can use sub-groups and display statistical results.

xSort Pricing:

Free:  Unlimited (Mac app)

Xsort

Optimal Workshop ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: Advanced

The Optimal Workshop suite consists of 5 quantitative and qualitative tools to help you with user research. One of them is OptimalSort, which is a tool focused on card sorting.

If you are looking for more information I found this comparison article – Optimal Workshop vs UXtweak which compares these highly rated card sort tools in more detail.

Optimal Workshop Pricing:

Free: Limited to 30 cards per a study, 10 participants per study
Paid plan: $208/month

optimal workshop card sort tool

Pen & paper⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed, Hybrid
Remote card sort: No
Analytics: None

Probably the simplest solution of all. And it works great. You don’t need any software, just create a card sorting session using pen and paper. Obviously, you can’t get feedback online (or it would be complicated), but it’s an easy solution if you want to create a quick test and got some potential respondents around you.

Pricing:

Free:  It’s almost free (count the cost of paper and pen 🙂).

Userzoom (now part of UserTesting) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: Advanced

This tool looks cool. They support both closed and open card sort. However, I am missing any guidance on how to create proper card sorting using their product. Their pricing seems to be a little bit complicated, for that reason it might be worth checking out some affordable Userzoom alternatives. They can customize the price base on your needs and volume which is not entirely clear to me, but it might work for your company or project.

UserZoom Pricing:

Free: no free trial or plan.
Paid: the pricing info is available upon request, from $70,000/year.

Userzoom card sort

Useberry ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: Medium

Although Useberry’s primary focus is codeless prototype analytics, card sorting is still one of their many features. They only allow for 2 main types of card sorting, but it can still work for you. The tool has a pleasant UI and nice analytics for its price. Their free plan is kind of limited, but would probably be enough for a small project.

Useberry Pricing:

Free: 1 project, 10 responses/month

Paid plans: start at $67/month, annual billing

useberry card sorting

Figjam ⭐️⭐️

Supported types: Open, Closed
Remote card sort: Yes
Analytics: None

Figjam is a remote collaborative whiteboarding tool by Figma. It’s an affordable option for running a simple card sort tool, if you don’t require any advanced analytics, as there’s none. However, you can still invite your testers to sort the cards inside the Figjam app and get insights into what structure they prefer!

Figjam Pricing:

Free: 3 collaborative design files

Paid plans: start at $3/month, annual billing

Editor’s note: The article was last updated at February 22th, 2024 to stay relevant and comprehensive.

figjam

Editors recommendation

 

After months of rigorously testing various usability tools, UXtweak emerged as my top choice, and here’s why:

Exceptional Pricing: UXtweak offers competitive pricing plans that deliver incredible value without breaking the bank.

Comprehensive Toolset: The range of tools available is unparalleled, encompassing everything from card sorting to usability testing, ensuring every aspect of my UX research is covered.

Advanced Analytics: The platform’s analytics tools provide deep insights and actionable data, empowering me to make informed, data-driven decisions.

Effortless Exports: With easy export options in both PDF and CSV formats, sharing findings and integrating them into my workflow has never been simpler.

In my quest for the ultimate UX research tool, UXtweak has proven to be the most reliable and efficient, making it an indispensable part of my toolkit.

Click here to learn more. 

FAQ

How do you conduct card sorting?

You can conduct card sorting offline, using paper cards, or using an online card sorting tool. See the exact steps of an online card sorting excercise in this example.

What are the benefits of card sorting?

Card sorting is a simple and quick-to-set-up method of getting an idea of how to structure your content, according to how your customers think. It is easy to understand, and cheap. It is an established method and provides a good baseline idea of how to structure your content.

What are the disadvantages of card sorting?

Open, closed, and hybrid card sorting. In open card sorting the users can define their own categories into which they sort the cards, or items of content, while in closed card sorting the categories are pre-defined. Hybrid card sorting has pre-defined categories, but users can also define their own if they feel the pre-defined categories are not sufficient. Learn more about various types of card sorting.