Free Star Map Generator
Most “free star map” sites are storefronts where free means a thumbnail. Here is the actual deal, stated up front.
Open the free generator
Free, in your browser, with no account and nothing to buy. The SVG, the 300 dpi PNG and the PDF (a real page of the size you pick, from 21 × 29.7 cm to 70 × 100 cm) are each the complete poster.
What is genuinely free
- Unlimited maps — every date, place, theme, size and caption option, no cap.
- All three downloads — the vector SVG; a PNG rasterized at 300 dpi for the page size you picked (5906 × 8268 px at 50×70 cm); and a PDF built as a real page of that same size (a 50 × 70 cm page at the default, a 21 × 29.7 cm one at A4), so a printer or a print shop's upload form reads the dimensions out of the file. Complete charts: nothing obscured, nothing downscaled.
- No account, no email, no upload — the page is static and the astronomy runs in your browser; your data never leaves it. It even works offline once loaded.
What is not free
Nothing. There is no upgrade, no subscription, no feature locked behind a trial, and no checkout anywhere on this site.
This page used to say otherwise, so here is the correction in plain sight: until August 2026 it advertised a high-resolution export you would have to buy one day, and the free file was stamped with a faint diagonal mark to make that future purchase look worthwhile. The purchase was never built. The stamp was therefore doing nothing except damaging your file, so both are gone. What is left is one credit line along the bottom edge — attribution, not a restriction, and you are welcome to crop it before printing.
Then who pays for it?
Nobody has to. It is a static page with no server, no database and no per-visitor cost: the astronomy runs on your device, the star positions come from the public-domain Yale Bright Star Catalogue, and the constellation figures come from d3-celestial (BSD-3). Hosting it costs roughly what hosting a text file costs, which is why it can be free without a catch.
What the chart draws
The chart holds the 1,630 stars brighter than magnitude 5.0 and the 89 constellation figures, and the Milky Way is drawn as a soft band. The Moon is drawn in its real phase, and left off when it was below your horizon. The five naked-eye planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, are drawn where they stood. The Sun is drawn too whenever it was up, and the caption says whether your moment was daylight, twilight or full dark: the stars are always drawn where they stood, even when daylight or twilight hid them. So is an eclipse, if your moment falls inside one. Uranus, Neptune and 133 deep-sky objects are one switch away: tick Deep-sky objects and the chart marks the Messier objects and southern showpieces and adds Uranus and Neptune (see them over London on a winter evening). Great comets since 1900 can be added (Hale-Bopp over London, 1997). Not drawn: faint comets and satellites, whose orbits this tool does not compute. Every position is carried to your date by precession. Not modelled: the stars’ own proper motion. A date before 15 October 1582 is read in the Julian calendar. It all runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and the downloads are complete and free. Accuracy, print sizes and privacy, answered in full.
Common questions
Is it really free?
Yes, in full: the generator, every option, and all three downloads — SVG, 300 dpi PNG and a PDF at the page size you pick, from A4 to 60 × 90 cm — with no account and no email. There is no paid tier and none is planned — nothing on this site takes payment or asks for card details.
What is the small line along the bottom of my chart?
A one-line credit, set in the caption colour at roughly the size of the date line: “Made with Starmap” and the site address. It is attribution, not degradation — the chart above it is the complete map at full resolution, with nothing blurred, stamped over or held back. Crop it off before printing if you would rather not have it.
Do you collect my data?
Your inputs, never: there is no backend, no account and no upload, so no server ever sees the dates, places or captions you type — the page is a static file and you can read its source. The published site does run a cookieless pageview counter (GoatCounter) on every page, which records that a page was viewed and not who viewed it; the privacy notice is linked in the footer of the live site.