Lucidchart vs Visio comparison

Lucid Software and Microsoft are both solutions in the Mind Mapping Software category. Lucid Software is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Lucid Software holds a 24.8% mindshare in MMS, compared to Microsoft’s 29.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Lucid Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Lucidchart

Read 56 Lucidchart reviews

5,234 Views
733 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Visio

Read 108 Visio reviews

7,159 Views
1,002 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Lucidchart

Visio

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 3, 2025

Visio and Lucidchart compete in the diagramming software category, each offering unique features and benefits. Visio appears to have the upper hand in integrations with Microsoft Office and creating detailed diagrams, while Lucidchart stands out in real-time collaboration and cross-platform usability.

Features: Visio benefits from seamless integration with Microsoft Office, has an extensive library of templates for engineering and network diagrams, and offers robust BPMN capabilities. Lucidchart shines with real-time collaboration, ease of use across multiple platforms, and flexibility in designing complex processes quickly.

Room for Improvement: Visio could enhance pen input support, dynamic grid controls, and improve integration with non-Microsoft tools. Users also desire better layering, sharing features, and web publishing options. Lucidchart can improve by adding more comprehensive training resources, advanced automation features, and offering more versatile design templates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Visio relies on on-premises or enterprise deployment models, tying in with Microsoft infrastructure and offering various support experiences through Microsoft or third-party resources. Lucidchart excels in cloud-based deployment, offering easy access, faster collaborations, and positive experiences with responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Visio provides varied pricing models based on licensing and bundles, being cost-effective within the Microsoft ecosystem but considered pricey for wider deployment. ROI is linked to integration and time savings in documentation. Lucidchart is perceived as more cost-effective for cloud users, with reasonable subscription fees and flexibility in user counts, providing value in collaborative projects despite some pricing challenges.

To learn more, read our detailed Lucidchart vs. Visio Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart vs. Visio

September 2025

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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 Mind Mapping Software

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)

Visio

Ranking in Mind Mapping Software

1st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

108

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Mind Mapping Software category, the mindshare of Lucidchart is 24.8%, up from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 29.6%, down from 30.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Mind Mapping Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Visio	29.6%
Lucidchart	24.8%
Other	45.599999999999994%

Mind Mapping Software

Featured Reviews

Michael Verruto

Managing Director, Project Design+Development at a government with 10,001+ employees

Visual approach facilitates clarity and process efficiency in complex real estate tasks

I haven't done much with Lucidchart's integration with other popular apps such as Teams, though one of my colleagues mentioned it can be added. This has sparked my interest to look into integration with Excel and Word, though we haven't implemented these features yet in our less than a year of operation. I access Lucidchart from multiple devices, including iPhone, iPad, and PC desktop. Our PCs are all laptops, so we can work remotely. I've collaborated with people from home on my iPad while they were on their laptop, though this isn't our routine behavior. I would recommend Lucidchart to others, but I'd also recommend exploring other options. It depends on what your fit and feel is for what you're trying to accomplish. For heavy users or technical users, Lucidchart might be very appealing. It has more capabilities than I'm currently using. The Highway Bridge Maintenance group, who are familiar with Agile processes, speak positively about it. For average users, they might find similar functionality in Miro or other less expensive alternatives. Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

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Osama Nabih

Chief Executive Officer at Easy Touch

Has helped me communicate business processes clearly and improve documentation efficiency

The customer service experience rates a seven. It's very difficult to find the right person. When you have an issue and open a ticket, sometimes the wrong persons answer and don't know the solution. They shift you from one person to another and sometimes it takes weeks to find a solution for a problem. It happened with me more than one time. Sometimes the answer is misleading. For example, we had an issue in Enterprise Group in KSA, and we raised a ticket with Microsoft. They sent us a document of 170 pages with possible root causes and solutions. The cost to deploy this 170-page solution was too high and the needed time was months. It was almost not an answer. If they don't give me a specific reason, they haven't replied to my question. We neglected the document from Microsoft and started deep diving and finally found the solution ourselves.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very effective tool for documenting processes and using it has improved our efficiency significantly."

"The collaboration, hands-down, is the top feature. It is valuable because our company doesn't believe in working in silos... While I may be the one leading the efforts, it's very important that my team gets buy-in on decisions being made when we're designing. It's critical, especially in this virtual environment, when we're not in an office to have a team meeting and able to whiteboard something. Lucidchart is an extremely useful tool for our team."

"The ability for Lucidchart to create database schemas or modify existing data structures is strong. That's what I initially introduced it for in our organization. The script that Lucidchart provides works with other systems like Oracle, SQL Server, and Postgres that I can copy-paste, and get a quick dump of metadata and import into has saved me a ton of steps that I didn't have to manually create these tables. I had a lot of things where I still had to put in the linkages between tables, but I didn't have to type in every field name, every data type, and everything else that came in. That saved me tons of time."

"I love the fact that you can just integrate a drawing into Google Slides. I build a lot of visuals in Lucidchart, and then, rather than sharing them directly from Lucidchart, I just build Google Slides decks for senior management, and I link the Lucidchart on the cloud version to a slide image. That makes it easy. This way, I can build in one tool and show in another."

"The swimlanes feature is one that I use a lot. I have used swimlane diagrams to create business process flows and I think that it does the job pretty well."

"The most valuable features are the different templates that they have already created, as well as all the different shapes you can use in the process charts because each shape stands for a different element or thing that's being done. It's easy to distinguish between different steps using the already set-out shapes."

"Lucidchart is a lovely tool for creating visual representations of any process or organization."

"The interface is really good and it is very easy to use."

More Lucidchart pros

"The solution is easy to understand with some hands-on experience."

"Visio has improved our organization through an essential collaboration with the other Microsoft applications like SharePoint and Excel. So basically in the earlier days, what used to happen, a majority of the organization captured all the as-is process, the time and motion data in the form of Excel and then they used to create process diagrams using other freeware applications. Collaboration allows easy and convenient sharing with other stakeholders, that is really helpful with Visio."

"The interface is the most valuable aspect of this solution."

"This is a very straightforward product and I don't think that anything needs to be simplified."

"The most valuable features are that the user experience is simple, and it's customizable."

"The usability in general is good. The integration of uploading custom stencils is also very nice."

"Visio has improved my workflow by making it easy to create charts, diagrams, and basic illustrations that I can use in my client reports and proposals. It has saved me a lot of time I would otherwise spend creating visuals for clients by hand."

"The solution is easy to scale."

More Visio pros

Cons

"One downside is that you can only modify things online, but when you download work, you download it as an image. It would be useful to have an option to modify it locally."

"Although it comes with a lot of pre-existing tools, it would help if it had some more design templates. By now, they must know what kinds of things people are trying out, and that should help them create more templates. I would also like to see a little more automation."

"It would be really helpful if we could create a process flow based on a Word Document or a PPT file."

"What I do find extremely frustrating is that when I've sent the sheet to non-license holders, you have to create an account. You create a username and password. The path taken to create that account is so confusing that everyone thinks that they have to give their credit card number, and then they're reluctant. They don't want to go through the sheet."

"The communication with sales has been pretty poor. They have been spotty in terms of response. So far, that has been our problem with it. We were in contact with one of their representatives, but he just kind of disappeared one day and we couldn't find him anymore. He has not been responsive to email."

"Lucid should create some proper documentation and video tutorials to demonstrate the capabilities of the product to new users. It should explain everything that it offers and everything that it can be used for."

"One area for improvement is the fact that I had to create two sheets. I had to create a process flow diagram, and I had to create a timeline. I wasn't able to do that in one sheet. If they could add that kind of feature, where you could input a timeline and different types of templates into one worksheet, that would be really useful. I had to include two and then cut and paste, and that was an extra step for me."

"Wireframing can be improved. For mock-ups and wireframing, only 10% of what is required is there. If they can develop this feature, it would be much better because it will then provide everything. Currently, we can design network diagrams, processes, etc., but we should also be able to do wireframing."

More Lucidchart cons

"Integration with other software would be an area of improvement, so that it's not just used to document but also as a center plane for information sharing."

"It can be complex. If you don't know a little bit about it, it can get really confusing."

"The improvement I want to see in Visio is being able to edit it more quickly, particularly when pulling it out of another software and then editing it on that non-Visio software. Currently, the process affects the overall performance because it's not as quick as I want it to be."

"Its support team could be well-equipped with the required information."

"The export and import functionality from Visio to other tools and the import and export functionality from other tools to Visio are areas with shortcomings."

"The tools panel at the top, et cetera, seems really complicated."

"There are some issues in Visio with the connectors, and it gets tricky when you want to connect objects with each other."

"From my perspective, Visio could probably add more help guidelines for users, and I would prefer to see more intuitive user interfaces to help with dragging and dropping, using the right components, etc."

More Visio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have only used the trial version and have not yet paid for it, or explored the pricing options."

"There is a nominal charge for the paid version of the product. They have a free version available and from what I could see, there was not much difference between it and the pro version."

"We chose Lucid based on the price comparison between it and draw.io... Lucidchart was about 15 percent cheaper per user... I was surprised to learn that it came with a separate subscription model and was not included in my existing Lucidchart subscription."

"The price and licensing are good."

"I was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."

"The price of this product is a little bit high. It is probably 20% higher than what I expected to pay for such a solution."

"I pay $95 a year for it. It seems like a reasonable price."

"The pricing and licensing are fine, though I wish they didn't require you to buy the licenses in batches of five."

More Lucidchart pricing and cost advice

"Visio is the cheapest solution because it has the basics. Everyone starts with Visio for designing processes because doing it in PowerPoint is a mess. I'm still a student, so I don't pay for licensing."

"I haven't looked at the prices lately. We have an older copy, and it was a couple of hundred dollars for this software. That's a huge expense."

"Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription."

"The popularity of a product is an indicator of its price. Because of the popularity of Visio, its price is on the higher side. We need better pricing for it."

"There are some cheaper as well as free solutions."

"Cloud-based tools are always cheaper since they are subscription-based. I use the on-premises version of Visio hence the price is quite expensive. However, I believe that the cloud version of Visio may not be as expensive as the on-premises version."

"I rate the price of Visio a six out of ten."

"The solution could be less expensive."

More Visio pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	61

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 ...

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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...

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What needs improvement with Lucidchart?

The system is a bit clumsy when it comes to stylizing to match corporate imaging styles. In real estate, we need everything to have the same look and feel as our materials. Beyond dropping a logo i...

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How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?

I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...

See all answers

What do you like most about Visio?

The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?

One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about the price with a Microsoft representative. If asked to rate the price, I would gi...

See all answers

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Compared 29% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs Visio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Blueworks Live vs Visio

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart

September 2025

Download Lucidchart product report

Buyer's Guide

Visio

September 2025

Download Visio product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Visio

Overview

Our online diagram application makes it easy to sketch and share professional flowchart diagrams. From brainstorming to project management, we support all of your communication needs. That’s why millions of users choose Lucidchart.

Lucid Software

Visio is an innovative collaborative solution that enables users to quickly visualize data-connected business process flows with a host of integrated intuitive features that bring the power of Microsoft 365 to Visio. Visio allows users to easily create professional diagrams, graphs, and other visual data, easily anywhere, anytime, and with anyone. Users are able to confidently and easily transform data into creative powerful visuals. Visio provides dozens of easy-to-use templates along with thousands of customizable colorful shapes that bring a user's best ideas to life. Visio is available for all Microsoft 365 commercial users and is available on desktop and Web applications.

Visio Features

Visio can easily create visual data for today’s business needs. Some of its most useful visual data include:

Flowcharts: Users can easily bring business concepts to fruition with Visio’s robust flowchart features. Visio provides a huge library of shapes, stencils, and templates to transform numbers and data into impactful, easy-to-understand business stories.
Organizational charts: Visio makes it easy to design articulate org charts to better visualize team, reporting, and hierarchy structures. Users are then able to seamlessly share the charts with stakeholders, teams, and employees.
Network diagrams: Users are able to creatively display how a system design processes function and visually illustrate how devices and networks interact with each other using a variety of network shapes, templates, and connector tools.
Brainstorming: Visio makes brainstorming simple and actionable with a wide range of templates designed specifically for interpreting problems and mapping out solutions, including fishbone and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) diagrams.
Floor plans: Users can design ergonomic workspaces, retail store layouts, new homes, and more with accurate, scalable templates and tools to help them better visualize function, flow, and overall aesthetic appeal.
Accessible: Visio is able to integrate with a wide variety of accessibility tools, such as Narrator, Accessibility Checker, and high-contrast support, to ensure Visio diagrams are available to your entire team.

Reviews from Real Users

“Visio has improved my workflow by making it easy to create charts, diagrams, and essential illustrations to use in my client reports and proposals. It has saved me a lot of time I would otherwise spend creating visuals for clients manually.” - Michael B., Principal Consultant at Lexington Consulting

“I use it for diagramming networks, racks, data centers, data flow applications, etc. It is a useful tool to map data flows, network objects, and computer science technology and to show to clients. It does what I need it to do. It's a tool I've used the longest, so I know it the best, and that's probably the claim to fame.” - Greg S., Director of Solution Architecture at Winslow Technology Group

“We use Visio for architecture modeling. We also use it to facilitate communication with other people. The feature I like most about Visio is that it acts as a facilitator of communication, as it displays information in a way that's easier to understand.” - Guy M., IT/Business Architect at a financial services firm

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks

Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart vs. Visio

September 2025

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