What is a tier list maker?
A tier list maker lets you sort things into ranked rows, from S at the top down to D, and save the result as a picture. You drop in images or type names, drag each one into the row it deserves, and download a PNG you can post, send or pin to the fridge.
Here's what you get from a real board. Title it Best pizza toppings, add 15 toppings, then put 3 in S, 9 in A, 2 in B, 1 in C and leave D empty. The download is a PNG 1,200 pixels wide and 852 pixels tall. It shows a title bar across the top, five colored rows with their letters on the left, and your toppings as square tiles in the order you placed them.
Items can be pictures (PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, or the first frame of a GIF) or short text labels up to 40 characters, and the two mix freely in the same row. You can rename, recolor, reorder, add or delete rows. Anything you haven't ranked yet waits in an unranked tray underneath, and the tray never shows up in the picture.
Most tier list sites start you somewhere else: a gallery of other people's templates, a login wall before they'll save your work, and so many ads that the board is the smallest thing on the page. This one opens on a blank board. There's no signup, and nothing to sign up for.
Why rank things in tiers instead of a numbered list
A numbered list forces a decision you often can't make. Is Pepperoni number 2 and Mushroom number 3, or the other way round? You don't know, and it doesn't matter. What you do know is that both are great and pineapple is a crime. Tiers let you say exactly that.
That's why the format stuck. It's honest about ties. Ten characters can share A tier without anyone pretending there's a meaningful gap between the fourth and the fifth. It also reads at a glance. Someone scrolling past your picture sees the top row, the bottom row and the fight in the middle in about two seconds. A list of 30 numbered items takes a lot longer than that.
Tier lists are also made to be argued with. Post one and the replies write themselves: "C tier? Are you serious?" For a group chat, a classroom debate or a team deciding which feature to build first, that argument is the point. A tier list gives everyone the same picture to point at.
You could build one by hand in a slide editor or a spreadsheet. You'd spend twenty minutes lining up boxes, cropping photos so they match and exporting a screenshot that squashes half of them. A tier list maker does the boring part: square tiles, even gaps, rows that grow when they fill up, and a clean export every time.
How the tier list maker works
The tier list maker does all of its work in your browser. When you add a photo, your browser decodes it, cuts out the largest square in the middle and shrinks it to a 240 × 240 pixel tile. A wide 1600 × 900 photo keeps its central 900 × 900 area, starting 350 pixels in from the left edge. A tall 1080 × 1920 phone screenshot keeps its middle 1080 × 1080, losing 420 pixels from the top and 420 from the bottom. That's usually the status bar and the space under the content, which you didn't want anyway.
Tiles are stored as WebP with transparency, so character art cut out on a clear background stays cut out. It doesn't get a white box behind it. The board saves itself to your browser's storage a quarter of a second after every change. Refresh the page and your rows come back exactly as you left them.
Moving items uses pointer events, which work the same for a mouse, a finger or a stylus. When you download, the picture is drawn fresh onto a canvas from the saved tiles. It isn't a screenshot of the page, and that's why a photo never comes out stretched.
Nothing you add is uploaded. Cropping, saving and drawing the PNG all happen on your device. There's no server copy of your images, which is also why there are no share links. Somebody would have to host the pictures.
Customizing your tiers
The default board is five rows, S to D, in a warm-to-cool run of pastel colors. Almost everything about it can change.
| Setting | Default | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rows | 5 (S, A, B, C, D) | 1–12 | Add row gives you E, then F, then a row called "New" |
| Row label | The tier letter | 1–24 characters | Click the letter to rename it; an empty label goes back to the old one |
| Row color | Red, orange, amber, yellow, lime | 8 presets | Green, blue and pink join the five defaults |
| Title | None | 0–80 characters | Adds a 72-pixel bar across the top of the picture |
| Items | None | Up to 300 | Images up to 25 MB each, or text up to 40 characters |
Words make fine tiers. "Would die for", "Fine, I guess" and "Never again" are all under 24 characters, and long labels wrap inside the colored cell instead of spilling out. For a school or work ranking, try "Must have", "Nice to have" and "Later". It turns a tier list into a quick priority board.
The picture's size follows the rows. Each row fits 8 tiles across the 1,200-pixel width. A ninth tile starts a second line, and that row grows from 128 to 252 pixels tall. In the pizza example above, A tier holds 9 toppings, so it's the one tall row, and that's where the 852-pixel height comes from. Even 200 items in a single row export with nothing cut off. The row just becomes 3,104 pixels tall.
Common problems and how to fix them
If something isn't doing what you expected, it's almost always one of these.
The Download PNG button is grayed out
The picture only includes the ranked rows, and every row is empty. Items sitting in the unranked tray don't count. Move at least one item into a row and the button wakes up.
The important part of my photo got cropped off
The crop always takes the middle square. If the face you care about is near the left edge of a wide photo, crop it roughly square in your phone's photo editor first, then add it again. It takes ten seconds and the tile will show what you meant.
An image won't add
You'll see "Couldn't read that file. Try PNG, JPG or WebP." HEIC photos only work in browsers that can decode them, so if one fails, convert it first. Files over 25 MB are refused by name. The other files in the same batch still come in.
My board vanished after I closed the tab
Private or incognito windows often switch off the storage the board saves to. The page tells you once when that's happening. The fix is simple: download the PNG before you close the window. The save also lives in one browser on one device, so your laptop's board won't show up on your phone.
Start over wipes the board and the saved copy together, after one confirmation. There's no undo. If you might want the old list back, download it first.
Related tools
A tier list is often step two. If you can't agree on the order of play, the list randomizer shuffles your items fairly before anyone starts ranking. Splitting a class or office into groups to argue over their own boards? The team generator does that in one click, and the random name picker decides who presents first.
After the ranking, the meme generator is there for the reaction image when your friends put your favorite show in D tier. The image combiner stitches two tier lists side by side for a "mine vs. yours" post. And when the ranking needs actual numbers behind it, like votes per option, a bar graph maker says it more plainly than letters can.
Frequently asked questions
Can I share my tier list with a link?
No. A link would mean storing your images on a server, and the tier list maker doesn't keep a copy of anything. Download the PNG and post it, or use Copy image and paste it straight into a chat. The picture is the share.
Why isn't the unranked tray in my downloaded picture?
On purpose. The tray is your workspace, full of things you haven't decided about yet. Leaving it out means you can download a half-finished list without your leftovers showing. To include an item, put it in a row.
Why don't I see the Copy image button?
Your browser can't put pictures on the clipboard, so the button is hidden rather than left there to fail. Download PNG works in every browser. Open the file and share it from there.
What happens to the items when I delete a row?
They go back to the end of the tray, in the same order they had in the row. Nothing gets thrown away. The delete button is disabled when only one row is left, because a tier list needs at least one tier.
How do I remove a single item?
Start dragging it, and a "Drop here to remove" bar appears at the bottom of the screen. On a phone or with a keyboard, tap or select the item and press Remove in the bar that appears.
Can I rank transparent PNG character art?
Yes. Tiles keep their transparency, so cut-out characters sit on the dark row background in the picture instead of inside white squares. It's the look most game and anime tier lists go for.