Best Wedding Seating Chart Apps: Free & Paid (2026)

The best wedding seating chart app depends on what you need to hand over: a floor plan for your venue, a list of tables for your caterer, or a way for guests to find their seats at the reception. Start with that decision before comparing prices.

For a free browser-based floor plan, start with Wedding Planning Assistant. For confirmed guests already in Zola, check its iOS seating tool. For a QR code table finder alongside wedding video, look at Amara. For professional venue layouts, ask your planner about Prismm, formerly Allseated. Joy is useful for RSVPs and table-assignment tags, but those are a different workflow from a visual seating editor.

Amara publishes this guide and makes one of the products compared. We checked the linked vendors' public documentation on September 7, 2026. Competitor descriptions are documentation-based, not claims of hands-on testing. Prices below are in USD; confirm the current offer before purchasing.

Wedding seating chart apps at a glance

A planning editor and a guest-facing seat finder solve different problems. A PDF can help your venue set the room; a name lookup helps a guest find their table. You may want both. A guest-facing digital tool also needs a practical fallback for people without a working phone or internet connection.

Which tool fits your wedding?

Amara: seating plus a guest-facing wedding experience

Amara's wedding seating chart combines a visual table layout with a guest list. You can move tables, choose round or rectangular shapes, set their capacities, and include room objects such as a dance floor. Searchable tables, phone-sized property controls, zoom, undo/redo, capacity warnings, and save status help with larger rooms. Guest names can be entered manually or imported from a CSV, with optional table assignments and contact fields.

At the reception, guests open the wedding link from a shared QR code, search for their name, and select it to see their assigned table. Where the floor plan's table label matches the assignment, the guest view can highlight that table. The same wedding experience connects to live wedding video and the video guestbook.

Amara's actual floor-plan editor, captured September 8, 2026, with a sample layout. This is product demonstration data, not a customer wedding.

This is a good fit when you want seating to be useful on the day as well as during planning. If your only deliverable is a printable floor plan, compare the free planning tools first: Amara exports the guest list as CSV, not a venue PDF floor plan. The importer accepts Name, Table, Phone, Email, Notes, with only Name required. It does not replace an RSVP system or automatically arrange guests based on relationships. Private contact details and notes are excluded from public seat lookup.

The published Amara packages are $59 for Essentials and $179 for Premium. Exploring the editor is free; check the package details for the video features you need.

Zola: a seating tool for your existing guest list

Zola's seating tool draws confirmed guests from its guest list and supports table layouts and downloadable plans. Its help center specifies iOS availability and a free trial for up to 15 guests; additional guests require Premium. Zola's published app guide lists the seating purchase at $14.99. Check the offer in your app before committing. Seating instructions, published pricing.

This is worth checking if Zola already holds your RSVPs. Device support is a practical selection criterion: try the seating workflow on the device you will actually use, especially if you plan to work from a laptop or Android phone.

Wedding Planning Assistant: a free browser-based floor plan

Wedding Planning Assistant documents a free seating tool with guest-list import, table and room elements, meal information, collaboration, and downloadable plans. It is a useful starting point when you need a layout to share with your venue or caterer. Its documentation also covers printable place cards and table numbers. Tool and instructions.

Before building the whole reception, import a small sample list, add the table shapes your venue uses, and inspect an exported PDF. That checks whether the output fits your actual handover process.

Joy: manage table groups alongside RSVPs

Joy's free Guest List Manager supports collaborators, spreadsheet import/export, RSVP answers, and tags that can represent table assignments. These are useful for keeping attendance and table groups together. The public documentation reviewed here does not establish a dedicated visual floor-plan editor, so this comparison does not rate one. Joy Guest List Manager.

If Joy already holds your RSVPs, you can keep it as the source of your confirmed guest list and use an exported spreadsheet with a separate layout tool. Check the export columns against the receiving tool's import format.

Prismm, formerly Allseated: coordinate the venue layout

Allseated rebranded to Prismm, whose website now identifies it as part of Cvent. It documents 2D/3D event diagramming and collaboration, with help pages for assigning guests to tables and seats.

Ask your venue or planner whether they already work in Prismm before creating a separate plan. Shared access to their existing room layout may be more useful than recreating it yourself. We could not verify a single public couple-facing price, so request current access and pricing details rather than relying on older Allseated offers.

Five checks before choosing a seating app

1. Try your real working device. Confirm that editing, importing, and exporting work on your laptop, tablet, or phone. Guest browser access and planner editing access are separate questions.
2. Import a small sample. Include a household, a hyphenated name, two guests with the same first name, and one unassigned guest. Check whether rows represent individuals or parties and whether a required table column is present.
3. Check the room and handover. Use the venue's dimensions and approved table capacities. Confirm what the venue needs: a PDF floor plan, spreadsheet, meal counts, or all three. A visual diagram alone is not confirmation that aisles and exits are suitable.
4. Test a late change. Move a sample guest, reopen the guest-facing view or export a new plan, and check that the assignment is correct. Decide who owns the final version shared with vendors.
5. Plan arrival without a phone. Keep an alphabetical paper list or a staffed lookup point. For digital lookup, test reception coverage at the entrance and use readable QR signage.

For a larger wedding, repeat the import and export with your expected guest count before purchasing. Check capacity indicators, duplicate names, and the time it takes to find someone.

Set up Amara's table finder from a spreadsheet

Keep one row per guest. With named headers, only Name is required; a blank Table leaves the guest unassigned:

Name,Table,Phone,Email,Notes
Jamie Chen,Table 1,,,
Morgan Patel,Table 1,,morgan@example.test,
Sam Rivera,Table 2,,,
José García,,,,Assign a table later
"Lee, Alex",Table 2,,,Sample guest with a comma in their name

Download this sample guest-list CSV and replace the example rows. In the wedding admin area, open Guests and choose Import CSV. Upload a file or paste its contents, then inspect the preview. Invalid rows are reported before importing; names with commas must be quoted. Imports accept up to 2,000 guests at a time and allow duplicate names and blank table assignments. Review the resulting list after import. This imports assignments you have chosen, rather than automatically optimizing them.

Create the corresponding tables in the floor-plan editor, using matching labels such as Table 1. The label connects a guest's assignment to the table shown in the guest map. Set table capacities and arrange room objects with your venue's layout in mind.

Open the wedding link on another phone, use Find Your Seat, type a sample name, and select the matching result. Check the table number and map before printing your QR signage. Repeat that check after changes, and prepare your paper fallback.

If you also plan to show guest cameras on a screen, use the venue Wi-Fi and live-streaming guide to prepare that separate setup. Video and a simple seat lookup have different connection demands.

What we tested with 500 guests

On September 7, 2026, we tested Amara with a synthetic 500-guest list and 50-table room in a local production build. Chrome browser checks covered desktop, tablet, and phone widths down to 320 pixels. The guest list paginated at 50 rows, and search found the final guest in the dataset. This is a documented product test, not a real wedding case study or a claim of testing competing products.

The checks included importing names with accents, quoted commas, duplicate names, and no table assignment; finding guests by keyboard; changing assignments; and refreshing the guest-facing page. Renaming an assigned table preserved the assignment. Deleting a table moved its guests to the pending-assignment state. Save-conflict and failed-save checks confirmed that a local draft was retained instead of silently discarded.

The public demo's guest result with sample names. Guests select the matching person to see their table and other guests at that table. Try the demo by searching “Priya”.

The browser import test used pasted CSV because the test browser's native file picker was unavailable. The shared parser and CSV export contents also had automated coverage; native download completion was not verified. Responsive Chrome checks do not certify physical iPhones, Android devices, or Safari. Rehearse your full guest list on the devices and venue connection you will use.

Common questions

Is there a free wedding seating chart app?

Wedding Planning Assistant lists its browser seating tool as free. Joy's guest-list tags are another free way to organize table groups. Zola's documented free seating trial is limited to 15 guests. Amara is free to explore, with paid packages for the wedding experience.

Can I use a QR code instead of a printed seating chart?

A QR code can open a guest-facing lookup such as Amara's. It does not identify a guest by itself: in Amara, guests search for and select their name. Keep a paper list or a helper available for guests who cannot use it.

Should I assign a table or a specific chair?

Confirm what your venue and caterer require. Table assignments tell a guest where to go; specific seat assignments may need a tool and export that identify individual chairs. Amara's guest list assigns table labels, so do not treat it as a chair-by-chair meal-service manifest.

What should I choose if I already use Zola or Joy?

Start with your existing RSVP workflow and check the missing step. Zola offers its iOS seating tool; Joy documents table tags and exports. If you also want guest name lookup at the reception, compare that requirement separately. Explore Amara's seating chart and guest view.