8 Best Free Color Palette Generators in 2026

Coolors is my first pick for a generate-and-lock workflow. Press the spacebar and a five-color palette appears; click the lock icon on any color you like and press space again to keep it while the rest change. That generate-and-lock loop lets you keep a chosen accent while exploring the remaining colors.

The free account has clear limits. A free account can save up to 10 palettes, one project and one collection, and five favorite colors, according to the limits shown on the site. Coolors Pro is a paid plan that removes those caps, allows palettes with more than five colors, and adds advanced export options. The current billing is shown on the Coolors pricing page.

The export menu is the other strength. From a single palette you can copy a URL, export a PNG or PDF, or pull the colors out as CSS, an Adobe ASE swatch file, an SVG, or code. That range means you rarely need a second tool to move a palette into a design app.

The weakness is that trending palettes look like trending palettes. A Reddit discussion in r/Design made the case that colors pulled from a real photo often beat a generated scheme, because a generated palette is a set of plausible hex codes and not a decision about a place or a feeling. Use Coolors to iterate quickly, then check the result against real material.

Pick it if you want the fastest possible loop from a blank page to a saved palette. Skip it if you need unlimited saved palettes on a free account.

Adobe Color is free on the web and it covers the classic color jobs. The tool includes a color wheel with harmony rules, an option to extract a theme from an image, a gradient extractor, and an accessibility contrast checker. For a website or an interface, that contrast check is the feature that separates it from a pure inspiration tool.

Saving works without paying. You can save a palette to a Creative Cloud library with a free Adobe account, and the library syncs into other Adobe apps. The limit is that automatically applying saved palettes inside Adobe Express designs requires a paid plan, which the Adobe Color page states directly.

The weakness is the ecosystem pull. Adobe Color nudges you toward an Adobe account and other Adobe products, and designers who do not use that suite get less from the integration. The free tool itself is still complete, and you can copy hex values out and use them anywhere.

Pick it if accessibility and color rules matter more than rapid iteration. Skip it if you want to avoid creating an Adobe account for simple tasks.

Color Hunt is not a generator in the same sense as the others. It is an open, curated collection of palettes founded by designer Gal Shir in 2015, and each submission is reviewed before it appears, according to the about page. That curation is the point: you browse finished four-color combinations instead of generating random ones.

Filters make it practical. You can sort palettes by mood and use such as Pastel, Vintage, Retro, Neon, Warm, Dark and Earth, then copy the hex codes straight out. There is a companion palette creator, and the site runs a Chrome extension for quick access. Everything is free.

The weakness is control. You are choosing from grooves other people have already cut, so it is a poor fit when you need a palette built around one exact brand color. Treat it as research, then move the winner into Coolors or Adobe Color to refine it.

Pick it if you want a fast, human-curated start. Skip it if you need to build from a fixed color.

Huemint starts from a problem the other tools skip: where each color goes. Instead of generating a flat palette, it assigns background, foreground and accent roles, then generates colors that respect the contrast between them. The about page explains the model, which was trained on more than a million flat-design images.

In practice you pick a template for a brand, a website, a gradient or an illustration, then use the generate button. Click a circular swatch to lock a color and generate again to keep it. A creativity slider moves the result from the most statistically likely palette to something less expected, and you can upload a flat-color image for reference. Everything runs in the browser with no account.

The weakness is that the interface assumes some design vocabulary. The contrast matrix, where you enter numbers between 0 and 100 to set the relationship between colors, is powerful and also easy to leave on the default if it looks intimidating. That is fine; the templates work well untouched.

Pick it if you want a palette with background and accent roles defined. Skip it if you just want five hex codes.

Khroma is a free AI generator, and its twist is personalization. You choose a starting set of colors you like, and the site trains a browser-based model to suggest combinations in that direction. The more colors you pick, the more the results sound like you rather than a random sample.

Once trained, it generates endless palettes you can view as a type sample, a poster, a gradient or a flat palette. You can search and filter the generator by hue, tint, value and hex, then save favorites to a library. Each saved pair comes with a name, the hex and RGB values, CSS, and a WCAG accessibility rating, which is richer output than most generators give you.

The weakness is the cold start. You have to spend a few minutes teaching the tool before it becomes useful, and the results only reflect the colors you fed it. If you rush the initial selection, the output will feel narrow. It is also a single-purpose site, so it will not help you check contrast across a whole interface.

Pick it if you know the palette you want before you can name it. Skip it if you would rather see a broad range of options immediately.

Paletton has been designing palettes since 2002, and it still does things the newer sites do not. The tool uses the artistic RYB color wheel with harmony models from monochromatic through triad and tetrad, so you can explore relationships among several colors. Each hue expands into five shades.

The features that keep it on the list are the export list and the simulation filters. You can export a palette as HTML, CSS, LESS, XML, plain text, a PNG image, a Photoshop ACO swatch file or a GIMP GPL palette, and you can preview how the palette looks to people with different forms of color blindness. It also checks contrast across all color pairs.

The weakness is presentation. Paletton is a hobby project supported by ads and donations, and the interface shows its age next to Coolors. It also leans on the RYB model, which can feel less direct than a modern HSL or OKLCH picker when you are matching a specific web color.

Pick it if you want deep color theory and files that drop into print and design software. Skip it if you want a modern, distraction-free interface.

Colormind uses deep learning to generate schemes that it says are learned from photographs, movies and popular art. It is deliberately minimal: five swatches, a generate button, and a set of models that rotate daily, so the tool gives you different color styles on different days. Click a swatch to lock it or use the usage tips to place complementary colors.

The API is its strongest reason to consider it for development work. The API page documents a small REST endpoint that returns a palette as RGB values and accepts locked colors as input. The API is free for personal and non-commercial use, and commercial users contact the maker for access. That is a surprisingly practical combination: a browser tool for quick work and an endpoint for a build script.

The weakness is depth. There is no account, no library and no export dialog with formats, so the tool is best for a quick scheme and not a long-term palette library. It also shows fewer fonts and layout previews than Huemint, the developer's related project.

Pick it if you want fast results or a palette endpoint for a script. Skip it if you want to save and organize many palettes.

ColorSpace does one job very directly. You enter a single color, click Generate, and it returns a set of matching palettes built from that value. The site also includes a gradient tool and a newer three-color gradient option, so it covers both flat palettes and blends.

This is the tool I would open when a client hands over one brand color and asks for everything else. Because it works from a fixed starting value, the results stay related to the brand instead of drifting to a random mood. There is no account and nothing to configure first.

The weakness is breadth. There is no saved library, no accessibility checker and no export beyond copying the values it shows. It handles a quick generation job. Use it to fill a palette, then move the result into Adobe Color for a contrast check.

Pick it if you already have a color and need the rest of the scheme. Skip it if you want to start from scratch or save many palettes.