Best Free WiFi Heat Mapping Software in 2026: 9 Tools Compared

#1

NetSpot

Best for: guided first-time surveys

Visit netspotapp.com

NetSpot is the tool most people should try first. You load a floor plan, walk the space and tap your position on the map as it records signal strength. A few minutes later you have a color-coded heatmap showing exactly where the signal holds up and where it dies. The interface holds your hand through the process instead of assuming you already know what an SNR heatmap is.

The free tier is real but bounded: you get limited zones and data points per heatmap, and it is licensed for non-commercial use. Paid PRO and Enterprise licenses add commercial rights, more zones, unlimited data points and advanced reports. For a homeowner or a small office trying to place one or two access points, the free tier is usually enough. IT consultants who survey client sites for money will need to pay.

#2

Ekahau HeatMapper

Best for: simple free walk-around surveys

Visit ekahau.com

HeatMapper is the classic free answer to this question, and it still works. Install it on a Windows laptop, load a floor plan (or sketch one), walk around clicking your location, and it builds a heatmap of signal strength in dBm. There is no signup, no trial clock ticking down, and no upsell screen blocking the export.

The honest catch is that Ekahau has moved on. The company now sells the enterprise Ekahau AI Pro platform, and HeatMapper is a legacy freebie that only runs on Windows with a 15-minute survey limit. It covers 802.11n and earlier standards well enough for a home or small office, but it will not know what to do with a modern WiFi 6E or WiFi 7 deployment. Use it for quick dead-zone hunts, not for professional site surveys.

#3

inSSIDer

Best for: channel and interference checks

Visit inssider.com

inSSIDer does one thing extremely well: it shows you every nearby network, which channel each one sits on, and how busy those channels actually are. That distinction matters, because a channel with one loud network can be worse than a channel with three quiet ones, and inSSIDer makes that visible. Its suggestions are written for normal humans, not RF engineers.

It is now published by Oscium and remains free to download with a free account. An optional MetaGeek Plus subscription at $200 per year adds packet analysis, snapshots and cloud sync. If your actual problem is "which channel should my router use," inSSIDer answers it faster than any heatmapper. If you need a colored coverage map of your floor, pair it with NetSpot or HeatMapper instead.

#4

Acrylic Wi-Fi

Best for: design plus survey in one suite

Visit acrylicwifi.com

Acrylic takes the full-lifecycle approach. The suite includes Heatmaps for site surveys, Analyzer for troubleshooting, and Sniffer for packet capture, and the current versions support WiFi 7 on all frequency bands. For a small IT team that wants one vendor for planning, surveying and fixing, that breadth is attractive.

The free story has changed, though. The old free Acrylic Wi-Fi Home edition has been replaced by the paid Acrylic Suite, available as a trial before you buy a license from their store. Pricing is not published on the main site, so you will need to check the store for current numbers. This is the right pick if you want professional features and reporting; it is not the right pick if you refuse to spend anything.

#5

TamoGraph Site Survey

Best for: professional-grade reports

Visit tamos.com

TamoGraph is a serious site-survey tool with a free evaluation mode, which is why it earns a spot here. The Standard edition costs $1,499 for a perpetual license, Pro costs $1,999, and time-limited licenses run $499 for six months or $999 for a year. Pro adds RF modeling (predictive surveys), GPS support and report customization.

The trial lets you test the workflow, but it is deliberately limited: surveys are capped at about 10 minutes, visualizations carry watermarks, and you cannot save projects or reports. For a business that needs defensible survey reports for clients, the price is in line with the category. For mapping your apartment, it is overkill, and one of the free options above will do.

#6

WiFi Commander

Best for: 3D channel visualization on Windows

Visit wifi3d.app

WiFi Commander is the odd one out, and that is its charm. Instead of tables and 2D graphs, it renders channel distribution in 3D views you can rotate and explore. For a visual thinker trying to understand why the 2.4 GHz band is a mess in their building, the 3D view clicks faster than any spreadsheet.

It is a paid app from the Microsoft Store (an inexpensive one-time purchase, with a trial available), and it works on Windows 10 and 11. It scans, monitors signal in real time and shows AP details like vendor and security, but it will not walk a floor plan and paint a coverage heatmap. Think of it as a prettier, more visual alternative to the basic scanners.

#7

WiFiInfoView

Best for: portable network spot-checks

Visit nirsoft.net

WiFiInfoView comes from NirSoft, the long-running one-person freeware shop, and it does exactly what it says: it lists every wireless network in range with SSID, signal quality, channel, security, MAC address and more. It fits on a USB stick, runs without installation, and exports everything for documentation.

It will not draw you a heatmap, so it belongs in this list as the companion tool, not the main event. Walk a building with WiFiInfoView logging to CSV and you have raw signal data for every room; feed a floor plan into NetSpot and you have the picture. For quick "is the signal actually weak here or is it something else" checks, it is the fastest free answer on Windows.

#8

WiFi Analyzer

Best for: open-source Android analysis

Visit github.com

This is the open-source WiFi Analyzer for Android, maintained on GitHub with over 5,000 stars, and it is refreshingly honest software. It graphs channel signal strength, tracks access point signal over time, rates channels, estimates distance to access points, and supports 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz bands where the hardware allows. It asks for minimal permissions, needs no internet access, and collects nothing.

The trade-off is platform and scope. There is no iOS version and no floor-plan heatmap mode; it is a channel and signal analyzer you carry in your pocket. For Android users who want a free, private, ad-free way to pick channels and find dead zones room by room, it is the best option on this list.

#9

Homedale

Best for: lightweight signal monitoring

Visit thesz.diecru.eu

Homedale is a small free Windows utility that monitors the signal strength of nearby networks and plots it over time. It is the kind of tool you leave running on a laptop while you move from room to room, watching the graph dip as you find the dead zones. Setup takes about a minute and there is nothing to configure.

It is basic by design: no floor plans, no predictive modeling, no reports. The interface looks like it has not changed in a decade, because it mostly has not. But when the question is simply "where does my signal drop," a live graph and a walk around the house answer it, and Homedale is free.