Cladogram Maker
Name the organisms — or paste a character table — and the AI works out the nested clades and draws a clean, correctly branching tree. No alignment files, no desktop software.
Cladogram styles
Five ways to draw an evolutionary tree, each shown with a real render — click a card to apply the style, or zoom for the full image.
What is a cladogram?
A cladogram is a branching diagram of how a group of organisms is related by descent. Each tip is a taxon, each branch point (node) is the most recent common ancestor of everything above it, and any node plus all its descendants is a clade. Branches are usually marked with the derived characters — synapomorphies — that first appear there, which is what makes the tree an argument rather than a picture: the nesting of shared characters is the evidence for the nesting of the groups.
A cladogram shows branching order only. Its branch lengths mean nothing, which is what separates it from a phylogram, where length is proportional to genetic change, and from a chronogram, where length is time. This cladogram maker produces the figure — describe the group in plain words, or paste the character table, and the AI resolves the topology and draws it ready for a worksheet, a lecture slide, a thesis or a paper.
How it works
Describe the group
Name the organisms, paste a character matrix, give a Newick string, or just name the group — "the great apes". The AI works out the nested clades, using the accepted phylogeny when you have not specified one.
Pick a tree style
The classic teaching ladder with a trait marked at every branch point, a clean rectangular tree for publication, the tree paired with the character matrix it came from, illustrated tips, or a whiteboard sketch.
Refine in the workspace
The cladogram opens in your workspace where you can edit regions, adjust labels, upscale and export in high resolution for handouts, slides, posters or papers.
The parts of a cladogram
Cladograms are readable across textbooks and journals because every one is built from the same handful of parts. These are the terms you will meet reading them — and the ones the generator can label for you:
Root
The base of the tree — the common ancestor of everything shown.
Node
A branch point: the last common ancestor of the lineages leaving it.
Branch
A lineage between two nodes. Its length carries no meaning.
Tip (taxon)
A terminal group — a species, genus or larger group being compared.
Clade
A node with every descendant it has, and nothing else.
Outgroup
The taxon outside the group of interest; it roots the tree.
Synapomorphy
A derived trait marked where it first appears, shared from there on.
Polytomy
Three or more lineages from one node — the order is unresolved.
One tree can be drawn many ways. A cladogram may be rectangular, slanted, or laid out as a ladder, and the branches at any node can be rotated freely — none of that changes the relationships it states. Two diagrams that look nothing alike can be the same tree.
How to read a cladogram without misreading it
Almost every mistake with these diagrams comes from reading something into the drawing that the tree does not say. Three worth naming:
The right-hand taxon is not the most evolved
Position along the tips is a drawing convention, not a ranking. Every living tip has had exactly the same amount of time since the root — a moss is as modern as a sunflower. Rotate the branches at any node and the tree is unchanged.
Closeness is measured through nodes, not across the page
Two tips printed side by side can be distant relatives. What matters is where their lineages meet: the taxa sharing the most recent common ancestor are the closest, however far apart they sit.
Tips are not ancestors of other tips
A cladogram never says that one living group descended from another. Ancestors sit at the nodes, and those ancestors are hypothetical — inferred from the characters, not one of the organisms drawn at the tips.
Who is it for?
Teachers & students
Worksheets, revision notes and lab reports for evolution units — build the tree from a character table and get the matrix and the diagram in one figure, or a whiteboard version for the lesson itself.
Lectures & science communication
The illustrated style puts an organism at every tip, which is what a slide or an explainer needs — the kind of figure phylogenetics software will not draw and an illustrator has to be commissioned for.
Papers, theses & posters
Clean rectangular trees with exact taxon names and clade labels for a background section, a review or a poster panel, without opening tree-drawing software or preparing a data file.
Frequently asked questions
How does the AI cladogram generator work?
You describe the group in plain language. The AI first works out the nested clades — which taxa form each group, and what derived character marks each node — then draws the tree with your exact taxon names at the tips. Give it just a group name and it uses the currently accepted phylogeny; give it a character matrix and it builds the tree that data implies.
Can I build a cladogram from a character table?
Yes, and it is one of the things this does best. Paste the table and pick the Tree + character matrix style: the taxon with the fewest derived characters becomes the outgroup, each character labels the node where it first appears, and the finished figure shows the tree beside the matrix it came from — the exact figure a classroom exercise asks for.
Can it read Newick, or a tree I have already worked out?
Yes. Paste a Newick string or simply write the topology out, and the tree is drawn exactly as specified rather than corrected to the textbook version. If what you asked for conflicts with the accepted phylogeny, the diagram follows your instruction and the note in your workspace says so.
Is this a phylogenetics package? Can I load an alignment or get bootstrap values?
No — this makes tree *figures* for teaching, publications, slides and articles, not phylogenetic inference. If you need to estimate a tree from sequence data with support values, use MEGA, RAxML, IQ-TREE or iTOL; if you need a clean, correct-looking cladogram in about a minute, this is the faster path.
What is the difference between a cladogram and a phylogenetic tree?
Every cladogram is a phylogenetic tree, but it shows branching order alone — its branch lengths are arbitrary. A phylogram scales branch length to the amount of evolutionary change and a chronogram scales it to time. Cladograms are what teaching material and most conceptual figures use, because the relationships are the point.
Is the cladogram maker free? Can I use the diagrams commercially?
You can generate cladograms on the free plan (with a watermark on exports). Paid plans remove the watermark and unlock every model and high-resolution export, and you can use your diagrams in courses, publications and commercial material.
Draw your first cladogram
From a list of organisms to a publication-ready tree in about a minute.
Start drawing