The Free Seating Chart App That Does More Than Seating

The single-purpose trap

You need a seating chart, so you search for a seating chart app. You find one. It lets you add tables, drag names around, and maybe export a PDF. Great—that's one problem solved.

But your event isn't just a seating chart. You also need to track RSVPs. Split costs with your co-host. Poll the group about menu options. Build a schedule for the day. Manage a checklist of things to do before the event.

So now you need a seating chart app, plus a spreadsheet for RSVPs, plus a payment app for expenses, plus a polling tool, plus a calendar app for the schedule. Five tools for one event. Five links. Five places where information lives in isolation.

The single-purpose seating chart app solved one problem and created four more.

What happens when seating is part of the whole picture

When your seating chart lives alongside the rest of your event planning, everything connects. Here's what that looks like in practice.

Guests flow into seats

Your guest list and your seating chart share the same data. When someone RSVPs yes, they appear in your unseated guests list, ready to be placed at a table. When someone cancels, their seat opens up automatically. You never have to manually sync a spreadsheet with a seating tool.

This sounds like a small thing until you're managing 100+ guests and someone cancels the week before your event. In a disconnected setup, you'd need to update the spreadsheet, then open the seating chart app, find the guest, remove them, and figure out if the now-empty seat creates an awkward gap. In Brunchie, it's one action.

Dietary tags inform seating

When you add dietary preferences to your guest list—vegan, gluten-free, kosher, nut allergy—those same tags are available in your seating chart. Auto-assign can use them to group guests with similar dietary needs at the same table, making service more efficient for your caterer. Read more about how this works in our auto-assign deep dive.

The budget stays visible

Planning an event with a co-host? Splitting vendor costs, decorations, catering deposits? When your expenses live in the same place as your seating chart, you can see the full picture of your event without switching apps. Log an expense, see who owes what, and check the seating chart—all in the same view.

The expense splitting guide walks through how this works, and our post on wedding budget spreadsheets covers the budgeting angle specifically.

Five things you get beyond seating

1. Expense tracking and settle-up

Add expenses, assign them to people, and let the settle-up algorithm figure out who owes whom. No spreadsheet formulas. No manual calculations. No chasing people through payment apps. Whether you're splitting the cost of a venue rental or tracking who paid for the decorations, it's all in one place.

2. Polls for group decisions

Need your wedding party to vote on centerpiece options? Want your friend group to pick a date for the dinner party? Create a poll with single choice, multiple choice, or ranked options. Set a deadline so people actually respond. View results in real time. No more scrolling through group chat threads trying to count votes.

3. Shared itinerary

Build a multi-day schedule with times, locations, and notes. Perfect for weddings that span a weekend—rehearsal dinner Friday, ceremony Saturday, brunch Sunday. Or for any event where guests need to know where to be and when. Guests can even sync events to their personal calendar with one tap.

4. Spreadsheets and checklists

For the stuff that doesn't fit neatly into other categories—vendor contact lists, packing lists, task assignments, gift registries—Brunchie includes built-in spreadsheets. They live in the hangout alongside everything else. No separate Google Sheet required.

5. Photo booth

Capture moments from your event with Brunchie's built-in photo booth. Guests can take photos that are automatically shared with the group. It's a fun addition that most standalone seating chart tools would never think to include—because they only think about seating.

The free part matters

Most seating chart tools offer a free tier that's so limited it's essentially a demo. Five tables maximum. No guest preferences. No export. No sharing. The real features are behind a paywall, and the pricing is often per-event—so you're paying again for every wedding, party, or dinner you plan.

Brunchie's seating charts are free. Not "free for 10 guests" or "free for one event." Free. Add as many tables as you need, seat as many guests as you have, use auto-assign, set preferences, share with your co-planner. No credit card required. No premium tier for basic functionality.

And because Brunchie isn't just a seating chart tool, the free experience includes all the other features too—expenses, polls, itineraries, spreadsheets, guest management. You're not getting a stripped-down seating tool. You're getting a complete event planning platform at no cost.

When to use a standalone seating tool vs. Brunchie

To be fair, there are scenarios where a dedicated seating chart tool makes sense. Professional event planners managing hundreds of events per year might want software with advanced floor plan design, CAD-style layouts, or venue-specific templates.

But if you're planning a wedding, a birthday party, a dinner party, a reunion, or any personal event where seating is one of several things you need to organize—a single-purpose tool is overkill and a multi-purpose tool is a better fit.

You don't need a seating chart app. You need an event planning app that happens to have a great seating chart—plus everything else.

Get started

Set up your next event at brunchie.app. Start with the seating chart or start with the guest list—either way, everything connects. Check out the seating charts guide for a step-by-step walkthrough, or read how to set up a wedding, birthday party, or park picnic from scratch.