Maze Generator

Create a maze for print, lessons or puzzles

A custom maze can be a quick activity sheet, a classroom handout, a party puzzle or a way to compare graph algorithms. Choose any rectangular grid from 5 × 5 to 60 × 60 cells. A square grid is familiar, but a wide or tall maze can fit a page, card or presentation more naturally.

The entrance and exit stay at opposite corners, so every generated maze has a consistent direction of travel. Turn on the solution overlay to inspect the route, then hide it before sharing the unsolved version.

What is a perfect maze?

This generator creates perfect mazes. In graph terms, the cells and passages form a spanning tree: every cell is connected, there are no loops and there is exactly one path between any two cells. That means the maze cannot contain an unreachable island, and the entrance-to-exit puzzle has one unambiguous solution.

“Perfect” describes the maze’s structure, not its challenge. A perfect maze can be simple or visually demanding. Size, corridor shape, wrong branches and the unique solution path all affect how it feels to solve.

Choose Backtracker, Prim or Kruskal

All three options produce a connected, loop-free maze, but their construction methods create noticeably different textures.

Backtracker is a good first choice when you want long passages that are easy to follow visually. Randomized Prim often creates compact branches. Randomized Kruskal considers connections across the whole grid and tends to create a spikier pattern. These are tendencies, not guarantees.

Jamis Buck provides visual introductions to recursive backtracking, randomized Prim and randomized Kruskal. Princeton’s algorithms reference also explains the spanning-tree basis of Prim and Kruskal.

What the route challenge setting means

Easy, medium and hard are relative choices for the current settings, not promises about human solving time. The generator creates nine deterministic candidate mazes with the same size, algorithm and seed family. It scores measurable route features: solution length, turns and misleading junctions. Easy selects the lowest-scoring candidate, medium the middle candidate and hard the highest.

The summary shows those route measurements so the label remains transparent. A larger grid usually demands more scanning, but cell count alone does not determine challenge. If a result feels too simple or busy, create a new seed or change the algorithm.

Recreate a maze with its seed

A seed turns the generator’s choices into a repeatable sequence. Record it with the row count, column count, challenge and algorithm. The same complete settings reproduce the same maze in the same compatible generator version.

This helps when preparing an answer sheet, sharing one puzzle with a group or returning later. A seed is not a universal maze format: another generator or algorithm may interpret it differently.

Use the solution overlay

The solution overlay traces the unique route from the entrance to the exit. Show it to check the maze or prepare an answer key. Hide it before printing an unsolved worksheet. Because this is a perfect maze, the overlay displays the only valid route rather than choosing between alternatives.

SVG, PNG and printing

SVG is usually best when the maze will be enlarged or edited. PNG is convenient when an application expects an ordinary image. Browsers support SVG as an image format, as described in MDN’s SVG guide, while canvas supports PNG creation as documented in MDN’s Canvas tutorial.

The tool does not upload a generated maze or create a server-side PDF. Use Print or save as PDF and choose your device’s PDF option when available. The 60 × 60 limit keeps previews and exports manageable; reduce the grid if passages look cramped on the chosen paper.

Browser-local privacy

Maze construction, solution calculation and image export run locally in this browser tab. The maze configuration and generated topology are not placed in the funnel URL or sent to our servers. Normal page requests still occur between funnel steps, and the tab uses session storage to preserve progress. If storage is unavailable, the normal one-page generator still works, but funnel navigation stops rather than losing the maze.