Make the meme.
Keep the file.

What the free tiers actually do to your file

The part that is rarely written down: the free plan is not the same as a free export. Two of the big names are free to use and both put something on the file.

• Imgflip — free exports carry a small imgflip.com mark in the corner, and removing or restyling it sits behind a paid plan. On the free plan, GIF exports are also capped: 360×360 from a video, 500×500 from a still image. (Imgflip’s plan table)
• Kapwing — every Free-plan project exports with a watermark in the bottom right. The same page lists a 250 MB upload cap, exports limited to 720p and one minute, and free projects deleted after three days. (Kapwing’s watermark policy)
• Ours — no account, no mark, and no upload. The PNG comes out at the size of the image you dropped in, because the work happens on your machine rather than on a server that needs to store your upload.

None of that makes the paid tiers bad choices. It makes them choices. If a mark in the corner is fine for you, the template libraries on those sites are worth more than anything a local editor can offer — Imgflip advertises more than a million user-uploaded templates on its own site. If a clean file matters, or the image is something you would rather not hand to a stranger's server, do it locally.

Route 1: the two-caption meme

This is the format that still works, and the tool covers it in one pass.

1. Drop or paste the image. JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF up to 20 MB; pasting works with Ctrl/⌘ + V. If you have no image yet, the built-in sample shows the layout — 1200 × 800 — so you can try the controls before you commit.
2. Type the top caption, then the bottom one. Enter starts a new line inside a block. Long words wrap and the text shrinks to fit, so the two blocks never collide.
3. Set the look once. Four fonts (Impact, Arial Black, System UI, Georgia), fill and outline colours, alignment, and a size that starts at 64 px. Uppercase is a toggle, not a law.
4. Download the PNG. The preview is the export — there is no separate "render" step and no second file to clean up.

The caption rules that make it land

Format matters more than vocabulary. The memes that get reused share a shape: a setup line on top, a punchline underneath, and both short enough to read in a second.

• Two lines per block, maximum. A caption that needs three lines is usually two sentences pretending to be one.
• Four to six words a line. Anything longer and the reader is reading instead of reacting.
• Write the bottom line second. Top text sets the scene; the bottom line is the part people screenshot.
• Do not explain the image in the caption. If the image already says it, the caption is decoration.
• Keep the outline. White text with a dark outline is what survives being scaled down to a phone-sized preview.

Route 2: four-panel formats

Multi-panel formats work because each panel carries one line and the joke lives in the sequence, not in the wording. You can build one from four images without a template library: put the panels together first, then caption the whole grid as one image.

1. Make the grid. The photo collage tool places your images in a grid and exports one PNG. Four square panels in a 2 × 2 layout is the standard shape.
2. Caption it as one image. Drop the finished grid into the meme generator and write the two captions. A four-panel meme usually carries a single line at the top and a single line at the bottom — the panels do the talking.
3. Check the order. Panels in the wrong order are the most common way a four-panel meme flops, and it is invisible until someone replies to it.

Size it for where it lands

The export is the size of the image you put in, so the canvas has to be right before the captions go on. These are the sizes we measured against each platform's own published guidance on October 15, 2026 — the full table with per-platform sources is in our social media size guide.

• Instagram square — 1080 × 1080
• Facebook link and photo — 1200 × 630
• LinkedIn — 1200 × 627
• X — 1600 × 900 for a wide post

Get the canvas to size first — resize or crop for social both run locally — then caption. Captions sit at the top and bottom edges, which is exactly where a platform's crop tends to land, so leave a margin rather than letting the text touch the border.

The legal bit worth knowing

Sharing a meme for laughs and putting a meme in an advertisement are not the same activity, and US courts have now said so in a case about a meme template.

In Griner v. King for Congress (No. 23-2117, 8th Cir. 2024), the photographer behind the "Success Kid" template had registered a copyright in it and licensed it to brands. A political committee posted the template in a fundraising message, never asked permission, and a jury found the committee liable; the appeals court affirmed and set the commercial use apart from ordinary sharing, noting that memes used in advertising or fundraising get a stricter copyright standard than memes used non-commercially.

What this means in practice: a template is usually someone else's photo, a film still, or a character. Sharing it in a reply is one thing; putting it on something that sells a product, or that raises money, is another. If the post has a commercial angle, use a photo you took, licensed stock, or a template whose owner permits it. Our meme generator does not ship a template library on purpose — you bring the image, so the rights question stays yours to answer rather than being hidden behind a catalogue of other people's pictures.

What our tool won't do

• No template library. You supply the image. That is the trade for the privacy and the clean export.
• Animated input exports as a still. A GIF you drop in is sampled as a single frame in the PNG.
• Four fonts, one canvas. Impact, Arial Black, System UI and Georgia, with size, fill, outline and alignment. No sticker library, no layers.
• No account and no history. The file lives in the tab until you download it. Close the tab and it is gone — download before you wander off.