There are genuinely free ways to print cheques — free tiers of paid products, free web tools, and spreadsheet templates. Some are perfectly adequate. It depends what you need beyond getting ink onto a leaf.

What free usually covers

Printing itself. If your requirement is "put the payee, amount and date in the right places on my bank's cheque", free options can do that.

Where the limits usually sit

  • Number of payees or cheque books. Fine for personal use, restrictive for a business with forty suppliers.
  • Reports. Commonly the first paid-only feature, and the one that matters most for reconciliation.
  • Vouchers. If you need an audit trail with prepared/approved/received signatures, usually paid.
  • Support. Free tiers get limited or community support.

The questions worth asking about a free web tool

Browser-based cheque writers are convenient and require no installation. Two things are worth establishing before you type a payee name into one:

  • Where does the data go? Cheque details are payment records — payee names, amounts, your account context. If a tool stores them on someone's server, ask whose and under what terms.
  • What happens if it disappears? A free web tool has no obligation to keep running. If your cheque history exists only there, it exists precariously.

Neither is a reason to avoid free tools. They are reasons to know the answers.

Spreadsheet templates

An Excel template with fields positioned over a cheque works, and costs nothing. It falls apart in predictable ways: no cheque numbering, no record of what was issued, no status tracking, and alignment maintained by hand every time the template is edited. Fine for occasional use, painful at volume.

ChequeMaster's free edition, stated plainly

We have one, and it is worth being specific about what it is:

  • Personal, non-commercial use only.
  • Two payees and two cheque books.
  • No vouchers, no reports.
  • Unlimited cheque printing. Never expires.

Two payees does not run a business. What the free edition is genuinely good for is testing — confirming that printing aligns correctly on your printer with your bank's cheque before you pay anything. That is a real use, and we would rather you did it than bought first.

Where we are weaker than some free options

Honestly: some competitors offer a time-limited but fully-featured trial rather than a permanently free but limited edition. ChequeGuru, for instance, offers 15 days with everything unlocked and no card required. If what you want is to evaluate reports and vouchers before buying, that model suits you better than ours does.

Ours suits you better if you want to keep a free tool indefinitely for light personal use.

The honest summary

If you print a few cheques a month for yourself, free is likely enough. If you print for a business and need to answer "did we pay them, and has it cleared", you need records — and records are where free tiers generally stop.

Competitor details verified 29 July 2026. Pricing and feature tiers change; check the vendor's own site before deciding.