Compare the Top Free Help Authoring Tools as of August 2025

What are Free Help Authoring Tools?

Help authoring tools (HAT) are software solutions used to create and publish user manuals, online help systems, FAQs, and other types of documentation for software applications, websites, and products. These tools allow authors to design, write, and structure help content in a way that is easy for users to access and understand. Features of help authoring tools typically include a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, multi-format export options (e.g., HTML, PDF, CHM), built-in templates, search functionality, and support for multimedia integration (such as videos and images). These tools are essential for creating in-app help, troubleshooting guides, and product documentation to improve user experience and provide support. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free Help Authoring Tools currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    FlowShare

    FlowShare

    miraminds GmbH

    FlowShare® documents every step you take in any software, then delivers a branded process manual you can use to train your staff. FlowShare is a one-of-a-kind documentation tool that runs in the background, automatically documenting every action you take, creating step-by-step guides for your staff to train themselves on complex tasks and processes. It's fast, gets your documentation done in just hours, instead of days or weeks, works with any type of software on Windows and saves time and money training staff. You get easy to distribute accurate information with all of your guides looking great - no matter who creates them! FlowShare AI-Powered assistant provides 24/7 instant help, ready to guide your end-users through troubleshooting and problem-solving independently and enhances your team's ability to adapt and grow with your tech stack. FlowShare Portal provides a Central Knwoledge Hub, making the solutions and step-by-step guides readily accessible.
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    Starting Price: €39/month/user
  • 2
    Folge

    Folge

    Folge

    Folge - is a fast tool for creating step-by-step guides, tutorials, lessons and documentation. It is a desktop tool to capture steps with every click of the mouse, customize screenshots, create annotations, and generate the final guide in HTML, Word Document, PDF, PowerPoint slides, and more. This app is suitable for anyone who wants to help others easily navigate products, applications, training, tasks, or any process. The whole process is as easy as following: - Take screenshots of apps, any selected area on your desktop or fullscreen. Pause, adjust, and resume. Screenshots with every click. - Give each step a name and description. Reorder them, hide them, and add new ones on the fly. Organize guides in projects. - Bring more details to screenshots by adding shapes, arrows, lines, and text. Blur out sensitive information. Add step icons for multi-step instructions. - Export with one click to simple HTML, ready to be published to your help desk, rich HTML, PDF, and more
    Starting Price: $110/user
  • 3
    ProProfs Knowledge Base
    ProProfs Knowledge Base is a knowledge management software used to create highly-searchable online FAQ’s to improve customer service and reduce tickets. ProProfs helps centralize access to all your files, documents and how-to articles ensuring they can be accessed across multiple devices and platforms. Organizations can easily share important information to train their sales, customer service and support teams. It is also an effective method for introducing new hires to company procedures during the onboarding process. ProProfs Knowledge Base improves productivity by making it easy for employees and customers to instantly find what they're looking for, whenever and wherever they need it. ProProfs Knowledge Base Software eliminates the need to answer the same questions over and over again.
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    Starting Price: $6 per user per month
  • 4
    WinCHM

    WinCHM

    WinCHM

    WinCHM is a very easy-to-use and powerful help authoring tool. Not needing to learn hard, you can be master of creating professional and good looking HTML help(CHM), Web help, PDF manual and Word documents. With this powerful tool you can not only create chm file from scratch, but also convert a set of existing HTML files to a chm file. You can open an existing chm file and edit the chm file too. create chm file too. Template support, make uniform style html help file very easily. Full-function web help creation. (Contents, Index, Search and Bookmark). Integrated full-function WYSIWYG html editor. No external word processor needed. Edit CHM files, and convert a set of HTML file into a CHM file. Super table of contents hierarchy editor. Supports multi-select moving, changing icons, and Visual CHM designer. WinCHM Pro is an easy-to-use help authoring tool. You can use it without leaning too much.
    Starting Price: $129 per user
  • 5
    snazzyDocs

    snazzyDocs

    snazzyDocs

    Create documentation with technical-free writing, and effortless hosting. Write the way you’re used to! Format and style your text just like a word processor. No complicated syntax if you don’t want it. Publish instantly with a single click. Structure chapters, sections and pages effortlessly. Concentrate on your product. With no coding experience required, delegate writing to absolutely anyone! Documentation software with super easy hosting. Use your own custom domain, or create one with us. Choose a theme, add your logo, and customize to match your brand or website. Get help from others on your team. Restrict access, assign roles and user privileges. Easily make documentations private and password protected for internal or personal use. Publish fearlessly knowing previous work is safe and backed up. Download or restore anytime. The documentation software that makes docs easier.
    Starting Price: $9.99 per month
  • 6
    HelpNDoc

    HelpNDoc

    HelpNDoc

    HelpNDoc provides all the tools necessary to write complete help files and documentations. From the table of contents to the final documentation layout, everything is included in HelpNDoc. HelpNDoc’s user interface has been carefully designed to be clear and effective, the various tools are grouped using the popular ribbon design first introduced by Microsoft Office, contextual elements such as picture or table editing operations will only appear when needed thus greatly simplifying the overall experience. All the necessary tools needed to create great documentations are built right in HelpNDoc, the table of contents editor, WYSIWYG topic editor, keywords editor and library are some of the features provided to ease-up the process of writing amazing documentations and are an integral part of the HelpNDoc environment. HelpNDoc includes a feature-packed word processor which makes you feel instantly at home.
    Starting Price: €149.50 one-time payment
  • 7
    HelpSmith

    HelpSmith

    HelpSmith

    Complete help authoring tool to create CHM HTML Help files, Web Help systems, printed manuals, Adobe PDF documets, Microsoft Word documents, and ePub eBooks from a single source. If you are looking for a help authoring tool to create a CHM help file, online Web Help system, or PDF manual, you can consider HelpSmith which provides a rich feature-set from the powerful word processor to write help topics, to the built-in screenshot tool with the possibility to create help for dialog windows automatically. Using HelpSmith, you can create a CHM help file, a fully responsive Web Help system compatible with desktop computers and mobile devices, Printed Manual, PDF document, ePub eBook, and Microsoft Word document from a single source help project. You can write topic content using a built-in word processor that includes a spell checker with dictionaries available for many languages.
    Starting Price: $199 one-time payment
  • 8
    Guide.AI

    Guide.AI

    Guide.AI

    The landmark audio guide platform for everyone. Develop smartphone-based audio guides, in multiple languages, for any location, for free, all through our website. Then profit from their success! It's quick and easy. Boost inclusivity with automatic translation into 11 foreign languages. Consistently high-quality audio guides. Great for accessibility of partially sighted visitors. No need for recordings or any tech!. Authors can earn revenue from guide sales. We've changed the audio guide landscape, using advanced AI text-to-speech. We've enabled everyone to independently develop and publish audio guides through our website. All you need is a script and some pictures! Once an audio guide has been published, it has the potential to earn you an additional income, without any further work! Just sit back and watch your audio guide rise in popularity and sales! We can create your audio guide for you. Get in touch to get started.
    Starting Price: $6.31 per month
  • 9
    LockStep
    LockStep is an easy, rapid authoring interface with all the same integrated editors found in WinSequence Enterprise. LockStep also supports the direct image capture with supported cameras, just like WinSequence Enterprise. However, LockStep is designed for the smaller company that just needs a simple, single-user desktop solution for authoring and exporting formatted PDF instructions. LockStep and the enterprise products are built on the same data model, so LockStep is easily upgraded to the enterprise suite of products when the time is right. Typically, the transition takes place when a networkable multi-user solution is needed for authors, or when electronic work instructions via web browser is needed in production, or when integration with other IT solutions is desired. WinSequence Enterprise will have the same look and feel as the LockStep application for authoring, so only minimal additional training is required to use additional functionality of WinSequence.
    Starting Price: $799.00/one-time/user
  • 10
    Dr.Explain

    Dr.Explain

    Indigo Byte Systems

    Create effective help documentation for your users by next week. Dr.Explain is a help authoring software to easily create help files, end user documentation and on-line help manuals in CHM, PDF, WORD & HTML formats automatically. You have a great product, but users keep asking the same questions every single day. Your email inbox is full, and your support team is overloaded. Your product is polished, but you have to spend all your time on calls. You receive constant requests for online demos. Create user-friendly help docs for your customers with Dr.Explain in just a couple of days and cut your support team’s workload by up to half. Help your customers make the most of your product without needing help from you, saving you time, money, and effort. Create help documentation just once with Dr.Explain and then publish it in various formats, from a help center built into your desktop or mobile app to an online repository integrated with your website or SaaS solution.
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    FAR HTML

    FAR HTML

    The Helpware Group

    FAR HTML is a collection of help authoring and file utilities. If you need to quickly manipulate HTML, XML, ASCII text files, or author help projects (HTML Help 1.x, MS Help 2.x, MS Help Viewer 1.x, Help Viewer 2.x and Uncompressed Web Help) then FAR will save you lots of time and money. You can safely use FAR HTML and MS Workshop/SDK side by side. FAR also works in batch (unattended) mode. Download the full 30 trial version of FAR HTML today. FAR HTML can create WebHelp using simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript. FAT HTML software contains partial translation into Japanese, German and Simplified Chinese. FAR is clever in that it fills many of the gaps left by other main stream tools. Yet FAR is capable of holding its own when it comes to creating and maintaining industry standard documentation and help. Some of these other tools are more than 10x the cost of FAR but do less and are less reliable. We hope you are more productive in your day because of FAR Tools.
  • 12
    Corilla

    Corilla

    Corilla

    A blazing fast markdown editor in the cloud. Built by technical writers to improve the UX of our daily content workflow and remove the complexity of actually writing. Same-page authoring and team draft links. Designed from the ground up to improve the collaboration between writers, developers and the entire organization. Maintain your content in a dedicated repository with powerful search and tagging plus the security of full version control. Freedom from duplicate files or ambiguous version names. Modular content publishing allows you to choose your flavour of topic-based authoring and single sourcing to maximize content re-use. No more dead-end wikis. Your internal documentation has never been more discoverable or dynamic. Company-wide private documentation or role-specific guides for new hires or reporting in just a few clicks. Unlimited documentation hosting with the option of custom domain, integrated publishing to external services or self-hosting.
    Starting Price: $45 per month
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