24 templates, each shown against the same sample resume in its own colour — so what you are comparing is the design, not the writing.Jump to the visually aesthetic designs ↓
All free, all unwatermarked. No account, no paid tier.
One column, conventional headings, real text. The safe choice for anything you submit through an online job portal.
Left-aligned with ruled section headings. The layout a recruiter has read ten thousand times, and the safest with older applicant tracking systems.
The default choice, and the right one more often than people expect. Nothing about it will distract a reader or confuse a parser.
Use this template →Centred header with colour-led headings and no rules. Lighter on the page, still a single readable column.
The same structure as Classic with the rules removed and the header centred. Use your accent colour to carry the section breaks.
Use this template →Classic set tighter and smaller, for a long history that has to fit. Nothing is dropped; the page simply works harder.
Pick this when you have too much history for one page and have already cut everything you are willing to cut.
Use this template →A serif face with ruled headings. What law, academia, medicine and the public sector still read as the default.
Serif, formal, unhurried. Conventional in law, academia, medicine, finance and the public sector, where sans-serif reads as a deliberate choice.
Use this template →A centred serif header with generous margins and no rules. Suits a shorter history with room to breathe; crowds badly with a dense one.
The most designed layout here. It suits a shorter history and looks crowded with a long one, so check the page count before committing.
Use this template →Sentence-case headings in your accent colour over a fine rule. Reads as a document rather than a form, without anything a parser will trip on.
Sentence-case headings in colour, a lighter rule, and a dash for bullets. Reads as a document rather than a form.
Use this template →Your accent colour on the name, the headings and the rules beneath them. Colourful without a block of background to print.
Colour on the name, the headings and the rules, with nothing to print as a block of ink. The loudest option that still behaves itself.
Use this template →A full-width colour band across the top with your name reversed out of it. The boldest layout here, and still one column of real text.
A band of colour across the top with your name reversed out of it. The band is a rectangle behind the text, so it changes nothing about how the file parses.
Use this template →An elegant, centred serif layout designed for senior roles. Projects authority and experience with generous spacing.
For C-suite and senior leaders. Generous whitespace, classical proportions, and centered alignment project a quiet, undeniable authority.
Use this template →Stripped back to the essentials. No rules, muted text, and maximum whitespace for a modern, calm aesthetic.
Zero clutter. Removes lines and rules entirely to let the typography breathe. Best for modern, design-forward industries.
Use this template →The standard business resume, refined. Strong structural hierarchy with a reliable dark blue accent.
A highly polished evolution of the classic business resume. Uses a strong structural hierarchy to safely stand out in a stack of applications.
Use this template →Clear, rigid hierarchy built for data-heavy histories. Uses heavy section rules to break the page into distinct blocks.
Heavy block dividers create an immovable, rigid hierarchy. Ideal for technical or data-heavy resumes that need strong visual organization.
Use this template →A dense, highly structured serif layout designed for lengthy CVs containing publications, grants, and teaching history.
Tailored for lengthy CVs with publications and grants. Tight serif typography allows a massive amount of information to remain legible.
Use this template →Pure black and white. No grays, high contrast, and striking typography. Perfect for making a bold, confident statement.
High-contrast pure black and white, with the name set large in capitals. Striking and confident, with nothing in colour to print.
Use this template →Side panels, portraits, bands of colour and contact icons: the designs paid resume builders charge for. Free like everything else here, with no watermark.
Choose Classic unless you have a specific reason not to. It is the layout a recruiter has read thousands of times, which means they can find what they are looking for without thinking about where it is — and a resume that is easy to skim beats one that is interesting to look at. Go to Traditional if you are applying in law, academia, medicine, finance or the public sector, where a serif face is the neutral choice and a sans-serif one reads as a decision. Reach for Compact only when you genuinely have more history than fits and have already cut what you are willing to cut. The other three are for fields that are relaxed about presentation.
Less than most template galleries imply. An applicant tracking system reads the text layer of your PDF and tries to sort it into fields, so two things decide whether it succeeds. The file must contain real text rather than a picture of a page — a surprising number of builders render your resume to an image, which looks flawless to you and parses as nothing at all. And the structure must be conventional: headings the parser recognises, in a single column, read top to bottom.
What breaks parsing is the decoration. Two-column layouts with a sidebar can interleave unrelated lines. Tables and text boxes can be skipped entirely. Icons replacing labels leave a phone number with nothing to say it is a phone number, and skill rating bars carry no text at all — a parser sees a row of shapes where you meant "advanced". None of the standard templates here uses any of it, which is why they look restrained: that is the point rather than a limitation.
The visually aesthetic templates make the opposite trade on purpose. They do use a sidebar, and their contact icons are drawn beside the text rather than in place of it, so nothing is lost, but the second column is a real risk with older parsers. They never use rating bars or text inside images. Pick one when presentation matters more than parsing, and keep a standard version of the same resume for portals. Switching template keeps everything you have typed.
Each thumbnail on this page is produced by the same layout engine that writes the PDF, from the same font measurements, against the same sample document. Nothing here is a screenshot taken once and left to go stale, and nothing is a stylised illustration of a template that renders differently in practice. When you pick one, you get the page you were looking at.
Yes, including the download. There is no account, no trial and no watermark on the PDF, and no template is held back behind a paid tier.
Classic unless you have a reason not to. Its layout is the one recruiters read fastest and parsers handle most reliably. Choose Traditional for law, academia, medicine or the public sector; Compact when a long history has to fit one page; and Modern, Technical, Vivid or Banner when the field is relaxed about presentation and a flat grey page would read as a lack of interest rather than as restraint.
The standard templates are: each is a single column with conventional headings, and each produces a PDF containing real selectable text rather than an image. Those are the two things that decide whether an applicant tracking system can read a resume. None of them uses tables, text boxes, sidebars, icons or rating bars, which are the usual causes of a mangled parse. The visually aesthetic templates are less ATS-friendly, because a side panel is a second column: their text is still real and is written in reading order, but some parsers will still splice the panel into your work history. Use a standard template for online job portals.
Ten two-column designs with a coloured side panel, an optional photo, and bands, bars and icons, in the style usually sold by paid resume builders. They are free like the rest. They trade some ATS reliability for looks, so they are best for resumes you send straight to a person: by email, at an interview, or through a referral.
No. A photo is optional, and in the US, the UK and Canada it is usually better left off. Without one, the photo slot is left out entirely, so the design never has an empty holder. Where photos are expected, such as much of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, you can add one in the editor; it is shrunk in your browser and never uploaded.
Yes. Each template sets an accent colour, a spacing density and a text size you can adjust in the editor, and you can override the font family on any of them. Switching template keeps everything you have typed.
At any point, as often as you like. Your content and the design are stored separately, so changing template restyles what you have written rather than asking you to re-enter it.
Yes. Each preview on this page is laid out by the same engine that writes the PDF, using the same font measurements, so the line breaks and page breaks you see are the ones you get.