Quick Answer: Yes — Khroma is the best free AI color palette tool for graphic designers in 2026.
It learns your personal color preferences and generates palettes tailored specifically to you. Completely free with no signup required.
Best for: designers who struggle with color selection and want AI to do the heavy lifting.
Introduction
Color is one of the hardest parts of design for beginners — and honestly, it trips up experienced designers too. Picking colors that work together, feel right for a brand, and actually look good in context is a skill that takes time to develop. Most people either default to safe, boring combinations or waste an hour cycling through palette generators that produce random results with no connection to their actual taste.
Khroma solves this differently. Instead of giving you random palettes, it learns what colors you personally respond to — and then generates combinations tailored specifically to your aesthetic. And it does all of this for free. I tested it thoroughly and this review tells you exactly how it works, what it does well, and whether it deserves a spot in your design toolkit. For a broader look at free design tools, check our guide to the best AI design tools for graphic designers.
What is Khroma?
Khroma is a free AI color tool that uses a neural network to generate personalized color palettes. Unlike most color generators that produce random or mathematically harmonious combinations, Khroma generates palettes based on your specific taste — because it first learns what you like before it starts making suggestions.
It lives at khroma.co, runs entirely in the browser, requires no account, and costs nothing. The tool covers palettes, gradients, typography pairings, and image-based color extraction — all driven by the preferences you teach it during the initial setup.
Who is Khroma Best For?
Designers who struggle with color selection — If you find yourself defaulting to the same safe colors on every project, or spending too long on color decisions, Khroma gives you an AI-generated shortcut that actually feels personal.
Brand designers — Building a color identity for a brand requires combinations that feel considered and cohesive. Khroma generates palettes that feel that way rather than arbitrary.
Web designers choosing color schemes — The typography pairing and gradient features are particularly useful for web design, where color relationships across text, background, and UI elements need to work together.
Beginners learning color theory — Seeing how the AI combines colors you respond to is a low-pressure way to develop your color instincts over time.
How Khroma Works
Step 1 — Train Your Algorithm
When you first visit khroma.co, you are shown a large collection of individual colors and asked to select 50 that appeal to you. There are no wrong answers — just pick the ones you are genuinely drawn to. This takes about five minutes and is a one-time setup.
The selections you make teach Khroma’s neural network your color preferences. It looks for patterns in the hues, saturations, and tones you gravitate toward and builds a model of your aesthetic. The more honest you are with your selections — choosing colors you actually like rather than ones you think are “correct” — the more useful the output will be.
Your preferences are saved in your browser, so you do not need to repeat the setup on future visits from the same device.
Step 2 — Generate Color Palettes
Once training is complete, Khroma starts generating color combinations based on your preferences. You can view these as palettes, gradients, typography mockups, and image-based pairings — each format showing the colors applied in a different context so you can judge how they work in practice.
You can search for specific hues by name or hex code to find palettes within your generated collection that use a particular color. You can also lock a color you like and ask Khroma to regenerate complementary colors around it, which is useful when you have a brand color already established and need to build a palette around it.
The palette generation is effectively infinite — you can keep exploring without running out of options.
Step 3 — Use in Your Designs
When you find a palette you want to use, Khroma displays the hex codes and RGB values for each color. You copy these values and paste them into whatever design tool you are working in — Canva, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, or anywhere else that accepts hex codes.
There is no direct integration with other design tools, which means it is a manual copy-paste step rather than a one-click transfer. For most designers this is a minor inconvenience rather than a real barrier — it takes thirty seconds to grab the values you need.
Khroma Key Features
- Personalized AI palette generation — Every palette is generated based on your specific learned preferences, not random combinations
- Typography pairings — See color combinations applied to text and background, helping you judge readability alongside aesthetics
- Gradient generation — AI-generated gradients based on your color profile
- Image color extraction — Upload an image and Khroma extracts a palette from it
- Hex code and RGB export — Copy any color value directly for use in your design tools
- Search by color — Find palettes containing a specific hue within your generated collection
Khroma Pricing
| Plan | Price |
| Free | $0 — fully and completely free |
That is it. No paid tier, no premium features, no subscription. Khroma is free for everything it does.
Khroma Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Completely free — no paid tier at all | Requires initial 5-minute setup to train the AI |
| Learns your personal preferences — palettes feel tailored | No mobile app — desktop browser only |
| Infinite palette generation | Less widely known than Coolors — smaller community |
| Great for brand and web color work | Can feel limiting after extended use if your tastes evolve |
| Typography and gradient views add useful context | No direct integration with design tools |
Khroma vs Coolors vs Colormind
| Feature | Khroma | Coolors | Colormind |
| AI personalisation | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ❌ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Ease of use | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Free | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Mobile | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
Each tool has its strengths. Coolors is faster to get your first palette — no setup required, just hit the spacebar and palettes appear. It is the right choice when you need something quick and are not fussed about personalization. Khroma takes a few minutes to set up but produces combinations that feel more in tune with your personal style. Colormind pulls inspiration from real-world imagery and art — useful when you want palettes grounded in the real world rather than abstract AI generation. We cover Colormind in detail in a separate review if you want to compare them directly.
For designers who want palettes that feel genuinely personal rather than just mathematically harmonious, Khroma is the standout.
My Honest Opinion After Using Khroma
Khroma is one of those tools that surprises you the first time you use it. The initial setup — selecting 50 colors — feels like a simple exercise. But the palettes that come out of it afterwards feel noticeably different from what generic palette generators produce. They feel like your colors, which is a strange thing to say about an AI tool but it is the most accurate description.
The typography pairing view is genuinely useful — seeing a color combination applied to real text helps you judge whether it actually works in a design context, rather than just looking good as abstract swatches. That extra step of showing colors in use rather than just as blocks makes the decision-making faster.
My honest frustration is the lack of mobile support and direct integration with design tools. The copy-paste workflow is fine, but a Figma plugin or even a simple mobile version would significantly improve the experience. Given that it is free and has no paid tier to fund development, I understand why those features do not exist — but they are the obvious gaps.
For a free tool with no catch, Khroma delivers more value than most. If you do not have it bookmarked already, spend five minutes setting it up and see what it generates for your aesthetic. You might be surprised.
Final Verdict
Designers who struggle with color decisions — Yes. Khroma removes the most frustrating part of color selection by making the AI do the exploration for you.
Brand designers — Yes. The personalized palettes and typography views are well-suited to brand color work.
Beginners learning design — Yes. It is free, it is educational, and it develops your color instincts naturally.
Designers who need quick, random palettes without setup — Coolors is faster for that use case. Khroma requires the initial training investment.
Mobile-first designers — Coolors has the better mobile experience. Khroma is a desktop tool.
Bottom line: Khroma is one of the best free tools in any designer’s toolkit. The five-minute setup pays dividends every time you start a new project that involves color decisions — which is most of them. Check our guide to the best free graphic design tools for more zero-cost tools worth adding to your workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is Khroma completely free?
Yes, Khroma is completely free to use with no subscription, no signup required, and no premium features locked behind a paywall. You simply visit khroma.co, train the AI by selecting colors you like, and start generating palettes immediately at no cost.
Q: How does Khroma generate color palettes?
Khroma uses a neural network trained on your personal color preferences to generate palettes. You start by selecting 50 colors that appeal to you from a large collection. Khroma then learns your aesthetic and generates color combinations, gradients, and typography pairings that match your personal taste.
Q: Is Khroma better than Coolors?
Khroma and Coolors serve slightly different purposes. Coolors is faster and easier to use for quick palette generation. Khroma produces more personalized results because it learns your specific preferences over time. For designers who want instant results Coolors is better. For designers who want palettes tailored to their personal style Khroma is the better choice.
Q: Can I use Khroma palettes commercially?
Yes, color palettes themselves cannot be copyrighted so you can use any colors generated by Khroma in commercial projects freely. There are no restrictions on using Khroma-generated color combinations in client work, products, websites, or any other commercial application.
Q: Does Khroma work on mobile?
Khroma does not have a dedicated mobile app and its web interface is not optimized for mobile use. It works best on a desktop or laptop browser. For mobile color palette tools Coolors has a much better mobile experience with dedicated iOS and Android apps.
Q: How long does it take to set up Khroma?
Setting up Khroma takes about 5 minutes. You visit khroma.co and select 50 colors from a large collection based on your taste. Once you have made your selections Khroma immediately starts generating personalized palettes. The initial setup is a one-time process and your preferences are saved in your browser for future visits.
