Free Online PRISMA 2020 Flow Diagram Generator

Build the PRISMA flow diagram for your systematic review or meta-analysis: identification, screening, eligibility and included, with every count computed automatically. Download as a PNG, no watermark.

What the PRISMA diagram is for

• The four phases: Identification (how many records you found), screening (title and abstract), eligibility (full text) and included (the ones that make it into the synthesis). Every journal expects them in that order.
• The exclusion reasons: The eligibility phase is the only one where you must give the reason for every exclusion, one by one. "Did not meet criteria" is not a reason: you need the number of studies excluded for each specific reason.
• The arithmetic has to add up: Identified minus duplicates equals screened; screened minus excluded-at-screening equals assessed at full text; full text minus excluded-at-full-text equals included. A reviewer checks this subtraction before anything else.
• PRISMA 2020, not the 2009 version: The 2020 template (Page et al., 2021) is what most journals ask for today. It changed little from 2009, but stating the right version in your manuscript matters.

Records, reports and studies are not the same thing

PRISMA 2020 distinguishes three units, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in the diagram. A record is a title and abstract as it comes out of a database; a report is a full-text document (article, thesis, poster); a study is the investigation itself, which may have produced several reports. The identification and screening boxes count records; the eligibility box, reports; the included box, studies. If the same trial appears in two articles, it enters as one study with two reports.

What this generator draws and what it does not

The generator draws the basic flow: records identified from databases (and from other sources, if any), duplicates removed, records screened by title and abstract, records excluded at screening, full texts assessed with each exclusion reason and its count, studies included in the synthesis and, if you run a meta-analysis, how many enter it. The official PRISMA 2020 template adds boxes for records removed before screening for other reasons (for example, flagged by automation tools) and for reports that could not be retrieved. If your review has them, state them in the Methods text or use the official template.

Worked example

With the example data the tool loads: 312 records from databases and 18 from other sources (330 in total); 46 duplicates are removed, leaving 284 to screen; 210 are excluded on title and abstract and 74 are assessed at full text; 19 are excluded with reasons (9 with no control group, 6 with a non-clinical population and 4 without enough data to compute the effect) and 55 studies are included, 11 of them in the meta-analysis. Every subtraction adds up, which is the first thing a reviewer checks.

Before you submit your systematic review

• State the version: "PRISMA 2020 flow diagram (Page et al., 2021)".
• Make sure the numbers in the diagram match those in the Methods text and the Abstract.
• The PRISMA 2020 checklist has 27 items: you can check your systematic review against PRISMA 2020 by pasting the manuscript.
• If you pool the studies, the next step is the forest plot with its heterogeneity.

Each box is explained in more detail in the PRISMA flow diagram explained, and the whole path, from search to write-up, is in the meta-analysis kit.

How to cite this tool

If you use it in your thesis or in a paper, cite it so that readers of your Methods section know how the calculation was done.

Ciudad-Fernández, V. (2026). PRISMA 2020 flow diagram generator [Web application]. Ciudad Science. Retrieved October 18, 2026, from https://analisisdedatospsicologia.com/en/tools/prisma-flow-diagram-generator

For your Methods section: The study selection flow diagram follows the PRISMA 2020 template (Page et al., 2021) and was drawn with the Ciudad Science PRISMA 2020 flow diagram generator (Ciudad-Fernández, 2026).

@misc{ciudadfernandez2026prisma,
  author       = {Ciudad-Fern{\'a}ndez, V{\'i}ctor},
  title        = {{PRISMA 2020 flow diagram generator}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Ciudad Science},
  howpublished = {Web application},
  url          = {https://analisisdedatospsicologia.com/en/tools/prisma-flow-diagram-generator},
  urldate      = {2026-10-18},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-18},
}

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