Tierforge: a tier list maker for things you can name in three words

01  What it is

A tier list is a ranking with bands instead of numbers: you sort a set of things into S, A, B, C and D, where S is the best of the best and D the bottom of the pile. It is behind a very large amount of internet argument, and it spread because a finished tier list is worth looking at: one glance tells you a lot about the person who made it.

Tierforge is a browser tool for making one. The board is five colour-coded lanes — S in a deep rose, then orange, amber, teal and blue down to D — with an Unranked tray underneath. Everything you are ranking starts in that tray, and you move each item up into a lane by dragging it and letting go. The lane you are hovering over highlights, and the item lands where you drop it, in position, not just in the lane.

It is free, runs entirely in your browser, and has no account and nothing to install. It works on a phone with a thumb as well as a desktop with a mouse, and the finished card is the point of the whole thing: a portrait PNG you can post, send or keep.

The one decision that shapes everything else: Tierforge is text and emoji only. It has no image upload, and it is not going to get one. If you want to rank anime characters, footballers or album covers, you want a tool built for uploaded images, and those exist and are good at it. Tierforge is for lists you can write out in a few words each — pizza toppings, breakfast cereals, chores, the seasons, the sounds your house makes.

02  Twenty packs, and the rule behind all of them

You can start from one of twenty ready-made packs, grouped into four headings. Food & Drink carries pizza toppings, ice-cream flavours, breakfast cereals, hot drinks, comfort foods and sandwich fillings. Everyday Life has chores, morning rituals, small luxuries, household sounds, ways to rest and Procrastination Methods. Outside & Weather covers the seasons, weather moods, night-sky sights and places to walk; Out & About is weekend activities, evening plans, group chat habits and getting around.

Packs hold between four and ten items each. Seasons of the Year is the smallest at four, which makes it a genuinely hard ranking — there is nowhere to hide when every option has to go somewhere. Surprise me on the picker screen hands you a random pack instead.

Every single pack is an original, low-stakes list of ordinary things. There are no celebrities, no brands, no characters, no teams and no logos anywhere in the app — a deliberate rule, not an accident of what got written. It is what makes a card safe to post anywhere: a ranking of household sounds draws no copyright complaint and looks fine in a work group chat. It also keeps the app small and fast — there is nothing to download but words and emoji.

03  Your own list, and the limits worth knowing first

Choosing Custom gives you a blank board and an input box. Type an item, press Add, and it appears in the tray; each one can carry a leading emoji. The board title is editable too — it starts as "My Tier List" and it is the text that ends up in the header of your exported card, so name it properly.

The caps bite if you are planning something large. A custom board holds thirty items, each label is cut off at forty characters, and the title at sixty. Items go in one at a time — there is no paste-a-list import, so a thirty-item board is thirty trips to the input box. If your list runs to fifty entries, this is not the tool for it; rank the half you actually have opinions about.

Custom mode is also the only place a Remove button exists. On a ready-made pack you can move an item back to the tray and leave it there, but you cannot delete it from the board. That is usually the right answer anyway — the item sitting in Unranked is part of the joke.

04  The card, and what it actually contains

The card is 1080×1350 — a 4:5 portrait, which is the shape the big social platforms want. It is drawn on your own device from your own board state: the only thing that leaves your browser is the PNG you chose to save or send.

A header band carries your board title and the app wordmark, then come the five tier rows S through D, then a footer reading "Made with Tierforge" and the site address. Each tier row has room for two rows of chips. Past that the card stops fitting everything and collapses the remainder into a "+N" pill — a tier you crammed fifteen items into will show a count instead of the chips. The card also leaves the Unranked tray off entirely: anything you never placed does not appear on the finished image. Worth remembering before you export — the board on screen and the card in the file are not quite the same picture.

The card is always drawn on a light background whatever your system theme is set to, so exports look consistent and stay readable when reposted. Download saves it with a filename taken from your board title — rank the comfort foods pack and you get tierforge-comfort-foods.png. Share behaves differently by device: on a phone it opens the normal share sheet with the PNG attached, ready for a message or a post; on a desktop, where no share sheet exists, it copies a short line naming your board plus the site address, so card and link can be pasted together.

05  Two ways to place a chip, and the things it deliberately does not do

Dragging is the same gesture with a mouse or a finger: press on a chip, move, release. A short press that does not move stays a tap, so the two never fight each other.

Tapping is the second path, and the precise one. Tap a chip and a bar appears reading "Move [item] to", with a button for each tier, one for the tray, and Remove if you are on a custom board. The chips are real buttons, so tabbing to one and pressing Enter selects it just as a tap does, and the move bar is keyboard-reachable. If you are ranking on a small screen, where dragging a chip past three lanes is fiddly, tapping and using the bar is faster and less error-prone.

What is not there matters just as much. There is no undo — a misplaced chip is moved back by hand, and Reset, which returns every chip to the tray, is a one-way door. There is no saved board either: the ranking lives in the open tab and nowhere else, so reloading the page puts you back at the theme picker with nothing kept. Export before you close the tab. And there is no gallery, no sharing links and no account — what you make is a PNG on your device that you post yourself, so nobody is moderating it or deciding who sees it.

06  Questions people ask

Is it free, and do I need an account?

Free, and no account. The app is ad-supported and runs entirely in your browser, with nothing to install and no paywall — packs, custom lists and the PNG export are all available without signing up.

Can I upload images or rank anime characters, footballers or album covers?

No. Tierforge is deliberately text and emoji only, with no image upload at all — it is for lists you can name in a few words. For rankings built from pictures of characters, players or cover art you want a tool made for uploaded images.

Is my tier list saved if I close the tab?

No. The board lives in the open page and nothing is stored — there is no save, no draft and no history. A reload starts you back at the theme picker, so export the card before you close or refresh the tab.

How many items can I rank?

A ready-made pack has between four and ten items. A custom list takes up to thirty items, with each label capped at forty characters and the board title at sixty. Custom items are added one at a time — there is no way to paste in a whole list at once.

What size is the exported card, and where can I post it?

It is a 1080×1350 PNG — a 4:5 portrait, which is exactly Instagram's tallest portrait format and fits a normal feed without cropping. The card carries a small "Made with Tierforge" footer and the site address, and the file is named after your board title.

What happens to items I leave in the Unranked tray?

They stay on the board but they are not drawn on the exported card, which shows the five tier rows only. If something belongs on the finished image, put it in a tier before you export. A tier that overflows the card's two rows of chips also shows a "+N" count instead of every item.

07  More from the shelf

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• Tapedeck — Make someone a mixtape.
• Tilewright — Draw seven tiles. Outword the AI.
• Chess — Beat the engine. Post the win.

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