Graph Paper

The most common are 1/4 inch (four squares to the inch) in the US and 5 mm elsewhere. Engineering and science paper often uses 1/10 inch or 1 mm squares with a heavier line every 10, and 1/2 or 1 inch squares suit young children.

With 1/4 inch squares, a Letter sheet with half-inch margins holds 30 × 40 (32 × 42 with 1/4 inch margins). With 5 mm squares, an A4 sheet with 10 mm margins holds 38 × 55, and with 1 cm squares 19 × 27, or 19 × 25 on Letter. The count is shown under the preview as you change the settings.

Yes. It’s often sold as “4 × 4” or “quad ruled” paper: four squares to the inch in both directions. It suits maths homework, floor plans at 1/4 inch to the foot, pixel art and knitting charts.

Close, but not the same: 1/5 inch is 5.08 mm, so over 20 squares the two drift apart by 1.6 mm. Choose the one your worksheet or pattern expects.

5 mm suits written sums and graphs with many points. 1 cm squares are easier for young children to count, and each is 1 cm², so counting squares gives an area and counting edges a perimeter.

The printer scaled the page. In the print dialog, choose “Actual size” or a scale of 100% instead of “Fit to page” or “Shrink to fit”. To check, measure ten squares with a ruler: ten 1 cm squares should span exactly 10 cm.

Most printers can’t print the outer few millimeters of a sheet, so the grid stays inside the margins you set. It’s also centred, so every square is whole, with no sliver of one at the edge.

Choose “Actual size” or 100% in the print dialog, not “Fit to page”, and load the same paper size as the PDF. Then a 1/4 inch square measures exactly 1/4 inch.

Yes. Every paper is free to make, download and print as often as you like, with no account and no watermark.