Free tool

Box dieline generator: free tuck end box template

Enter your box’s inside size and get a tuck-end carton dieline to design on: cut and crease lines as spot colors, bleed and safe areas, allowed for the board’s thickness. Vector PDF with layers, or SVG.

Free, no sign-upRuns in your browser

Box dieline

Runs in your browser. Nothing to install.

How it works

What’s in the file

Cut and crease on their own layer, as the spot colors “Cut” and “Crease”, set to overprint, so they never print on the box.
Bleed and safe areas on a guides layer, following the outline of every panel and flap.
Allowances for the board: panels a board’s thickness wider than the inside size, and tucks narrower so they slide in.
Panel names and the box’s sizes, so you know which panel is the front before you design it.

Adding a barcode? Make it with the barcode maker and keep it on a flat panel, away from folds and the glue flap. Printing the box? Read how to set artwork on a dieline. Stock sizes, such as 2 × 2 × 4 in and 3 × 3 × 6 in cartons, are ready to download with no account in the free templates.

Questions

What is a dieline?

The flat outline of a box or label: where it is cut, where it folds, and where the glue goes. The printer makes a cutting die from it, and you design your artwork on top of it. See dieline in the glossary.

Reverse tuck end or straight tuck end?

Both are the everyday retail carton, for cosmetics, supplements, candles and small products. A reverse tuck end has its top flap on the back and its bottom flap on the front, which runs well on packing lines and prints neatly. A straight tuck end has both flaps on the back, so the top and bottom open the same way, which some products and window displays need.

Which measurements do I enter?

The inside size of the box: the space your product needs, plus a little room. Length is the width of the front, width is the depth from front to back, and height runs from the bottom flap to the top. The tool adds the board thickness, so the outside ends up slightly bigger.

Which board thickness should I pick?

Ask your printer which board they will use. Folding cartons are usually 14 pt to 24 pt (about 0.36 to 0.61 mm); 18 pt is a common middle. Thicker board needs more allowance at the folds, which the tool adds.

Can I send this dieline straight to my printer?

Use it to design on, and send it to your printer to check before they make the die. The cut and crease lines are spot colors set to overprint, the way printers expect, but every printer’s board and die differ slightly, and many adjust a dieline or use their own. Print a sample on similar card, cut it out and fold it before you approve anything.

How do I design on it?

Open the PDF in Illustrator or Affinity. Keep the Dieline layer on top and locked, put your artwork on a layer below it, and run backgrounds into the pink bleed. Keep text inside the blue safe areas, away from folds. Before you send it, delete the Guides layer and keep the dieline as its own spot color, or as the printer asks.

Do I need an account?

To download, yes: a free one, with Google or an email link and no password. The preview and the numbers work without it. Your dashboard keeps every dieline you download, so you can get it again, open it here with the same settings, or ask us about it.

Put the dieline maker on your site

Run a print shop or sell packaging? Add it to your own site, free and with no sign-up: it lets your customers draw a tuck end box dieline at their box’s size and design on it. It runs in your customer’s browser, so their files aren’t sent to us or anyone else, and there’s no account, tracking or chat inside it. A small “by Silentt Design” line stays under it.

Paste this where it should appear:

<script async src="https://silenttdesign.com/embed/dieline/embed.js" data-size="3x2x5in"></script>
<p><a href="https://silenttdesign.com/tools/box-dieline-generator/">Box dieline maker</a> by Silentt Design</p>

data-size is the inside size it opens at, length × width × height, in in or mm: 3x2x5in or 75x50x125mm. Leave it out to start at 3 × 2 × 5 in. Folding a printed sample first is still the way to check a die.

Printer messages this helps with

“The artwork doesn’t fit our dieline”: A dieline is the printer’s template for the cut, fold and glue lines of a label or box.
“There’s no white ink layer”: Printing inks are see-through and CMYK has no white, so on clear film, metallic, kraft or dark stock, colors look faint and anything meant to be white simply isn’t printed.
“The foil (or spot UV) needs its own layer”: Foil and spot UV aren’t inks the printer can pick out of your colors, so they need a separate map of exactly where each finish goes: solid 100% vector shapes, on their own layer or page, in a spot color named as they ask (or a separate 100% black mask file).
“We need flat artwork on our dieline, not a picture of the box”: An AI mock-up shows a finished box from one angle.

Rather have it done? Labels, stickers & packaging or Retail & counter displays, at a fixed price.

More free tools

Cards, flyers, brochuresPrint template makerMake a print template with bleed, free EAN, UPC, Code 128, QRBarcode generator: UPC, EAN, QRMake a UPC, EAN-13 or QR code, free Books, KDP paperbackBook cover size calculatorWork out a book cover and spine size, free

Or the rest: Print-ready PDF checker, DPI and print size calculator, Add bleed to a PDF, Seamless pattern checker, RGB and HEX to CMYK converter, Paper weight converter: GSM to lb, UPC and EAN check digit calculator, Label size calculator, and all of them on one page.

Want the whole box designed?

We design your box on the dieline, with barcode, white ink and foil set up, and a 3D mock-up to approve before it prints.

Ask a designer See prices