Resumake Has Closed: The Best Alternatives for a Free LaTeX Resume in 2026
If you went looking for Resumake recently, you found a farewell note instead of a resume builder.
Resumake was a free, open-source LaTeX resume generator built by Saad Quadri — no ads, no user accounts, no data collection. It was written, in his words, out of "a pure love of coding and open source", it got featured in Mashable, and tens of thousands of people used it to land internships, first jobs and career changes. Then it closed.
This guide is for the people arriving at that farewell page needing something else. It is worth saying up front: nothing on this list is a drop-in replacement, because the thing that made Resumake special was not its feature list. It was its terms.
First: it might not be over
Before you migrate anywhere, read the update at the top of the Resumake site. Saad is looking to hand the project to someone who will keep its philosophy intact — free, ad-free, and never requiring accounts.
So if what you want is Resumake specifically, it may be worth waiting rather than switching. Nothing below is going anywhere.
What you are actually replacing
Most "alternative" lists compare features. That is the wrong axis here, because Resumake's users were mostly not choosing it for features. They chose it for four things:
- Free, with no upsell. Not a free tier. Free.
- No account. Open the page, type, download. Nothing to sign up for.
- No data collection. Your employment history did not end up on anyone's server.
- Open source. You could read exactly what it did, and fork it if you disagreed.
Work out which of those you genuinely need, because that is what narrows the list. Someone who mainly wants clean LaTeX output has very different options from someone who will not create an account on principle.
The options, honestly
| Option | Closest to Resumake on | Where it differs |
|---|---|---|
| RenderCV | Open source, free, no account, no tracking | You write YAML rather than filling a form. A step more technical. |
| Overleaf | Free tier, huge template gallery | You edit real LaTeX. Needs an account. |
| An AI chat plus a LaTeX compiler | Free, no dedicated account | You are pasting personal data into a chat. See the privacy note below. |
| Lampzi | The no-code form-to-LaTeX experience | Requires an account, and is not open source. |
If the open-source philosophy is what you are protecting: RenderCV
Of everything here, RenderCV is the closest in spirit. It is open source, free, requires no account, collects nothing, and produces genuine LaTeX PDFs. It has a substantial GitHub following for the same reasons people liked Resumake.
The trade is the interface: you describe your CV in a YAML file rather than filling in a form. If you were comfortable with Resumake you will almost certainly be comfortable with this, but it is a step toward the technical side rather than away from it.
If you want template choice and do not mind LaTeX: Overleaf
Overleaf is where most LaTeX resumes get written. Enormous template gallery, real-time compilation, and a free tier that covers resume work comfortably.
The difference from Resumake is fundamental rather than incidental: Overleaf is a LaTeX editor. Resumake was a form that produced LaTeX. If you liked never seeing a backslash, Overleaf is not that. We wrote about that gap in detail in Overleaf vs. Lampzi.
The route Saad himself suggests: AI plus a compiler
The Resumake farewell page recommends using Claude or ChatGPT to generate LaTeX and compiling it in Overleaf or locally. It is a legitimate approach and costs nothing, and for tailoring wording to a specific job description it is genuinely better than any template tool.
Two caveats worth carrying with it. First, AI-generated LaTeX often does not compile first time, so budget for some debugging. Second — and this is Saad's own advice, worth repeating — a resume is a dense block of personal data: full name, address, phone number, employment history. Consider redacting the identifying parts before pasting anything into a chat, and adding them back into the final document yourself.
If it was the form-not-code part you liked: Lampzi
Full disclosure: this is our site, so weigh this section accordingly.
Lampzi is the closest thing here to Resumake's actual interface — you fill in a form, pick a template, and the platform compiles real LaTeX behind the scenes into an ATS-friendly PDF. You can also upload an existing resume and have it parsed into the form rather than retyping it. If what you valued was LaTeX output without touching LaTeX, that is the same trade Resumake offered.
But it differs from Resumake in exactly the ways its users cared about:
- It requires an account. Your resumes are saved to it, which is the point, but it is a real difference if you chose Resumake specifically to avoid signing up anywhere.
- It is not open source. You cannot read the code or fork it.
If those two things are why you used Resumake, RenderCV is the more honest recommendation and you should take it. If what you wanted was the no-code experience and the account is not a dealbreaker, the LaTeX resume builder is worth a look, and the templates will tell you quickly whether the output suits you.
One thing Resumake never set out to do: the same account also carries a free job application tracker, an interview tracker for logging rounds and the questions you were asked, and a job search calendar that fills itself from those rounds. There is also a library of real interview experiences shared by other candidates, readable without an account at all. All of that is free — it is the part of a job search that starts once the resume is finished.
What to check before you commit to any of them
Whatever you pick, the same four questions apply — and they are worth asking precisely because Resumake shutting down is a reminder that tools do not last forever.
- Can you get your data out? If the tool closed tomorrow, would you still have your content in a form you could reuse? A saved PDF is not the same as a portable document.
- Is the output really LaTeX? Several tools advertise "LaTeX-style" templates that are HTML rendered to PDF. That is not the same thing, and the typography shows it. If it matters to you, check whether you can download the .tex source.
- Does it survive an ATS? LaTeX produces a text-based PDF, which parses well — but only if the template avoids multi-column layouts and text in images. Our honest take on LaTeX for resumes covers where it helps and where it does not.
- What happens to your personal data? The Resumake standard — collect nothing — is rarer than it should be. Read the policy before you upload an employment history.
Final thoughts
It is genuinely a loss. Resumake was a small free tool that helped a lot of people for years, built by one person who never made money from it, and its terms were more generous than most things you will find now.
If you want the closest thing to what it stood for, use RenderCV. If you want the closest thing to how it felt to use, a form-based builder gets you there — ours included, with the differences above stated plainly. And if you can wait, keep an eye on the Resumake site: it may yet find a new maintainer.
Whichever way you go, take five minutes to save your resume content somewhere portable first. That is the lesson worth taking from this.