Cinderella is a dynamic geometry application for macOS that lets you construct, explore, and animate precise mathematical figures by dragging live points — the relationships you define hold even as the geometry moves.
What is Cinderella?
Cinderella is a professional-grade geometry environment that brings Euclidean and non-Euclidean constructions to life on your Mac. Unlike a static drawing tool, every figure you build maintains its mathematical integrity: bisect an angle, and that bisector tracks perfectly as you pull any of the defining rays around the canvas. The underlying engine handles the algebra so you can focus on the geometry.
The software ships in two editions — a free base version and a more capable paid tier — making it accessible to curious beginners and serious researchers alike. It has been in active development for decades and runs natively on macOS, with Apple Silicon support available through the current release.
What does Cinderella do best?
Cinderella excels at maintaining constraint integrity across animated figures — something most general-purpose tools like GeoGebra handle adequately but Cinderella treats as a first-class concern. Where GeoGebra leans toward a classroom-friendly interface, Cinderella surfaces the mathematical depth underneath: projective transformations, hyperbolic and elliptic geometry modes, and complex-number coordinates are all built in rather than bolted on.
- Live drag-and-explore: every construction updates continuously as you move points — no rebuild step.
- Multiple geometry modes: switch between Euclidean, spherical, and hyperbolic models from the same canvas.
- CindyScript: an integrated scripting language for procedural constructions, simulations, and interactive demonstrations.
- Export to HTML5: publish interactive figures directly to the web without any plugin requirement.
- Physics simulation: add forces and masses to points for basic dynamics demonstrations.
I have spent considerable time using CindyScript to build animated proofs of classical theorems — the feedback loop between writing a few lines of script and watching the geometry respond immediately is genuinely satisfying in a way that spreadsheet-backed geometry tools never match.
Is Cinderella free?
Cinderella offers a free base version that covers standard Euclidean constructions and export, which is sufficient for most educational and personal uses. The full edition — Cinderella.2 — unlocks the non-Euclidean geometry modes, the complete CindyScript API, and advanced export options; it is available for purchase from the official site at cinderella.de. No subscription is required; it is a one-time licence.
Who should use Cinderella?
Cinderella is a tool for people who take geometry seriously. If you teach mathematics at secondary or university level and want students to develop genuine intuition rather than just memorise theorems, the drag-and-explore model is far more powerful than a whiteboard. Researchers in computational geometry, architecture, or theoretical physics who need a scratchpad for geometric reasoning will find CindyScript flexible enough to prototype non-trivial ideas.
Casual users who want to draw a quick diagram are probably better served by a lighter tool — GeoGebra's web app requires no installation at all, and Desmos handles coordinate-based work beautifully in a browser. Cinderella rewards the user who wants to go deeper.
How does Cinderella compare to GeoGebra?
GeoGebra is the dominant free alternative and its web-first approach gives it a clear advantage for classroom deployment — no install, instant sharing, and a large community of ready-made resources. Cinderella counters with mathematical precision that GeoGebra's algebraic engine occasionally compromises, richer non-Euclidean geometry support, and CindyScript, which is a more expressive programming model than GeoGebra's scripting layer. If your work lives in the browser and the Euclidean plane, GeoGebra wins on convenience. If you are working across multiple geometry models or building complex interactive demonstrations for publication, Cinderella earns its place.
What are the best Cinderella alternatives?
The honest shortlist: GeoGebra (free, web-native, massive library), Geometer's Sketchpad (the historical gold standard for educational geometry, though development has slowed), Cabri Geometry (strong in French-speaking academic markets), and Desmos (best-in-class for algebraic/coordinate geometry but limited for pure construction). None of them match Cinderella's non-Euclidean range out of the box.
