Free printable mazes and maze generator

Hard Mazes to Print

Large, winding mazes with one long route and hundreds of dead ends. Print them with answer pages.

This page makes hard mazes in your web browser that you can view, print, or save as a PDF. It is free, needs no sign-up, and nothing has to be installed. Each maze is made on your device and nothing is uploaded.

The page opens on Hard, a 30 x 30 cell maze with one maze per page. For a bigger puzzle, switch to Very hard (45 x 45) or Expert (70 x 70). These printable hard mazes suit older children and adults, and a whole set can be saved as a PDF. For an even larger puzzle, the Design tab builds giant mazes up to 100 x 100 cells. Answer pages show the route in red, so you can check your work.

How to use the hard maze generator

  1. The page opens on the Print tab with Hard (30 x 30 cells) and one maze per page.
  2. For a larger maze, click Very hard (45 x 45) or Expert (70 x 70) above the preview.
  3. Press New maze to get a different maze with the same settings, until you have one you like.
  4. Press Show solution to draw the shortest route from Start to Finish in red.
  5. Set Mazes per page, Number of pages, Paper size (US Letter or A4) and Page layout (Plain or Worksheet).
  6. Tick Add answer pages if you want the solutions printed after the maze pages.
  7. For a custom size, open the Design tab; set Wall thickness to Thin under More options to fit more detail into a very large maze.
  8. Check the preview of page 1 and of the answer page (switch with Puzzle page and Answer page), then press Print / Save as PDF. To get a PDF file, choose Save as PDF as the destination.

Download SVG and Download PNG save what the preview shows. Use SVG if you need a file that stays sharp at any size, such as a poster. Press Copy link to share the exact maze with someone else.

What makes a maze hard

A maze is hard when its correct route is long and most of the passages lead nowhere. Three things drive this: the size of the grid, the number of dead ends, and whether there is only one way through.

These mazes use the recursive backtracker, which carves long, winding passages and one long single route. With Extra routes at 0 %, there is exactly one solution, so there are no loops to shortcut through. On the site’s generator, averaged over 20 mazes, Hard has a shortest route of about 250 cells and 93 dead ends. Very hard has about 450 cells and 200 dead ends. Expert has about 920 cells and 490 dead ends. Each step up roughly doubles the number of places you can get stuck. The size grows fast because the area is the width times the height: Hard has 900 cells, Very hard 2,025 and Expert 4,900.

How do you solve a hard maze

Use a method that checks the whole maze instead of guessing at turns. Three strategies work well, and all of them work on every maze printed here:

  1. Wall follower. In a perfect maze (no loops) whose entrance and exit are on the outer wall, keep one hand on the same wall at all times. This always reaches the exit, though often by a long detour.
  2. Dead-end filling. Shade in every dead end, working back to the last junction, and repeat until only the solution is left. On paper, a pencil makes this easy.
  3. Working backwards. Start at the Finish and trace back toward the Start. A route that looks hopeless from the Start is often easier to spot from the other end.

For the largest mazes, combine dead-end filling with working backwards, and use a pencil so a wrong guess can be erased. Filling removes most of the wrong paths, and tracing back covers the rest.

Frequently asked questions

Is the hard maze generator free?

Yes. It runs in your web browser, needs no sign-up, and nothing has to be installed. Each maze is made on your device and nothing is uploaded.

Can I print the answers?

Yes. Tick Add answer pages on the Print tab. The answer pages come after the maze pages and show the solution in red.

Does it work on a phone or tablet?

It runs in the browser, so you can open it on a phone or tablet. Printing and Save as PDF use your browser’s own print dialog, so the steps can look different on each device.

Can I make the same maze again?

Yes. Each maze is built from a seed, and the same seed and settings always give the same maze. Use Copy link to keep the exact maze, and a reprint will match it. New maze creates a different one with the same settings.

What is the hardest maze?

There is no single hardest maze. The Expert level (70 x 70) is the largest preset, with a shortest route of about 920 cells on average. For a bigger challenge, the Design tab makes custom mazes up to 100 x 100 cells, which is 10,000 cells.

Can I make giant mazes?

Yes. Use the Design tab to set the size up to 100 x 100 cells. Choose Thin walls for very large mazes so the detail fits the page. Download an SVG to print the maze at a large size without losing sharpness.