Tap any part to see what it does.
Switch between an animal and a plant cell, then click, drag and zoom to explore. Run the guided tour through every organelle, hide the labels to quiz yourself, and track how much of the cell you've mapped.
Same parts, different cells.
Ten organelles are shared between the two cells. Two are found only in animal cells, two only in plant cells — and the vacuole changes character completely. Tap any row to jump straight to that organelle in the diagram above.
Four moves and you've mastered it.
Everything runs locally in your browser — nothing to install, nothing uploaded, nothing stored.
Pick your specimen
Start with the animal cell, then flip to the plant cell and watch the diagram rebuild itself — wall, chloroplasts and giant vacuole included.
Click any part
Tap an organelle to spotlight it, fly the camera in and open its dossier: what it does, plus a quick fact worth remembering for the exam.
Drag & zoom
Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom up to ×4.6. Getting close is the point — the ribosomes are tiny on purpose, just like in real life.
Tour & self-test
Run the guided tour to step through every organelle in order. Then hide the labels and quiz yourself by naming each part as you tap it.
The two reactions that run everything.
Chloroplasts and mitochondria are opposite ends of the same energy pipeline — one stores sunlight as sugar, the other cashes it back out.
Photosynthesis — chloroplasts
The chloroplast's recipe: carbon dioxide and water, welded into sugar using nothing but captured sunlight. The oxygen is a by-product — and the reason you're breathing.
Respiration — mitochondria
Photosynthesis in reverse, run by mitochondria: sugar is broken back down and its energy pocketed as ATP, the currency every process in the cell is paid in.
A sense of scale
If the cell were a football stadium, a mitochondrion would be a delivery van parked on the pitch — and each ribosome a small coin. There would be millions of coins.
Things people ask.
Everything about how the explorer behaves, what it saves (nothing), and how honest the drawing is.
Still stuck? Write to us — we read everything.
How do I use the interactive cell diagram?+
Pick animal or plant cell, then tap or click any part of the diagram to see its name, what it does, and a quick fact. Drag to look around, and scroll, pinch, or use the zoom buttons to get closer.
Is this diagram to scale or scientifically exact?+
No. Real organelles overlap, change shape, and vary hugely in size and number between cells. This diagram is a stylized, simplified illustration built to make each part easy to spot, click, and tell apart, not a microscope image.
What's the difference between the animal cell and the plant cell here?+
The plant cell adds a rigid cell wall, a large central vacuole, and green chloroplasts for photosynthesis, and drops the centrioles and lysosomes shown on the animal cell. Both share a nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, the ER, and a Golgi apparatus.
What does tapping the animate button do?+
It plays gentle looping motion on parts of the cell that are active in real life, like mitochondria pulsing and ribosomes drifting, so it's easier to picture the cell as a living, moving space instead of a static picture.
Does the tool save or upload anything?+
No. The diagram runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you click, zoom, or select is ever sent to a server, logged, or stored.
Can I use this on my phone or tablet?+
Yes. Tapping selects an organelle, dragging pans the view, and pinching zooms in or out, so the whole diagram works the same way with touch as it does with a mouse.
Why do some organelles appear more than once in the diagram?+
Parts like mitochondria and ribosomes are shown several times because real cells contain many copies of them. Tapping any copy opens the same information, since they all do the same job.
Is this interactive cell diagram free to use?+
Yes, it's completely free with no account, no sign-up, and no limit on how much you explore.