Empty state design examples: what 109 SaaS products show

By Screenrove editorial · 22 October 2026

Empty state design examples from 342 screens in 109 SaaS products: 42% offer no primary action. Kinds, illustrations, templates and headline formulas.

Of 342 empty screens we captured across 109 SaaS products, 143 (42%) give the user no primary action inside the empty state: just a sentence, sometimes a picture, and a button somewhere else on the page. That is the most useful thing these empty state design examples show. The blank moment is the one screen every new user is guaranteed to see, and four in ten of them leave the next step for the user to find.

Below we break the set down by kind of emptiness, then look at what fills the space: buttons, illustrations, templates, docs links and the copy itself. Every screen is filterable on the Empty states wall.

Empty state design examples, counted by kind

Each screen has one of five kinds: first use (a feature not used yet), blank canvas (a new document or editor), no data (a report with nothing to report), no results (a search that matched nothing) and cleared (an inbox or trash emptied by finishing).

Two patterns stand out. First-use screens are the most finished: three quarters carry a button and two thirds carry art. Blank canvases are the opposite. Only 14 of 63 have any illustration and just one links to help, because most editors, from tldraw to Smartsheet's new sheet, put the guidance in the toolbar and leave the canvas bare. What blank canvases do instead is pre-load content: a third offer templates or samples, the highest share of any kind.

The best illustrations do a job

56% of screens use an illustration or icon art, and 84 of the 109 products use one on at least one screen. Most are decoration. The ones worth copying preview the result or act out the action.

PostHog does both. Its empty Experiments, Feature flags and Surveys pages put a hedgehog on the left and, on the right, a mock of the finished feature tagged "example data". The empty Experiments page shows a running test where one-click beats control, 4.6% to 3.1%, with "Chance one-click wins" at 96%. You see what you are about to build before you build it.

Gumroad spends the most on art. Its empty Sales and Payouts pages run full-width commissioned illustrations: a banknote with a beret-wearing painter in the portrait, and a waiter's hand serving a receipt in exchange for cash. The copy stays short ("Let's get you paid.") and each page keeps one pink button plus a learn link.

Softr's Global data restrictions page uses its illustration as the explanation. Three cursors sit on a table, labelled Employee ("Can edit assigned tasks"), Client ("Can view their projects") and Admin ("Can edit everything").

Mural goes one step further and acts out the gesture. Its empty Starred page shows a mural tile with the menu open on "Add to Starred" under a cursor, and the copy describes the same steps: click the three-dot menu and select Add to starred. There is nothing to create here, so the illustration teaches the motion instead.

When the copy points somewhere else

A common shortcut is to describe a button instead of placing one. Splitwise's empty group says "To add a new expense, click the orange "Add an expense" button." Make's Data stores card says "Click 'Add Data Store' in the top-right corner". TickTick's empty list reads "Click the input box to add", and folk's empty Messages tab sends you away entirely: "Go to a group and click "Email all" to begin reaching out."

It works when the target is close, as in Splitwise. StackBlitz has the cheapest fix we saw: the empty dashboard sentence "Create your first project and it will be shown here." makes its first word, "Create", the link. The instruction and the action are the same element.

The bare end of the scale has neither. Coolors shows a grey bucket outline and "You don't have any collection yet." with no button. Prezi's brand-new All projects page shows "No projects to show" under a no-results magnifier, the icon of a failed search on an account that never searched. 84 screens, a quarter of the set, have no button of any kind.

Templates, samples and docs

71 screens (21%) offer templates or samples. In some they outweigh the main button. Shortcut's empty Docs page puts a small "Create a Doc" button above twelve template cards, from Product Requirements Doc to Blank Doc. Glasp's "No Highlights Found" is really an import grid of 14 sources, Kindle to CSV Import.

Developer tools seed runnable content. Neon opens its SQL Editor on 11 lines that create a playing_with_neon table and fill it with generate_series, so Run works on the first click. Checkly's empty Heartbeats page puts a ready-to-paste monitor ("Run backup job", period 7 days, grace 2 hours) under the button. Hotjar's Heatmaps page embeds a 15-step tour captioned "This tour uses sample data." (How sample data plays out on empty charts is covered in our dashboard empty state study.)

Docs links are rarer: 62 screens (18%) carry a learn link, and almost all of those are first-use or no-data. Not one of the 34 no-results or cleared screens links to help, which is reasonable. Nobody needs a tutorial for an empty trash.

Headline formulas

324 screens have a headline. Four formulas cover most of them:

• "No X …" openers: 68 screens from 49 products ("No tasks", "No models yet", "No Workflows created"). The default, and the least informative.
• "…yet": 37 headlines from 32 products. Gamma's "No custom themes... yet" and Retool's "Nothing here...yet" lean on the pause.
• "Your first …": 25 screens from 18 products put "first" in the headline or button, from Vercel's "Deploy your first project" to folk's "Let's add your first people".
• "No X found": 13 screens, mostly genuine searches. Bolt uses it on a first run ("No projects found") and then corrects itself with "Create your first project to get started!"

14 headlines are questions ("What do you want to monitor?", "How would you like to start?"), almost all sitting on a prompt box. No-results copy is best when it names the query and a cause: Jitter's "No files or folders match "storyboard". Try a different keyword." beats Kapwing's equally specific but dead-end "Try searching for something else." Slack's "Nothing turned up" adds three things to try: different keywords, typos, filters.

Tone, from warm to bare

Cleared states get the warmest writing. Smartsheet's notifications panel says "All clear! You've taken care of all of your notifications. Take a break." over a steaming cup. Fibery's empty inbox shows a dog lounging by a pool: "Your Inbox is empty, enjoy the quiet". Tally's empty dashboard says "Roll up your sleeves and let's get started." Upstash jokes on an empty key browser: "Data on a break" / "Quick, lure it back with some CLI magic!"

At the other end, Medium's empty Stats page shows five zero counters and a flat line with no message at all. Warmth is not the point; the useful question is whether the copy tells you what will appear here and how to make it appear. Gumroad's one line ("Every time a new customer purchases a product from your Gumroad, their email address and other details are added here.") does both without a joke.

How we counted

We captured these screens in desktop browsers with research accounts in September and October 2026. A vision model recorded each screen's kind, button, illustration, templates and learn-link attributes, and you can check every one on its screen page. 18 screens in the feed have no attributes yet and are left out, so the base is 342 screens from 109 products. Counts are screens, not products, and a product can appear several times. We record what we saw, not A/B test results, so nothing here says which empty state converts better.

What to steal

• Put the action in the empty state. If you must point elsewhere, make the instruction the link, as StackBlitz does with "Create".
• Preview the result. A labelled example of the finished thing (PostHog, Softr) explains more than a decorative illustration.
• Seed blank canvases. Runnable SQL, a code snippet or a template row gets someone to a first result faster than an empty editor.
• Match the copy to the kind. Don't use a search-failure icon or "No X found" on a first run; Prezi and Bolt both do.
• Say what will appear here. One sentence naming the future content beats both a joke and silence.
• Keep cleared states short and kind. No button needed; a line like Smartsheet's is enough.

Browse the full Empty states wall, or start with the PostHog and Gumroad collections. Building one now? Connect the Screenrove MCP server and ask your agent for "first-use empty states with templates" while you design.